A (for another company) hopeless case successfully recovered

We recently received a WD laptop drive for recovery. The client had already sent them (via a Dutch company) to a recovery company in Portugal.

The family photos were especially important.

However, the recovery in Portugal was not a success. Only a few photos could be recovered.

In desperation, the hard disk was sent to us.

During the diagnosis, it quickly became clear that a head crash had occurred on head 0. For this reason, the other company had also stopped recovery.

The drive had three read heads in total. A crash on one read head is no reason for us to give up.

A WD has a copy of the essential boot modules (like most drives). We could not count on cooperation from the company in Portugal for a copy of those modules. After a lot of effort we managed to read those modules. Some were damaged, but we were able to repair them. This made it possible to create a hot-swap donor that gave us access to the two read heads where no crash had occurred.

In this way we managed to read two of the three magnetic layers. In this way we were able to recover approximately 4,000 family photos and several hundred family videos.

Our client was over the moon.

Here is (part of) her email:

Dear Marc

>This is incredibly good news. I can hardly believe this. That's better than you expected, isn't it? You thought you could only recover 50%

If I understand correctly, those 4231 good photos, I can use them for albums of make and print, so there's nothing wrong with that?

Even if it only plays part of those videos, I I have moving images, right? ... and are those images clear?

I'm going to have almost everything, or will you only take the good thing?

You asked in a previous email if I wanted anything else. Maybe my excel files? There aren't many; the most important one was the one called: estimated house costs, I believe. I'm no longer 100% sure about the name. It is an overview of the expenditure on our house

And from our email I had a folder with house Moerbeke, my name is not sure. Here were important emails regarding the purchase of our house, contractors, etc... The rest of the email is not important.

Just see what else you could achieve. I have the most important thing. You really are a great team!!!!! I can't believe it's really a burden on me.
Don't understand what that company in Portugal did. Have you contacted them yet?
Luckily I had the drive returned. For the same money, I would have accepted their story that my drive was doomed and left them there. Just imagine. How lucky you are to be here!!

Thanks Marc, my children are going to be so happy!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! :)))))))))))))))))))))))))

Conclusion: A head crash does not always have to be the end of your data, but prevention is better than cure!