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A client regains his photos & administrative data through Stellar’s hard drive recovery service

The Client is based in Luxembourg, a small European country, Surrounded by three countries on all sides: Belgium, France, and Germany.

Challenge faced by the client

The client used a 3.5″ SATA Western Digital external hard drive (Model No.: WD10EACS-00D6B) that had the data storage capacity of 2TB. The large size of the external drive ensured that he could save and as well as access a significant amount of data on it. However, the drive stopped working and could not be detected by the client’s PC anymore. Therefore, he needed help to recover his personal photos and exceedingly confidential administrative data.

“I cannot use my external hard drive because it has stopped working. As it cannot be detected by my PC anymore, I cannot access my photos and the administrative data I saved on it. I need help to recover all my data from it in a confidential manner.”

The client was worried about the confidentiality of his data. Thus, all that he wished for was a safe and secure recovery of his data from the drive and privacy of his data in the process of external hard drive recovery.

Stellar hard drive recovery service to the rescue

The client searched for Stellar data recovery services online and was directed to our website www.stellar.lu. Here, he filled the request for call back form for external hard drive recovery services to which we responded promptly. We observed that he was worried about the confidentiality of his personal photographs and professional data throughout the interaction. To set him at ease, we assured him that his data would be safe and secure with us as we recover data in bit form. Further, our executive also explained the entire external hard drive recovery process.

Stellar Data Recovery came to my rescue by offering safe and secure external hard drive recovery service while maintaining the confidentiality of data, just a few seconds after I approached them.”

The client readily gave his consent for the External Hard Drive Data Recovery and hence was asked to send his drive to our Stellar Data Recovery Service Center.

Challenges & breakthroughs

We at our Service Center received the client’s faulty SATA external drive and proceeded with the pre-check diagnosis which was ready by the end of the day.

At first, the drive could not be detected on any PC, not even on our hardware based cloning tool. Also, it did not display the ID parameters. On diagnosis, we found that the Read/Write Head of the drive was damaged and this made the drive inaccessible. This diagnosis took us five business days post which the report was sent to the client, and we received an acknowledgement for proceeding with the recovery on the same day.

Meanwhile, we performed a head swap of the external hard drive in our CLASS 100 CLEAN ROOM Lab. With this, the movement of read/write head got repaired, and the drive displayed ID parameter that was not available when the head was damaged. Even so, we were still not able to access the data.

Hard Drive Recovery in Lab- Stellar Data Recovery

“CLASS 100 CLEAN ROOM and experts’ cutting-edge techniques was the apt solution to recover data from damaged external SATA hard drive.”

After that, we checked the service area and found that a few modules of the drive’s firmware was damaged, which is essential for accessing the user’s data. Thus, we repaired the damaged modules and got access to the data area of the drive.

Another challenged that we faced was that of making a clone of the drive as the surface of the platter was damaged. Therefore, we applied the reading setting (timeout, soft reset, and hard reset) and other important parameters while cloning the damaged drive. We applied the setting based on the condition of the drive and then made a clone of it with 35 bad sectors.

Finally, we were able to successfully recover the client’s valuable data that was of 455 GB in size. It was a 100% successful hard drive recovery as the bad sectors did not affect the client’s sensitive data.

The client was elated by 100 % hard drive recovery. All his personal photographs and administrative data were restored and that too, without changing the original format. He expressed his satisfaction :

“I would like to thank the Stellar team who worked hard to restore my 455 GB of data which I almost lost. I’ve got only good things to say about Stellar: Professionalism, speedy service! Thank you so much for everything you have done!”

Author : Kees Jan Meerman

Kees-Jan-Meerman

Kees Jan Meerman has been Managing Director of Stellar® Data Recovery Europe since 2009. Kees Jan is responsible for the growth of the In-Lab Data Recovery Service activities and for the further expansion of the European partner network. Kees Jan has previously worked in various board, management and consultancy positions at Pon's Automobielhandel, VWE bureau voor voertuigdocumentatie and Iris Investment Support Services, among others. Kees Jan studied economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

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