Recovering pictures of endangered Parrots

Elaine Henley called me last friday and asked me to stay open as she was coming to see me with a faulty hard drive.  

When she arrived she explained that she was an animal behaviour specialist and that she had been in Uganda trying to locate wild populations of African Grey Parrots. She went on to explain that the faulty HGST 500GB hard drive had the only known pictures of these animals mating, and that this had never been witnessed before in the wild. The significance of these images were very important for the conservation of these birds as this proves the location of their social behaviour.

Here is a step by step of the Recovery, the problem with this drive was that it was 'Buzzing'. The heads were stuck in the ramp after being dropped. 

Elaine was kind enough to provide some recovered Images for the purposes of this post and a review

You can follow the great work Elaine is doing using these links:

Website: www.dogbehaviour.org.uk
Facebook: www.facebook.com/animalbehaviourclinic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elainehenleyparrotexpert

Video upload from a HGST that came in for data recovery, full blog post here..

Ok, this video was the drive as it came in, "buzzing" or "beeping" means that the disks inside are not spinning or being prevented by stuck heads. 

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HGST Hitachi HTS541010A9E680 1TB From a G-Drive case, this is the drive without the fancy case.

HGST Hitachi HTS541010A9E680 1TB From a G-Drive case, this is the drive without the fancy case.

I know by the noise that I will need to open this one up so I need a donor drive for replacement heads. (the parts that read the data). Good job I have a ton of these for nearly every hard drive. 

I know by the noise that I will need to open this one up so I need a donor drive for replacement heads. (the parts that read the data). Good job I have a ton of these for nearly every hard drive. 

Perfect match as a donor drive from my big box of these. Note the matching model number. Now I need to open it up and see what all the fuss is.

Perfect match as a donor drive from my big box of these. Note the matching model number. Now I need to open it up and see what all the fuss is.

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My custom hard drive table, my good friend doogie made this for me, gives me access to the underside of the drive without moving it. Its perfect for what it allows me to do. 

My custom hard drive table, my good friend doogie made this for me, gives me access to the underside of the drive without moving it. Its perfect for what it allows me to do. 

This is the problem with this hard drive, the heads are stuck in the ramp (orange part) the drive cannot spin as a result. Hopefully damage will be minimal after the heads have been removed and replaced. 

This is the problem with this hard drive, the heads are stuck in the ramp (orange part) the drive cannot spin as a result. Hopefully damage will be minimal after the heads have been removed and replaced. 

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First I remove the ramp to minimise the damage. Need to get these heads out clean. Not taking any chances 

First I remove the ramp to minimise the damage. Need to get these heads out clean. Not taking any chances 

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Heads look ok but I would never risk using the same heads again that had been under some kind of force. Always replace heads to be sure of the best result. 

Heads look ok but I would never risk using the same heads again that had been under some kind of force. Always replace heads to be sure of the best result. 

Both drives opened up on my bench. Heads out the client drive and I will move over the parts from the donor. 

Both drives opened up on my bench. Heads out the client drive and I will move over the parts from the donor. 

Ramp back in and tightened up, new heads getting fitted and so far all going to plan. Wont know anything until I spin the drive up for the first time. 

Ramp back in and tightened up, new heads getting fitted and so far all going to plan. Wont know anything until I spin the drive up for the first time. 

Ok, the drives spins up nice and it gives me positive indication that all is well with the world, top left of this image you can see the model and serial. However the red , yellow and black are indicators that we have damage to the disk. Green is good, everything else is bad. I will need to modify the settings on this one. As it is at the moment we have corruption. 

An error log of the damaged files, the files listed above are the important pictures. This is not good news!  

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Corrupt :(

Corrupt :(

Corrupt images of parrots :(

Corrupt images of parrots :(

These are the images I need, and they are corrupt. They sit on areas of the disk that are damaged. What are the chances? 

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Changing read timeout settings from 1000 - 5000

Changing read timeout settings from 1000 - 5000

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Time for some data recovery tricks, the above screenshots are settings that I have available to modify how long the drive will read a specific sector for. Its called timeout settings, by changing this from 1000ms too 5000ms I am giving the data recovery machine (PC3000) permission to read a sector for longer. Hopefully by doing this we can get more data and the images we need.  

This worked and the sectors that were previously unread are now green and healthy. This will be a good result!

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Success, perfect images! :)

Success, perfect images! :)

Success, perfect images! :)

Success, perfect images! :)

The images that were previously corrupt are now completely recovered, don't tell anyone but that was a close one. Victory selfie with Elaine :) 

Other latest jobs here , you can contact me here or my new friend elaine here