Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Need data from hard drive and tape

Saturday, November 18th, 2017

I’ve had several hard drives and old backup tapes fail recently – I’ve documented the details of the problems below.

Hard drives failed
Windows booted and gave me a disk read error, tried to repair using windows 10 recovery image via usb which failed. Installed a new copy of windows 10 on another hard drive and ran chkdsk /r on the faulty HD. In the windows explorer menu for my computer I see the file is 0 bytes (it’s a 1tb hard drive) chkdsk has been running for 3 days with an ETA of 150hours. Kind of am giving up hope need data recovered…

We plugged in the HDD on the wrong voltage setting and now it won’t work.

many hard drives

I have had my IOMEGA external hard drive for 8 years. I recently tried to plug it in and it says the hard drive must be formatted.

2TB LaCie External Disk Drive not being properly recognised by operating system when plugged in via USB, despite trying with multiple laptops (Windows and Mac). I carefully removed the Seagate drive from its LaCie enclosure and placed in a PC but the BIOS would not detect it. To my knowledge, the drive has not been subjected to any shocks or drops. However, it does make a faint beep noise when plugged in (be it via SATA or USB enclosure).

The hard drive is ticking regularly, when I try to open it, I receive an IO error. It is an ext4, old external 500Gb, w/ approximatelly 100Gb of Data

I dropped my 2TB Seagate back up harddrive, and now it isn’t being recognized by my computer. It makes a beeping noise and a clicking noise.

Seagate freeAgent external hard drive is being recognised by my Mac but running so slowly that I cannot transfer files over (recently got new laptop and wanted to transfer music and photos)
E.g. it takes around an hour to open a folder and I tried to transfer one folder of photos from external hard drive to laptop and this failed after 48 hours.

Need data back from tape
The external hard drive has been dropped and now no longer is picked up by computer. Its first spins and then after 15 seconds it makes two clicks and stops spinning.

I have three backup tapes from 1990. They are 3M: two DC 600A and one DC 300 XL/P. They are undamaged, so I guess that if you have an appropriate tape drive and can read the byte order, they should be easy.

We have an issue with a number of tapes that are either corrupted or physically damaged (snapped). These are DDS3 and DDS4 tapes. Are you able to give a high level indication of cost for recovery per tape?

I have a DAT / DDS Retrospect backup that I need restored. Is this something you can do and if so what would it cost ( a single tape?)

Actions
I’m currently working on getting the data back from several of these devices – If you’d like me to help you recover the data from your hard drive or tape the price per recover is approximately £300 – £600 depending on the fault with the device. I’ll update readers of this blog with news in future posts.

Not Working! – Hard Drive

Monday, October 30th, 2017

From the start, I would like to say, that i took this hard drive from my broken laptop and put it in my main pc and used it as a external storage, one day the hard drive started to making click sounds and I realized that It’s not showing up in my pc, I unpluged the drive and tried to open in to see if the pillars where stuck on the disk, but that was not the problem, in the near pc shop (falcon) they told me that It’s unrepairable but im not giving up so quickly, If you could help me or wanted to know more furthure information about the hard drive I would be honored to tell you more.

500 gb 3.5 desktop hardrive started to someitmes fail when booting, then stopped completely, can files be recovered, the photos are the most important type, anything else is just a bonus

Mac book pro 2008 model. Hard drive is clicking and laptop will not load up.

hard drive failed

The hard drive is an old (2004-ish) WD external computer HDD. The lights on the front were on but the drive was not seen by the operating system. I plugged it in again this morning and noticed a little wisp of smoke come out the top, along with a burning smell! I was hoping that the burning was only to the electronics in the box and not the HDD so I disassembled the box and put the HDD into my PC – nothing at all. The data that I want off it are my family photos – thirteen years worth! There’s a few back-ups on there and some other junk probably; I am only interested in the photos, though.
What do you think you can do for me?

Hard drive no longer works. The computer picks up the device by beeping when connected although in ‘my computer’ the device is not found. It no longer feels as though the ‘fan’? is working but does make some sounds. The light comes on when connected to the computer.

I have multiple internal hard drives that I’ve removed from old windows pc’s. I now want to connect them to my macbook air and drag off the data.
Issues:
1. HDD not recognised by mac
2. The op sys on HDD might have a p/w that I don’t know
I’m not interested in keeping the HDD’s but I need all the data.
Are you able to help with this task at all, and what would it involve?

