Recovery data is my expertise usually I charge a lot but I can help you for FREE , add me on steam :P

Quoting: wolfyrionRecovery data is my expertise usually I charge a lot but I can help you for FREE , add me on steam :P

Sure. I can do it when i get home.
(note i am on CET timezone)
IS your ID the same there ?

I can throw a few games/beers or even some cash your way :-P

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: wolfyrionRecovery data is my expertise usually I charge a lot but I can help you for FREE , add me on steam :P

Sure. I can do it when i get home.
(note i am on CET timezone)
IS your ID the same there ?

I can throw a few games/beers or even some cash your way :-P

yeap my steam id is on my profile, I am on EET – Eastern European Time (Standard Time) zone.
Usually I come at night home due to work.

Did you try fsck?

Seeing as we have a professional here I'm loath to speak up at all, but recently when I had a disk problem R-Linux from r-tt.com did the job better than anything else I'd tried. It supports various variants of ext and is free. Just my 2c.

Most recovery specialists would attempt to clone the broken drive as quickly as possible (so that it doesn't get worse) and then attempt to recover from the clone image. Also true of forensics analysis. If the drive doesn't have any errors, running testdisk while the partition is mounted read-only, might allow you to grab files.

Once you have backed up the data, you could attempt to fsck the partition.

I've done a fair amount of hard drive recovery myself over the years. Advise regular back-ups. Advise - don't keep using a broken drive (e.g. one on which SMART errors are growing.)

Quoting: ageresDid you try fsck?

Not yet

Quoting: damarrinSeeing as we have a professional here I'm loath to speak up at all, but recently when I had a disk problem R-Linux from r-tt.com did the job better than anything else I'd tried. It supports various variants of ext and is free. Just my 2c.

Cool. Will download and check it out

Quoting: g000hMost recovery specialists would attempt to clone the broken drive as quickly as possible (so that it doesn't get worse) and then attempt to recover from the clone image. Also true of forensics analysis. If the drive doesn't have any errors, running testdisk while the partition is mounted read-only, might allow you to grab files.

Once you have backed up the data, you could attempt to fsck the partition.

I've done a fair amount of hard drive recovery myself over the years. Advise regular back-ups. Advise - don't keep using a broken drive (e.g. one on which SMART errors are growing.)

Was told to do a dd as soon as possible on other forums.
Will attempt to do so , but the problem is the broken disk is 2 TB and in a hurry the only large drive available in store I found is 4 TB. Can dd work around this ? OR is there something better ?

Using ddrescue to clone from smaller drive to larger drive:
https://www.linux.com/learn/intro-to-linux/2017/3/gnu-ddrescue-best-damaged-drive-rescue

Using ddrescue to clone from smaller drive to image on larger drive:
https://datarecovery.com/rd/how-to-clone-hard-disks-with-ddrescue/

(If you do the image, then obviously the larger drive should have a file system on it, and sufficiently empty space.)

There's no problem copying a smaller drive to a larger one. Just don't do any resizing of partitions, etc on the clone before you do the recovery. Leave it as is and treat it like a smaller drive.

Ddrescue is designed specifically to copy from a failing drive with bad sectors. If the drive itself is fine and it's just damaged logically, dd will do just as well.

Y not "dd" or "ddrescue" into a disk/partition image?

Most recovery specialists actually the first thing they do is to identify the problem:
If the problem is Electrical Failure,Mechanical Failure,Bad Platter Area(bad sectors) and so on.

So according to the situation we act accordingly

if its Mechanical problem like the read-write head and motors, Clicking, grinding sounds you cant do cloning and the only thing you are doing by trying to clone the disk is more damage.

If its electrical problem is something with the PCB.

I assume that on this case the problem has to do with bad sectors and cant access the hard disk at all.
Well cloning the hard disk is one solution but is a 2TB Hard disk and maybe the information he wants to retrieve are some GB so cloning at the end maybe is a waste of time especially on hard disks with a lot of bad sectors , sometimes it may take ages to clone the disk.

My solution is simple, well actually I would point him to some tools to use but since are a bit expensive I would point him to some other alternative locations *cough* to download these tools which I cannot post here so as to access the disk and get the data...

Quoting: wolfyrionMost recovery specialists actually the first thing they do is to identify the problem:
If the problem is Electrical Failure,Mechanical Failure,Bad Platter Area(bad sectors) and so on.

So according to the situation we act accordingly

if its Mechanical problem like the read-write head and motors, Clicking, grinding sounds you cant do cloning and the only thing you are doing by trying to clone the disk is more damage.

If its electrical problem is something with the PCB.

I assume that on this case the problem has to do with bad sectors and cant access the hard disk at all.
Well cloning the hard disk is one solution but is a 2TB Hard disk and maybe the information he wants to retrieve are some GB so cloning at the end maybe is a waste of time especially on hard disks with a lot of bad sectors , sometimes it may take ages to clone the disk.

My solution is simple, well actually I would point him to some tools to use but since are a bit expensive I would point him to some other alternative locations *cough* to download these tools which I cannot post here so as to access the disk and get the data...

Well.
I am originally from an East European country.
Just drop some names :whistle: