How Data Recovery Works (its usually not that complicated)

In this video I go over how data recovery works
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[@trailblazingfive]

That's why you should print out binaries of all your files in Times New Roman 10 font A4 paper and store them in the garage

[@rockytom5889]

And then your scanner dies during the process of loading data from them.

[@trailblazingfive]

@@rockytom5889 no no; scanners are failure prone; that's why in case of storage failure you should type in the bits one by one back to the computer

[@brecken19972]

@@trailblazingfive just like the good old days of manually typeing in the boot loader.

[@rockytom5889]

@@trailblazingfive Usb and ps2 controll chips are a failure point too, weave the magnetic core memory from your papers.

[@trailblazingfive]

@@rockytom5889 you got a point; what about punch cards?

[@gitshell]

I once ran photorec on an old hard drive. I haven't slept ever since.

[@davidyoder5890]

Photorec and testdisk work, but good Lord...the files that come back are almost not worth sifting through to find the data you actually need. Getting a directory structure first and recovering specific data in a location is _way_ more valuable. Like I'd pay for that.

[@gitshell]

​@@davidyoder5890 I agree with you. I usually sort the output with some Linux commands, to gather each file type on separated folders, like, a folder with only .jpeg's, another with mp4's and so on. Not sure about being able to recover the folder structure with photorec. It seems that EaseUS is able to do that.

[@clumsyjester459]

@Its GNU /Freedom The main reason of data loss isn't accidental deletion, but hardware malfunction. You won't be able to roll back if your HDD/SSD is dead.

[@mirkospinato4883]

I had an old HDD from which i was trying to backup the data (memories of a lifetime) just in case, you know. Ironically, during the copy, the disk failed and now it's about a year that my laptop is trying to recover data. 6 months with Photorec and now i'm trying TestDisk. I feel you ;_;

[@LloydLynx]

I've fixed the "click of death" more than once by just hitting the drive against a desk a few times. No joke, I fixed my portable drive last week like that.

[@rockytom5889]

That fix is called repeated use of the 1st engineering axiom, which states the following: "If the damn thing don't work, smack it till it does". If the repeated application of the first axiom was deemed unsuccessful, the second engineering axiom is applied, aka. "If hammer don't fix it, get more bigger hammer.". And the third and final axiom, "When all hope is lost, throw it into the oven and pray to tech gods it works"

[@VerticalGuitar]

lol i hope you're joking

[@LloydLynx]

@@VerticalGuitar Nope, the method goes you strategically hit it against a desk to unstuck the drive head. Also, there was no way I was gonna spend money recovering data I already had copies of, or open the drive and risk ruining it for good.

[@LinuxIsNotAnOperatingSystem]

lol would it work on my 3.5" Seagate Hard Drive? It has been laying around for months as I can't afford a recovery

[@LloydLynx]

@@LinuxIsNotAnOperatingSystem It might, but I make no guarantees. See if you can find a picture of a disassembled one online so you know if the heads dock on the platters or off the platters, that way you know what orientation to hit it. Don't hit it too hard though. You'll wanna try to knock the heads towards where they dock. Also, there is a bit of a possibility of damaging it more, just so ya know.

[@avrilianbriliansyah5290]

*SSD starts clicking*

[@trajectoryunown]

"This does not bode well..."

[@roborobo8370]

yo! who tf put a mouse in my ssd

[@joselaw6669]

Mouse is still updating

[@connie_d]

That hard drive clicking is nightmare fuel

[@liesdamnlies3372]

Just today a family member said the drive they were using for backups was clicking. I couldn't hear anything when I checked, but my advice was the same: NEW DRIVE TIME

[@JessicaFEREM]

6:48 "You're probably going to need some professional help" I know i need professional help

[@Jorgeee]

DUDE. Is your profile picture a combination between Felix and Rem?

[@aaaa-wh3lj]

your pfp is so cursed. sauce ?

[@zwenkwiel816]

I know I need a professional help but what are we going to do about this hard drive? XD

[@ktvx.94]

"So you should backup your data" ... ...wait, no cloud storage ad? Nice

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

Nothing terrifies me more than losing my files. It happened once, and it was terrible. Wish I had more money to make a ZFS file server with a bunch of drives, but I need bigger drives, and I can't even do that yet.

[@nhansgoofyvideos7581]

From my experience: 1 Recycle bin 2 temp/cache folder 3 Recuva Those above cover 90% of the cases already.

[@ashishpatel350]

and that's why more people need a nas for backups.

[@abhishekpanthi6496]

This taught me a lesson to not to sell my phone on OLX or any website for money who knows that guy may recover data and threaten you...here is the solution : format your phone... Then fill your phone with data again some trash text files etc then again format it now that trash data will be overwritten on the previous even if the threat will use a recovery software he will get only trash from your not your private photos... On olx many manics use this trick to steal data from girls phone

[@ScrewTSW]

You should add a caviat there, the restoration of formatted drive can only work if you performed a quick format - rewritten the partition table essentially. If you initialized the drive with zeros, then you're screwed

[@tylerpryjda1253]

Hey man, just found this channel some time ago, and I've got to say, this is some awesome stuff. Thank you for doing this! I was going to email you, but I couldn't find one, either way, I appreciate the videos!

[@marioschroers7318]

It heavily depends on the file system whether or not data can be recovered by software. I once was able to recover accidentally deleted data from an NTFS file system using ntfs-undelete (part of the ntfs-3g package). However, it will recover only files, not the folder structure (which luckily wasn't relevant in my case). Unfortunately, only a few hours ago, I wasted a really important folder by directing rsync to the wrong location during my backup (yes, ironically, I wouldn't have lost it, had I not run the erroneous backup to begin with). Unfortunately, I use xfs on all my devices on Linux, which doesn't feature undelete by design. Sloppy backup practices caused me not being able to fully restore the data. This means I will have to look into automated backups using cron and rsync. My strong advice: Never rely on a manual backup strategy. Automate it if possible. Backup multiple times a day in intervals.

[@lunareclipse363]

I have once decided it's a good idea to wipe my system before a reinstall by running sudo rm -rf /* or something along those lines. I forgot that I had drives mounted under /run. P.S. Did I mention the mounted drive had all my backups?

[@marioschroers7318]

Ouch!

[@stackspace]

A story sadder than The Notebook. Nicholas Sparks is a fraud compared to Linux Nerds

[@der0keks]

@Lord Brookie I typed in the wrong sd letter in dd and lost most of my backups. A data recovery program got some of the data, but large files were mostly corrupted. Rather unlucky too. I typed the key below by mistake (B instead of G) (sdb).

[@chfourchfour]

@@der0keks I had something similar happen, I tried flashing a windows ISO to a flash drive, only to mix up the letters and overwrite the first 6GB of my external harddrive (most of my family's photos along with some of my stuff) with a windows 10 install image. Thankfully we had a copy of the photos on another harddrive, but my projects that were stored on that disk are gone. Also hit shift+delete once with Documents accidentally selected. RIP ~/Documents/projects/

[@ericchandler90]

Make multiple backups of critical data! Large flashdrives are so inexpensive now and they're great for a little extra redundancy.

[@basedfragman5370]

Before watching this video I always believed that the data was deleted when I hit delete Man I never thought this way Thanks Mate for making me a less Normie

[@JohnDoe-qk7wx]

Dude your videos are awesome please don't stop making them

[@TemperedWambat]

So MANY ANIME PROFILES

[@EpicTyphlosionTV]

Well, computer nerds are all gamers and weebs

[@downwardtumble4451]

What’s the deeal with all these anime profile pictures?!

[@micycle8778]

run

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

Where?

[@gitshell]

UwU

[@oalfodr]

Haha I had data loss today. I've corrupted my root partition when resizing and made it worse when trying to fix. Luckily my backup was from few days ago and bunch of my folders are symlinks to somewhere else.

[@efrainm4649]

And how do you fix a corrupted partition? Do you reinstall the OS?

[@oalfodr]

@@efrainm4649 I have reformatted the partition and reinstalled OS. OS reinstall was not even necessary since I am making snapshots of root partition too. I decided to reinstall because of timeshift wanted some info I was too lazy to see how to get

[@Dyros55]

I once put a clicking HD into a freezer for a couple of hours. Gave me just enough time to copy files off.

[@Invalidinput]

Data recovery for HDDs vs SSDs. That is a video I would watch.

[@fatbeard8072]

Excellent, most stuff I knew about. Back ups always and just throw that drive away or recycle it and make sure it can't be recovered at all. I am having an issue with a HDD that just stopped working. Like it is not getting power, sadly it was a back up drive and some stuff I needed because my other drives that are working were running out of space. Have any ideas on a drive that won't literally power up. It was a 320 GB 2.5 inch Internal.

[@davidyoder5890]

SSHD's are the absolute *worst* drives to recover data from. You may as well just drill holes through it and pretend it never happened.