The computer does not recognise the device or it does but partially. When it does the computer sees the drive but it cannot open the file

External 1tb hard drive knocked of table whilst running. Made horrible scratching noise when plugged back in and not seen by computer. Unplugged immediately.

I have a Samsung HDD 750 GB which is not showing up on the PC and I need the data recovering please
It powers and clicks once and that is it

My G Drive Slim, 500GB has stopped working. I had it looked at and apparently the issue is the “reader”. The drive contains mostly excel and word docs along with some pdf’s and jpg’s.

My laptop suffered a power surge. It is a HP Probook.
The chap who looked at it says the hardrive is not being recognised and there are 4 partitions?
It all means nothing to me.
The hardrive has been removed from the machine and I simply need to recover the data. It has some old spreadsheets etc I need and photos of my kids etc.

Just had a hard drive not working – its a Samsung 3tb external drive. the power did not work when plugged in. when I used another power supply it powered up but the light was constantly flashing – what is an idea of cost of repair?

Type A issue, 4 ticking noises on startup Seagate 1 terabyte external hard drive. Seagate scan says capacity 0 data 0. But there are lots of pictures on the drive. Can you help recover these pictures?

Hard Drive Recoveries

Thursday, September 7th, 2017

We are always getting fresh enquiries for data recovery – to give people an idea of the type of faults we see read on!

CCTV DVR Recovery Needed
We have a DVR in from a client. Model is Sannce SN-DB3708GDSL31. The hard drive is not being recognised by the DVR and they need some footage retrieved. The drive itself appears intact with no SMART errors however the filesystem is unrecognised so we can’t access it.
Is it possible to give a rough estimate for data retrieval?

LaCie Rugged Data Retrieval
My LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB USB 3.0 has stopped working. It’s beeping and won’t show up either on the desktop or under disk utilities.
Got a lot of data that needs recovering!!
How much is it to recover this and make it functional again?
And when do you have time?

Two More
I have two hard drive that are not working. The first is a 5tb Seagate which was an external drive – I plugged the wrong power pack into it and it is goosed. I’ve tried to get it working via an external hub but no luck. No clicking or any sound coming from the drive when put in the external hub.
The second drive fell and now clicks when I try to get it working via the external hub. This was a 1tb drive. It clicks repeatedly but doesn’t appear to boot up.
Can you give me a rough estimate as to how much we would be talking about to try to recover data from each drive? I realise that this would only be a very rough estimate given the need to actually get a proper look at the drives.

We have a 2TB hard drive here with DVR video footage saved on it, which has corrupted and the computer will no longer recognise it. We have tried our IT department but they were unable to recover it. They said the data is totally corrupt / unreadable. Would you be able to send a quote for recovery? How does your pricing work – would we still be charged a cost if you weren’t able to recover the drive?

We’d recommend someone like Data Clinic (UK) or Ace (Russia) for quality data recover services. But as always, do your own research!

Hard Disk and Phone Help

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2017

Western Digital External Hard Drive, being partially recognised by a PC but getting the error “Disk inaccessible. IO error“, the disk also appears to be making a quiet ticking noise.

Lost files on Microsoft Surface Pro 4

I wanted to enquire whether you are able to extract files from very old PCs please? We have two old PCs running Windows 2000 and would just like to have all of the files on the hard drives transferred to a USB stick so that we can dispose of the computers.

Lost Photo/Video files that are of great importance on Macbook, think they’ve potentially been deleted, how much does it cost to recover?

hdd

I have a samsung harddrive that has been dropped and no longer works. I am in urgent need to recover the photos and videos as they are the only copies of my sons entire life that i have.

Western Digital Passport. Unable to access file, due to connection issue

My Seagate 1TB hard drive is no longer being picked up by my Macbook. I also tried it on a PC. The hard drive powers up, lights come on but then there is loud clicking sounds for roughly 10 seconds and then silence.

