Data Recovery Blog
A selection of our articles, written by us and not Ai generated. These are generally details of some of the recoveries we’ve completed, or other associated info.
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iPod Classic Hack 2019
It’s been a long time since I’ve written about iPods on this blog. 2008 was the last post I could find. In that time, SD cards have become so cheap they’re almost disposable, and iPods have virtually disappeared from normal life. But I still have one, and I still love it. I built this FrankenPod about ten years ago from a pile of broken iPods so it’s always looked a mess. The back cover came from an 80GB iPod Classic, an 80GB hard drive from a MacBook Air, and all the other internal parts were scavenged from various broken iPods.…
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Deleted iPhone Data
On your iPhone when data such as photos and contacts are deleted, in most cases due to encryption your data is lost forever. One of the ways deleted data can be retrieved is by actually skipping the phone itself and heading for backups. Many phones automatically back up to the user’s computer or to the cloud. It can be easier to extract the data from the backup than the phone. Obviously the level of success depends on how recently the phone was backed up and the service used to store the files. If you have lost data on your iPhone…
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Deleted Android Data
As with the new iPhones your new Android when data such as photos and contacts are deleted, in most cases due to encryption your data is lost forever. One of the ways deleted data can be retrieved is by actually skipping the phone itself and heading for backups. Many phones automatically back up to the user’s computer or to the cloud. It can be easier to extract the data from the backup than the phone. Obviously the level of success depends on how recently the phone was backed up and the service used to store the files.
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Latest Ransomware News
Ransomware is not going away and unfortunately the latest variants are difficult to decrypt if at all. 2019 has seen some new variants of strains appear, such as Dharma ETH & Anatova virus to mention a few. At the moment we are not aware of any solutions for these strains, but are aware of companies that supposedly offer a data recovery solution to get back your data. I would question the ethics of such companies as it has been reported that some companies are partnering up with these attackers to offer this solution. If you are a victim of such…
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Windows Login Password: Is It Secure?
Just because you have a login password on your computer, don’t think your private data is secure. It would not take much to access the data without your consent or password. The best way to ensure your private data is secure is to encrypt your files. This comes with it’s own risks, especially if you forget your password and lock yourself out of your files. So you need to make sure you have backups at all times. Also don’t be fooled into thinking that if your files are encrypted, you are safe against ransomware type virus attacks. If infected by…
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More Second Opinions
We recently posted on Facebook about a pair of disks that we recovered. Both had been sent around the market a little bit, so I thought they’d be worth writing about in a bit more detail. Disk 1 – 3TB Seagate drive from an Apple Time Capsule. The disk had previously been sent to another lab for recovery. It was diagnosed as having multiple damaged heads, a stuck motor, cracked head-ramp, and microscopic damage to the disk surface. Our Findings We could see the screws and seals had been tampered with on the outside of the drive. When we took…
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Staying on Top of Technology
An important part of data recovery is staying ahead of new technology. It’s important that we are able to recover data from wherever people currently store their files. People once stored their most valuable data on a hard drive in their PC. Making hard drives is complicated and expensive, so only a handful of manufacturers had the resources to build them. The relatively small number of brands allowed us to became experts in the way those disks work & fail. Over time, some of those manufacturers merged or went bust. There are now just a few factories building disks. That’s…
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Why Computers Always Guess the Wrong Copy Time
In the previous part of this series, I explained why small files take longer to copy than large ones. This can make for unpredictable results when you copy a mixed batch of files. I decided to track the time estimates for such a copy and see how wrong the time estimates really are. Let’s kick off with another animation. I took a series of screenshots when copying files to another disk. I then tracked the estimated time to complete vs the actual completion time. I have also included the raw numbers at the bottom of the page. How wrong was…
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Why Small Files Take Longer to Copy Than Large Files
Have you ever noticed that it takes longer to copy 200MB of small text files than it does to copy a 200MB video file. This can seem a bit strange, but there is a simple reason for it. Metadata Every time you copy a file, the system must also copy over some metadata. Things like the filename, creation date, modification date, filesize etc. When you copy a large file like a video, this information is copied once, and then all the data blocks are copied into place. With tiny text files, new metadata needs to be transferred for each and…
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(Possible?) World’s First Apple SSD Recovery
Apple’s PCIe SSDs have always proven challenging for data recovery. We have a good success rate with them, however many of our tools don’t even support working at PCI level. This particular SSD provided a new challenge though. The Device Manufacturer: SamsungModel: MZ-JPV5120/0A4Controller: S4LN058A01-8030Capacity: 512GBInterface: PCIeDate: 2015.11 The Problem The SSD we received was initially showing up correctly in the system. Upon access, the disk would read a few bytes and then stop reading. The SSD would remain visible to the system but not respond to any further commands. The only way to bring it back was to cycle power. Yep,…