[@vistars6892]

very good and well explained video thank you very much

[@McOuroborosBurger]

Daily Reminder: Data is stored in the balls.

[@gabboman92]

Your channel is interesting, you might blow up or get stuck in this range. Good luck

[@thelovertunisia]

Flashdrives are sometimes sneaky, they get damage in their driving circuit and even with Linux I could not read it not gparted nothing, not even format it.

[@thothheartmaat2833]

dear this video.. the problem youre describing has happened to me before.. i never needed to do any fancy data recovery.. its just a glitch.. literally just plug it into something else or run the windows scan for errors tool on it..

[@papaghostie3619]

Love your videos man

[@Alejandro-vp1op]

Many Windows sw!

[@orlovskyconsultinggbr2849]

I say the most bad thing can happen to your hard disk is bad sectors, only then you need to send the disk to clean room and pay big money. Good news, nowadays harddisk rarely fail, you need to maintain the temperature and cool down constantly the hard drives.

[@devincurrie4145]

I have encountered an unacceptable number of SSD drive that failed so your statement that "nowadays harddisk rarely fail" isn't true.

[@spvvk3621]

@@devincurrie4145 He said hard disks, not ssd's.

[@devincurrie4145]

@@spvvk3621 Sorry, I misunderstood and thanks for pointing this out.

[@TheJustinJ]

SSDs fail due to power loss or being unplugged for too long or at the wrong time (when computer is sleep or hibernate) . So, SSDs need to be backed up often. My current built has a 500gb Samsung SSD and 1tb HDD. Plus an old 256SSD and 500gb HDD ima try and recover some data from and use for backup of a backup. Haha.

[@orlovskyconsultinggbr2849]

@@TheJustinJ if controller chip fails on SSD, well good luck with that, HDD well there is hope.

[@chilli_con_carne]

banger after banger

[@milkyway5573]

5:37 now that's some stuff out of a horror movie

[@pilot8710]

i lost my 2TB drive data so I pray this works

[@MrBenMcLean]

I wasn't aware of the recovery star tool for firmware problems. I may need to invest in one of those sometime.

[@you900001]

Dude love this tech channel. Plz no raid shadow legends sponsorship

[@38911bytefree]

The only thing you can "fix" is SW issues. If the drive is having HW issues or physical malfunction, you are done. Run Crystal Disk from time to timed to monitor the SMART health of the drive.. When disk rellocated sectors start to go up, just back up you data (bak up you data anyways LOL) Sometimes is head stuck to the platter. Not common but it can happen when drive fails to park the heads. If you dont care too much about the data and you are carefull enough you can "unstick" the heads and try to recover most of the data. But you are at your own risk. Dust .... yeahhhhhh ..... most of it is blown away by the centrigucal forces once the disc spin up. Im not saying it is healthy, but I had 500MB drive opened a few times, even wiped with a cloth, yeah I got 20 o 30 sectors ... they chasnge from time to time. But nothing really bad. OF course 500GB is another density.

[@robertg1968]

... until you work with a dummy hard drive ... Otherwise Don't try this at home on the drive that holds your valuable data And, kindly, DO NOT POWER ON a drive without its cover, the cover is VITAL part of the Hard Drive Engineering, it is NOT just a cover. The cover is the COMPONENT that GUARANTEES the parallelism between heads and platters and IN MANY DRIVES it pushes down the heads, which mean that those head stacks are NOT screwed from bottom, instead they are "pushed" against the HDD body exactly by the cover The whistle/hiss you ear in the video when cover is open are the heads brushing on the platter 🤦‍♂ Heads are flying at few air molecules of "distance" from the platters and any dust or out of parallelism will cause a brush against the platters If you have a problematic drive , the unique software you should use is free, and it is Crystal Disk Info If the drive is reported healthy (cyan or green bubble) , then use any of the softwares indicated in this video But if it is not, you are going to self-kill your drive Well if you have dummy music or movies on it, then do any experiment you want But if your valuable data are in a unique copy on that drive ... think about asking a consultancy to some good data recovery lab And if you contact www.RecuperoDati299euro.it then it will not cost as much as said in the video

[@testhekid]

that hdd had a stroke, definitely scary

[@karai5082]

If youve accidentally deleted something just check the recycle bin, one time my dad asked for help because he just deleted a bunch of important photos because he though they werent important, they were just in the recycle bin.

[@1Maklak]

RStudio I know is a GUI for Language R for Statistics. This could use examples of undelete and unformat.

[@efrainm4649]

He was talking about R-studio, not RStudio

[@rockytom5889]

Hey man, do you have any advice on how to recover accidentally deleted files on a xfs filesystem? Thanks.

