data recovery

Michael changed his laptop to a 2TB hard drive, but as he tries to move his data over to the old drive, it can't be read. Leo says the best way is to get a $35 USB dongle that turns your old hard drive into a USB external drive. But Michael says that he gets a message requiring it to format. Leo says the drive may have corrupted and died. He recommends trying to use Recuva to recover the lost data, but it may be a mixed bag as to what it can recover and what it can't.

Adam wants to create a new RAID 5 array, but his current RAID 1 system went belly up as he was converting to RAID 5. Can he get his data back? Leo says probably not through the RAID itself. He could take one drive out and try to recover, but Adam may have been too deep in the conversion process to restore the data. But the good news is, that he can take the drive out and plug it into the existing PC and see the data. If the data is mirrored, it should be easy to recover with a utility like Recuva. EaseUS also has a free drive recovery tool. He can probably use those to see the files. 

John wants to recover some data off a USB Thumb drive. Leo recommends RECUVA or PC Inspector for Windows. On the Mac, Leo recommends Data Rescue. It's not free though. But the fact is, when flash memory dies on a USB drive, it's pretty much dead. And if it doesn't mount, it's completely shot. The only option at that point is to take it to a professional and that would cost far more than it is worth. 

Josslyn's phone recently died. She wants to know if she can take out the memory drive and use it with something else. Leo says no. The memory storage chip is built onto the logic board. Pity.  This is why it's vital to back up your phone regularly: so you don't lose anything. Can Josslyn recover the data on the phone? Leo says as long as it can turn on, you have a chance. But if it doesn't turn on, then you're likely out of luck. 

Stan has a thumb drive where he saved all his information, but it stopped working. Leo says a thumb drive is a terrible place to keep original data or backup, but Stan can try Recuva. The program is from CCleaner, which is a pretty reputable company.

Kathy dropped her external hard drive on the floor and now it's not working. It wasn't even that far. Leo says that's just bad luck: it's likely a broken arm or scratched sector. DriveSavers could fix it, but it's very expensive. And if they can't, then nobody can. This is why you back up. Leo recommends a 3-2-1 backup strategy: three backups, on two different formats, one off-site.

Laurie's father had a security camera that would send videos to his iPhone. They've since been deleted, and he recently passed away, but she wants to find a way to recover them. How can she do that? Leo says that if the videos were deleted off the phone's SD card, they can be recovered. But another option is to look and see if there's a cloud backup option. If there is, the app may have uploaded the video to the cloud. There is a company called Cellebrite that can take the data off the phone as well.

Skyler's laptop drive crashed during the saving of a large file. Now the drive can't be seen by the computer. He tried seeing it in SpinRite and it doesn't see it either. Leo says that laptop had a so-called "fusion drive" which was half hard drive, half SSD drive. The technology was designed in a time when SSD drives were too expensive, and it really wasn't that great performance wise. It could be the spinning drive died, or the SSD drive died. Try rebooting into your BIOS and see if the BIOS sees it. If it does, then it could be a software issue.

Daryl has a hard drive that has bad bearings, and he needs to get the data off it. He's tried to have the board on the drive replaced, but now it says it needs the original board or ROM. How can he get the data off this bad drive? Rich says that at this point, only a data recovery service like DriveSavers will be able to get the data off it, and it's not cheap. Rich says that it's odd that the data company would require him to get the proper materials. He recommends going to another company.

Ricardo would like to recover some data from his phone, including his messages. How can he do that? Leo says that there's a program called ECamm PhoneView is the best one he knows of. It's Mac only though. Free to try, then it costs $30. What about Doctor Phone? $100 is really pricey, and it has page after page of one-star reviews. So Leo would recommend steering clear of that one.