I recently deleted the camera collection file on my One Plus 3T and would very much like to recover all the photos (as it contained all photos since february!!) there should be just over 1000 photos and they have not been backed up because I am an imbecile

The USB Hard Drive in question is my father’s and is probably approx 5 years old
He had used the drive as his main or back up drive for his photos, unfortunately his iMac had some kind of issue and when resolved it had be refreshed, so this drive may or may not have been connected during these issues
When the drive is connected (I’ve not tried 4 different machines, Mac and PC) the drive appears in the directory (Freecom device). I can also right click and see ‘get info’ which tells me there is approx 100 GB of data on the 250 GB).
However, I can’t fidn any way to see any contents in the drive, it is always completely empty, no files or folders

I have an external hard drive that used to be a MacBook drive that’s had some damage to the USB connector. The actual drive itself seems to be okay, I just can’t access anything because of the USB.

Vodafone Smart Ultra 6. Need data recovering from Internal storage chip. Motherboard is dead/not able to power on. verified by a phone engineer.
Is it possible for you to recover data.
Advised when I called in this evening “Elliot” would know if it’s possible to recover it.

Mortgage Broker Needs Data, Salford and Bury

Wednesday, August 9th, 2017

Question: I’ve used your services in the past and I would like to obtain a quote if possible. We are a well known mortgage brokers in Manchester [http://manchestermortgages.co.uk/] and we have a 500Gb SSD from a Lenovo laptop. The machine itself was wiped with the original factory settings. We had someone who was using this in February this year, we want to if possible recover the drive prior to the factory reset. Are you able to provide a quote on
1. Looking at the drive itself
2. Costs for recovery

Answer: Hi – yes we dealt with Manchester Mortgages in the past – glad to hear for you again. If you remember you also advised on buying our current property and sorted out a good mortgage deal for us so we were very pleased! Regarding your 500Gb Lenovo laptop, please can you bring it into our Manchester office and we’ll take a look and see what we can do.

salford quays picture

iPhone problems – Salford
Question: IPhone 6s was dropped into toilet. Fished out and dried superficially. It turned off but I mistakenly tried to power it on again and it flashed multicoloured. Several hours later, managed to submerge it in rice for 48 hours. Connected it to my Mac and the battery empty symbol displayed but screen subsequently went black. Tried charging via mains and screen started flashing but phone did not turn on. Later it did show the empty battery symbol again but still didn’t turn on. Plugged it into Mac one last time and it seemed the mac was reading it as it said the phone needed to be unlocked before it could be synched. There was no way to unlock it since the screen was black but I’m hopeful this means the data can be recovered somehow. I’d be very grateful for your help. I am based in Salford Quays.

Answer: Hi I was actually in Salford Quays the week before last working on a data recovery job on an iPhone. Water damage can be difficult to deal with on iPhones as the water corrodes the circuit board leading to multiple problems. If you can bring your phone in Bury I can take a look at it for you? I believe you are near to Manchester Mortgages? In the meantime you may find this article about how to dry out wet mobile phones useful: http://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/mobile-phone/how-dry-out-iphone-fix-water-damaged-smartphone-watch-tracker-7-3515240/.

Data Recovery Assistance

Wednesday, July 19th, 2017

I have an external hard drive which was opened by two companies with recovery data profile, one is Recoveo from France and the other one is AABBOO from Germany, both of them told me that my external hard drive have microscopical scratches and they are not able
to recovery any of my data, my pictures and my videos are really important for me because I have all my life on this drive, did you had such any cases till now ? do you think my data can be recover ?

computer help and assistance required

I have a WD My passport 1Tb that has become unreadable. I need the files recovered. The hard drive was accidentally dropped and now cannot see the content. is does see as connected to the pc but that’s it. I had professional to look at it and was connected with Linux software but nothing, and I have been advised that it need to be open in laboratory to recover the data.
the WD hard drive is 1T big but is not even half full and has only pictures on it. is it something that you can do and if yes how much would it cost?
Please contact me via email as I don’t have good network reception.

I have a WD passport hard drive with photos, music, and some documents on it which i can no longer access. I took drive on holiday with me; it was working before I went but not since I’ve come back (not used on holiday, just carried in bag). When I plug drive in light comes on and I can hear it whirring, but it’s not visible under My Computer. I can see it as External HDD under control panel, but I can’t do anything with it there. When I go into disk management through command prompt it says the drive is not initialised. Would be grateful if you could give me a quote for your recovery services.

Editors Note: For recommendations about which data recovery companies to use we suggest to read this blog thoroughly! – starting with the last post here http://24hourcomputerrepairs.com/help-recovering-hard-drive-data/

Buffalo Hard Drive Fault

Wednesday, June 21st, 2017

This month I’ve had a spate of enquiries about faulty Buffalo hard drives. IMO any hard drive that produces ticking or buzzing sounds should be sent to a data recovery company. Don’t try and fix it yourself !

