Model: WD2500JS-40TGB0 Client Symptoms: System not booting Previous Recovery Attempts: Various Mac OS and Linux boot CDs to read data. One computer store even said that they could recover files for $80, without seeing the drive. Recovery Force Diagnosis: Drive has media damage, firmware damage and ...

An article has just been posted to the Recovery Force website for technicians who aren't sure what is safe and unsafe to try when they encounter a failing hard drive.

http://www.recoveryforce.com/how-to-tri ... chnicians/

It is good to see that the Ontrack partnership is paying off for Best Buy clients.

Model: ST9500423AS Client Symptoms: Drive was getting blue screen error when booting into Windows Best Buy Diagnosis: Drive is corrupted, likely due to a virus Recovery Force Diagnosis: Drive has 3 read/write heads (0,1,2) where head 0 is crashing The Recovery Force team was able to tweak our image...

Drive clicked and would stick at BSY state. Terminal output was something like this (grabbed from another similar case): Boot 0x40M Spin Up TCC-0019[0x000065B4][0x00006A20][0x00006E8C] Trans. Rst 0x40M MC Internal LPC Process Spin Up TCC-0019 (P) SATA Reset MCMainPOR: Start: Check MCMT Version: Curr...

Symptoms:
- This drive is not being detected by any system

Diagnosis:
- Firmware, sector and possible file system damage

Recovery Process:
- Did a work around to get by firmware issues
- Mirrored the drive with minimal sectors

In short, 100% of the data was recovered for $350.

We are seeing a surge in Western Digital Passport hard drives of all capacities coming in for recovery. In most cases, the heads have crashed down onto the platter surfaces, suggesting that they were bumped or dropped while powered on.

I recommend you take the drive to Data-Medics in Providence RI. The owner there is absolutely inept and will likely start by licking your spit off the platters, then put them one-by-one on his old record player and read each surface to a cassette tape.