A gentleman called me from here in Hutch with an external Toshiba Canvio Basics external hard drive that was not showing up on his computer and needed to be recovered. He had initially bought it to a local computer repair shop, which had verified that it was the drive itself that was having an issue. The repair shop had recommended contacting us as an affordable data recovery option.
The data on the drive included the only copy of baby pictures, so it was very important to get the data off the drive and backed up! After the client discussed options with his wife, they decided to have me work on the project and arranged for a local pickup.
Not Showing Up Canvio Basics Recovery
When data recovery is needed, trusting the recovery technician you are giving the drive to is very important. If you are looking to pay for the data to be recovered, it is almost always because the data itself has value. I have a whole page here on the site dedicated to what you should think about when you are looking for data recovery. The very first item on my list is technician experience. I cannot stress enough how important it is to pick a recovery company where you know the recovery tech who is going to be working on your drive is experienced.
USB PCB swap to SATA PCB
In this case, the drive had a USB port built into the PCB; this meant that there wasn’t a standard SATA port on the drive which is required for some data recovery procedures. Therefore, the first step was to swap the PCB board out with one that had the standard SATA connection. Once that was completed the next step was to complete some firmware repairs.
MQ01UBD100 firmware issues
The g-list on the drive was corrupted, so clearing that allowed me to get access to the data on the drive. Basically, the g-list is a module that keeps track of sectors that have gone bad on the drive. In this case, clearing the g-list with the PC-3000 and turning off the feature of the drive that keeps track of what sectors are bad, allowed me to image as much of the drive as possible.
Sectors on the drive were indeed bad, so the most I was able to get was 97% of the sectors on the drive. This equated to about 95% of the pictures being recovered from the failing Toshiba External drive.
Successful photo recovery
After imaging as many sectors as possible, I moved on to the software data recovery stage of the process using UFS Explorer Pro. This allowed me to get back folder structure as well as file names for the data on the drive.
When I dropped the completed recovery off, I could tell how thankful they were to get their baby’s photos back. As a father, I understand how important these photos are and I am always so pleased when I am able to help recover those precious memories for others.
Recover drive that is not showing up
Do you have a drive you need help recovering? I offer data recovery Nationwide via our mail-in service as well as locally here in Kansas. We are one of the only clean room recovery labs in the state of Kansas. Just fill out our quick data recovery quote form and I will get back to you right away. If you would like to discuss your project over the phone, just give me a call at (620) 615-6836.
Drive info: Toshiba Canvio Basics Disk Drive MQ01UBD100, DRIVE REV AZA AA00/AX001U, 1TB, DATE: 06SEP2015, MADE IN PHILIPPINES
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