[@gitshell]

Have you tried photorec? It seems to be able to recover from this file system (www.cgsecurity.org/ )

[@rockytom5889]

@@gitshell Will give it a go Update: it went in and is pulling something big, which is to be expected since I put a 100gb disk image on that drive. I'll see in about 2 hours. Second update: shit,it didn't pick up my drive image that was deleted on the hdd. Looked at the site and it says it detects .img files, but in the menu where you select what filetype you want to pull it's missing.

[@marioschroers7318]

I had this happen today. Unfortunately, there is only one potential option to recover files from an xfs file system, and that's a paid Windows software (I think it's called UFS Explorer). There are a couple of tools out there like xfs-undelete available on Github, but the thing is, unlike NTFS, none of these tools are able to extract file names from inodes on an xfs file system. In case these tools will recover anything at all, you will most likely be presented with *raw data* , which in most cases will be unusable. As much as I love the xfs file system, I can only recommend: backup frequently, if you use it. The file system itself is advanced and really stable, but recovering accidentally deleted data is near impossible.

[@gitshell]

​ @Rocky Tom Strange... Good to hear you got something. Usually, this tool recovers everything it encounters, I end up with about 50-60 filetypes scatered in folders. I then use find command to organize everything... My advice would be, run photorec until the end (might take a couple of hours depending on the size of the drive), then on the folder you dumped the recovery, use the "find" command to sort all .img's/iso's ( unix.stackexchange.com/questions/67503/move-all-files-with-a-certain-extension-from-multiple-subdirectories-into-one-di ) Of course, if you ever used (wrote data) this hard drive AFTER you lost/deleted, even if very little, I guess there is a chance that a big file got partially overwritten, in that case, rendering said file corrupted.

[@diskdoctorprague]

I would at least suggest to check the SMART data before attempting a data recovery yourself. I agree that deleted files or accidentally formating a drive do not need a lab. But you forgot a huge category of cases - instable and degraded drives. Drives are mechanical devices and many of them degrade over time. So there is a lot of drives which seem to work but they are on the edge and a scan of a data recovery tool may push them over the edge... As long as the HDD show no issue in the SMART data all is fine. When the drive start to degrade over time you will see more and more errors in the SMART data and those drive are then on the edge of failing and need to be handled with care because they can fail anytime especially when you start push them and make them work really hard. In such cases the only DIY approch which may work would be cloning the drive with Linux and a tool like dd_rescue while you sit next to it and be ready to stop the process when the head fails.

[@aperson9375]

Space between platter and hard drive is just 5 nanometer.

[@Xiefux]

actually its 4

[@gorgonflabish]

I wish I knew this before I messed up, I tried to switch the metal disks to a donor drive and it didn't work. Do you think its too late to send the drive to seagate ? 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@Ankit-cs8un]

I watched this video for knowledge after two days my laptop fell and hard disk is dead, what a luck

[@AntiWanted]

Nice

[@SlimbTheSlime]

Oops, my system crashed! I lost my data, but I had an antivirus!

[@che1591]

I would love video like this, but for ssds.

[@twl148]

lol

[@MpSniperM1911]

my less than 1 year old hard drive was making a noise everytime the swap was being used, so i just swaped the swap to a SSD since the friend that helped me to install linux when i was a total noob just used the hard drive for swap

[@dharmang]

And here's my hdd having reallocated sectors within a year! Like wtf 😂😭😭. Also its a seagate barracuda pro. 😥

[@sorcey9532]

I messed up some "table" in my harddrive, any tip for that?

[@user-tm3fz7qx3s]

A bad SATA power cable smoked my hard drive's PCB. The darn thing smells horrible.

[@Chillingworth]

I think Recuva is supposed to be pronounced like Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "Recover"

[@robbirobson7330]

clicking drive can also happen because of firmware corruption

[@ChristopherJohnJackson]

Also create a backup! :D

[@MissourHanzai]

thanks mr. btrfs man, I'll run raid 10 for my hentai collection from now on

[@liesdamnlies3372]

I lost data to a Drobo once. I still haven't gotten it back. It's a logical failure, not a hardware one _buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut,_ because the system is proprietary, I've never been quoted under $8k to get it back (and that's not even guaranteed). And no, Drobo was not helpful. This happened before I really knew any better, and that the thing I bought was really just a glorified RAID 5 (ish). Let this be a warning to everyone who would consider a proprietary backup/storage solution: Don't do it. Use RAID. Use zfs. Keep your own offsite backup if you can. Your data is too important.