My hard drive produces a clicking/ticking noise when turned on. This happens no matter how many times I reset it. It’s a Buffalo branded external hard drive.

hard drive exposedMy daughter is taking A-Level exams and has kept her work on a USB stick. She has plugged it into her Mac tonight and the system is saying that there is an error. (She did not back her work up! aggghh).
We have tried various fixes but none seem to work.
The work that is on the USB needs to handed in by Tuesday afternoon at the latest.
I know it is a big ask but is it possible to recover the work at such short notice? If so, I would be able to drop the USB of at Geldard Road, Leeds when you open at 8am for possible recovery?

My external Buffalo harddrive will no longer show up on my computer but I have hundreds of photos on there that I would really like to retrieve if possible. Please can I send it to you to see if anything can be done?

My hard drive no longer mounts on both Mac and Window platforms. The cable is relatively new and I tried the different USB ports available to me. It did mount temporarily a few days ago on my windows 10 tablet but its connection sporadically cut out by itself. Now it no longer mounts. It is still receiving power once connected as I can hear and feel the drive whirring. It’s a portable Buffalo type.

Hard drive was accidentally formatted and as a result all files are no longer accessible. I tried running a recovery and was able to see the files but unable to recover them as I wasn’t confident of what I was doing and didn’t want to lose the files.

Samsung S4 Mini is completely unresponsive, although when connected to a computer the computer does recognise the phone as an “unkown device” with an error message being displayed saying (“one of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and windows does not recognise it”). I would like to make an enquiry to recover my personal data / photo’s directly from the phones memory if this is possible?

Ireland Data Recovery

Thursday, June 8th, 2017

Data recovery services in Ireland are not widespread. UK companies like Data Clinic will provide a decent service, although you’ll have to send your equipment to the UK mainland to have the information retrieved.

A map of Northern and Southern Ireland

I am currently living in Ireland. I would like to ask you some questions for fixing my iPhone 5 I can’t turn it back on. There are a lot of precious photos and movies of my family on the phone, and I hadn’t backed them up yet. I really want to recover the data but I don’t know if it’s possible. Would you be so kind as to assist me with my problem? I’ve included the technical detail regarding my iPhone.
Status of the trouble
2.1. Basic information
Unit type: iPhone 5 (32GB) *Japanese model
iOS version: iOS 6.1.4 or 7 (not sure)
Storage space: 1.0-1.2 GB (probably)
– Pictures: around 22 GB
Mobile phone carrier: Softbank (Japanese company)
The sequence of events
May 2016; The power can’t turn on. (The iPhone did not show anything.)
June 2016; The Apple showed only apple logo, but did not start. I tried to update iOS (Firmware and OS) but I failed to update it. It maybe because of insufficient storage. Japanese data recovering company suggested that there are no hardware defects. The Apple logo sometimes on, sometimes off. I tried to update several types of iOS (iOS 9.3.2-5 and iOS10) again, but I failed to update it.
February 2017; The iPhone did not show the Apple logo.
Questions
1) Is it possible to repair the iPhone5 and recover the data under these circumstances?
2) If yes, what kind of approaches will you use to do it, and how much does it cost to recover the iPhone?
3) In case you try to fix the iPhone, are there any risks where in to the trouble could worsen such as data destruction?
4) If you cannot fix the iPhone, do you know any companies which may be able to repair it?
Special concern
As this data is very important for my family, I really want to avoid negative impact, such as losing the data. If you have any further questions regarding my email, please don’t hesitate to ask me.

Not detecting the external drive – making a click sound continously – anywhere in Northern Ireland (eg Belfast) that can help? I am unable to get to Dublin.

I have an external hard drive a Samsung 3m portable 1TB. About two months ago it failed and i sent it away for a data recovery. I know the drive was almost full but the previous data recovery company was only able to recover about 200GB of data. I was given the drive back but my PC still don’t recognise it. After reading your reviews i am wondering if you can recover more. It does have adult material (pics and videos) on the hard drive is something i like to disclose just in case its something you don’t recover. The company said it may had a power surge.

I have an iPhone where the camera roll has been wiped (approx 600) photos deleted and then the deleted photos section also cleared.
Are you able to recover the photos from my holiday in Ireland?

My Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 has stopped working. I’ve tried various things to get access to the data (mainly the photographs) on the phone, including taking it to the Samsung shop in Dublin. They diagnosed it as a hardware fault. I’m due a new phone so I didn’t follow-up with a repair from them as this would have involved losing the data. I’m not worried about what happens to this phone or getting it repaired, just more about the options for getting the data from it. Is this something you could help with? What would the likely cost of this be?

External Driver (Hard Drive) Recovery

Wednesday, May 10th, 2017

In this post I decided to send some hard drives to Recover Deleted Data to test their data recovery capabilities. I was surprised what I discovered: they were actually very good. It’s not often that an ‘under the radar’ hard drive recovery company like this are any good. With a bit of digging I found out that they were trained by Data Clinic Ltd, who are recognised experts in data recovery.

My external driver (I think he means ‘hard disk drive’) has some problems and I can not get access to my data.
The lens (I think he means ‘read write heads’) are damaged and are touching the disk not allowing it to spin.
I would like to recover all the data on this external driver.
How much this will cost?
Where do you usually save this data? Do you need a new external driver?

Adjusted my WD MyPassport 1TB from one position to the other (didn’t even drop it) and it stopped working. Making the clicking noise. I need the whole 1TB worth of data recovered (I can send a working hard drive to put it on if need be?) and I am looking for preferably less than £100.

Comment: There is no chance of recovering the data from a mechanically damaged hard drive like yours for anything less than £395 ex VAT

Windows Safe Mode Problems
Installed Windows Media Pack 3 which caused the computer to not boot. Couldn’t get it to start even in safe mode. Did a system recovery which unfortunately restored the computer to factory settings so I lost all my data

safe mode screen

My external hard drive is not working. My computer recognises that it is connected to the hard drive and the light goes on and a whirring sounds is heard but nothing appears on the screen. I have two external drive like this.

I have a 1TB Samsung M3 portable hard drive with photos, films and music on it. The PC and a Sony Blu Ray player are not recognising the hard drive when it is connected. When connected to the PC or Blu Ray Player, the blue light comes on the hard drive, then flashes three times, then goes off. The disk then stops spinning. Sometimes the blue light stays on and the disk spins but the computer or blu ray player do not recognise it
I’ve tried a different cable and on 2 different PC’s but still the same problem. I’m not sure if it’s been dropped, been in close proximity to magnets (my son may have played with magnets near it? unlikely though) or whether there is a problem with the driver. I’ve had it about two years. Just before the problem started, I plugged it in at work and my work computer did a ‘scan and fix’ but then said it didn’t need fixing and it opened okay. I work in Putney/Wandsworth so quite near the Data Clinic Chiswick office if that helps.

Recover Deleted Data were able to assist with sorting out the hard drive problems on all the above cases.

Can’t Load / Stopped Working

Monday, April 24th, 2017

I have a sandisk 32gb drive pen, part of the internal plastic assembly has become dislodged back inside the metal casing which means I can’t insert it into a usb port. Would you assist with this and, if so, could you please quote me a price?

I have a Mac. Can’t load operating system, but drive still makes noise for the first few seconds of booting, then clicking noise stopps, but platter is still spinning.

I have a WD “MyCloud” type external hard drive which is out of warranty and has stopped working. I need the data which is on the drive recovered. Am happy to drop this off at your Lombard Street office (I work nearby). Let me know what I should do.

My seagate 1tb external hard drive, I have arrwmpted to plug it in to my laptop and work desktop.
The light comes on however it will not show up on the computer.

My external hard drive has stopped working I am now unable to access any data on it. It is a Cajie [ I think they mean LaCie ] hard drive – with mostly photos and videos on it.

I have a corrupted hard-drive which has been broken for 3 years. I sent it to a data recovery company and they weren’t able to fix it. However, they offered a physical action and I didn’t accept. I live in London and I can bring the drive over.

My USB was connected to my laptop, and I accidentally knocked it off the sofa, breaking my USB. The tip is now detached from the rest of the drive, but the green part (don’t know the lingo, sorry) looks fine. All my university coursework is on there and I desperately need my files back. 🙁 Is there anyway you could fix it?

Old laptop runs some very old hardware. No longer supported. Customer wants data recovering to a new (identical) hard drive that will go back in the laptop so it’ll continue to work