Data Recovery from a 250GB Samsung SSD
The initial diagnosis for this drive was that the drive is damaged (according to an IT company that this customer sent the drive to before arriving to us at R3), and that it also kept freezing and blue screening.
18/08 at 10:36am Drive Received
The drive arrived with us Friday morning, we booked it in to our database and we informed the customer of the arrival of the drive. It was under assessment as we didnt know the exact fault of the device as of yet.
18/08 at 13:42pm Drive Diagnosed
The drive was diagnosed as logical as it became ready and had no SMART errors present on the drive. The drive was then sent to clone.
18/08 at 14:52pm Drive Cloning
At this point the drive was put for cloning, and since it was a 250GB SSD we managed to get it cloned in no time at all. It finished cloning with 0 errors and 0 unread sectors. This suggested that it was definitely a logical issue rather than media degradation. If the device was degraded it would have finished with unread sectors as when a drive degraded it means that the sectors are unreadable, hence the conclusion of the failure being logical.
18/08 at 15:19 Data Transfer
The data transfer process began. The image drive was scanned for missing files and files system as the engineers knew it was a logical issue. The customer was asked to give us some indication as to what to look for as this makes it easier for the engineers so they know if they are on the right track to recovery or not. After the scan it was clear to see that there was not much in the shape of files that you would normally see on a person’s computer. It looked just like a fresh install of Windows. This unfortunately means it leaves us with one last option which is what we refer to as a RAW scan, where we pick and choose file headers for certain file types for example .jpg, .mov etc and the software searches sector by sector and finds these files headers and will recover them to the designated location. A RAW recovery will fetch back corrupt and non-corrupt files. This is the only problem with this type of recovery.
21/08 at 13:31pm – Job Paid For, Data Sent Back
Fortunately the customer was relaxed about what was being sent back to him, and was informed that there was not a lot we could do regarding the situation of the drive so we decided to send the RAW data (and the folder structure) back to the customer.
In conclusion, if a drive has been formatted or overwritten then there’s always a chance that we can recover the data. If you have accidently formatted your hard drive, or perhaps a computer shop has told you something and you want a second opinion why not call us on 0800 999 3282 or alternatively email us at enquiries@datarecoveryhospital.com.
