Some of the real life jobs we did for our clients in our Australian data recovery labs at Payam, case studies / case study showing a video and article about work we have done for our clients.
Case Studies
WD 10TB Hard Drive With Bad Sectors: 94% Cloned in 6 Days, 4TB of Files Recovered
A WD 10TB hard drive from a car mechanic’s workshop in Western Australia showed up but nothing would copy. A six day DeepSpar clone reached 94 percent and about 4TB, 4,700 files, came back.
WD My Passport Not Spinning Up: Stuck Heads Released, 62,000 Files Recovered
A WD My Passport that stopped working with a faint clicking had its read/write heads stuck to the platters. Heads released in a laminar flow cabinet, SMR firmware unlocked on the PC-3000 Express, 700GB and over 62,000 files recovered.
SanDisk Dual Drive 256GB Not Detected: Shorted Power Chip Fixed, Photos Recovered
A SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Luxe 256GB stopped being recognised by any computer. We found a shorted power regulator chip and an unstable resistor, fitted a matching chip from a donor drive, replaced the resistor, and recovered Olivia’s photos and videos in 1 day.
WD My Passport Asking to Be Formatted: One Weak Head, Over 700GB Recovered
A WD My Passport kept asking to be formatted. One of four read heads was weak. We imaged with the good heads, fitted donor heads and recovered over 700GB, 99.9 percent cloned.
Lenovo ST650 RAID 5, 8 SAS Drives, 2 Failed: Files Recovered After Another Lab Spent Two Months
A Lenovo ST650 server with eight 900GB SAS drives in RAID 5 lost two drives. Another company worked on it for two months without success. After imaging every drive, fitting donor heads to the worst one and working out an unusual RAID layout that no software could detect, the files came back after more than three weeks.
MacBook Air A1369 Died Overnight: Files Rescued From a Worn 128GB SSD
A MacBook Air A1369 died overnight. Its 128GB Samsung SSD was worn out and stuck in a busy state. We rebuilt the translator on a PC-3000 and copied most of Daniel’s files to a new drive.
Clicking Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB: Donor Heads Fitted, 2 Weak Heads Read Last
A Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB drive from Melbourne clicked and would not show up. The failed heads were replaced with donor heads, the ROM patched on the PC-3000, and the drive cloned.
WD External Drive Slow, Then Not Detected: 1 of 4 Heads Failed, Family Video Recovered
A Western Digital 2.5 inch external drive read slowly for months, then stopped detecting. One of four heads had failed. Two stage imaging with donor heads brought back years of family video.
Broken USB Flash Drive, Tax Deadline Today: Files Back in a Few Hours
An accountant needed PDF files from a USB flash drive with a torn-off connector before a same-day tax deadline. Our mobile and electronics engineer soldered on a fresh USB connector under Emergency service at our main data recovery lab in Rhodes, NSW. Every file was recovered within a few hours and collected on a new Toshiba 1TB drive in time for the deadline.
Samsung T7 Shield 4TB Not Recognised: Full Clone of an Encrypted SSD in 3 Days
A Samsung T7 Shield 4TB portable SSD stopped being recognised, with the power light on but no data activity. The fault was damage inside the USB-C port that only appeared at high speed. We read the encrypted drive at USB 2 speed on a PC-3000 and delivered a full sector-by-sector clone in three days without unlocking it.