[@Supakills101]

How do I backup if the cloud is a botnet?

[@MegaKopfschmerzen]

Another plug-in hard drive

[@meowtabby5369]

is there any good free and open source recommendations for data recovery software? it just sucks that you still have to pay premium to recover large amounts of data on most freemium software..

[@der0keks]

There are a couple around. But when I needed data recovery, only a paid solution worked. Keep in mind, you don't have the luxury to mess about. It is important to get the data off first try (or thereabouts) and not write over any lost files.

[@Mike09017]

Is Recuva a FOSS program?

[@baloniMCYT]

Does anyone by any chance know if it is conceivable to recover an APFS drive with no signs of a filesystem? i've even tried an apfs lib on linux but nothing seems to recognise the fs

[@TacoDaddy-mr8ig]

❤

[@flleaf]

what about psp memory stick

[@herooftermina]

first

[@roxy3826]

If I deleted something it's not worth recorvoring

[@HonieFlakes]

I formated then installed windows my files are gone arent they? I've tried so much I didn't use the drive I only installed Windows

[@jacobhayes7552]

My room's pretty clean...

[@nap8187]

I wish I wasn't broke and didn't have 10tb of shit to back up... Bah whatever it's a bunch of torrents anyway. The important shit is backed up a few times across random old laptop drives I have laying around. Better than nothing!

[@supahx1421]

Same bro.

[@teslacoiler]

I'm used to attend to flea markets. There are a lot of used 2.5" hard drives at prices 3 to 5 euros each: most of them are 500GB but sometimes i also find 750GB, 1TB, 2TB. These disk are just perfect for making multiple backup copies (you also need an USB to SATA adapter and at least two different separate sites to store the disks!).

[@fredrikbackstrom4014]

Once opening driver it is ruined

[@theuncalled_64]

i think youtube is hearing me, i corrupted my usb drive because of the usb port is loose so the little fahker doesn't work

[@Stefan-gh7xr]

I exaclty have a drive now that keeps clicking

[@damaikishore7845]

my WD MYPASSPORT ULTRA IS SHOWING UNINITIALIZED AND WHEN I TRY TO INITIALIZE ITS SHOWING I/O ERROR.IS THERE ANY SOLUTION TO RECOVER THE DATA?

[@shapelessed]

2:30 total bullshit right there... Unless you have the "Quick Format" option selected in windows' formatting tool it's gonna format the drive *AND* overwrite the drive's content with a bunch of zeros...

[@seppa1671]

How do you backup?

[@masamune5710]

Store the files in another drive, like a usb drive. That or use a cloud service like OneDrive or iCloud

[@seppa1671]

@@masamune5710 USB drives are not reliable and cloud services could be expensive.

[@ReflexRL]

You need to purchase a backup drive with enough capacity which you can store your backup files on. First you need to find out how much capacity you need. You can get a 1TB drive for around $50 USD on Amazon. I have a backup drive for my Windows PC and a separate one for my MacBook

[@ReflexRL]

If you need to backup on Windows 10, here is a tutorial on how to do so: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIPWY2d5a5WkbMk

[@ofthecaribbean]

@@seppa1671 If you want to do pictures and videos, just use google photos. Select the setting "High Quality. " That gives you free unlimited storage

[@micycle8778]

What's good data recovery software linux?

[@elpsykongr00]

photorec

[@Mocoso7]

Aomei Backupper

[@yeppiidev]

Lol I use DFS (diskfs)

[@____-gy5mq]

*it's

[@victorprokop2240]

autopsy is free software...

[@bandanaboii3136]

I had fallen asleep on the couch with my girlfriend's laptop on my lap, which I was using to study. She had gone out to get some burgers and fries for us to eat for dinner. As soon as she started unlocking the door, I immediately woke up and jumped up off the couch to go unlock the door for her. The laptop flew off my lap and landed on the floor hard. Why does HP put HDDs in their laptops. It's broken

[@chillinfartdotcc]

Check SMART and electronics before any heavy measure. Even click of death had origin in a bad HDD board. Once i recovered a drive CLEANING it, because contacts i side got rust.

[@INeedAttentionEXE]

You delete files and folders? I delete partition tables :-(((((

[@cgmarch2359]

Check testdisk found in systemrescuecd to try find lost partitions start end and then restore your part table. Keep in mind backup data as is *before* trying any rescue

[@INeedAttentionEXE]

@@cgmarch2359 It was a partition table for a striped hardware specific raid array. I was unaware of any recovery at the time