r/AskADataRecoveryPro

We recently upgraded laptops (W11) and i couldn’t really find an easy way to copy the contents of the old laptop (W10) to the new one. I was doing this for a parent as they have had the same setup for years and didn’t want anything changed.

I basically copied the entire user folder from one laptop to the other.

On the old laptop whenever I try and open folders it says something about not having security access. And programs like adobe acrobat crash when trying to open.

On the new laptop, I can access the copied material but there is a separate user folder from the old laptop that i can’t open.

And help would be appreciated.

Basically:

Copied contents of old laptop SSD to new laptop and now the old laptop can’t open most files/folders.

The comments in the original post basically explain everything but TLDR. Instead of cloning from one laptop to the other I hooked up the SSD from the old laptop to the new and manually copied the user folder with everything in it to the new laptop and now the old laptop is requiring permission to access most things and the pain programs form the old laptop didn’t transfer to the new one.

I was tranfering files from my Android phone to my PC (using a USB cable) and doing it by cutting the file from the phone folder and paste it on my pc descktop but in this operation the folder pasted on my PC was empty and the folder on my Cellphone disapeared. All the doccuments on the folder went missing. I tryed a lot of programs on google play and no one could do anything, same on Pc. Need help!!!

AI gave me advice that accidentally ran a destructive Terminal command on a perfectly healthy, 5+ year old 4TB external Seagate HDD (formatted as HFS+). Drive physically passes Disk Utility First Aid fine. I tried running TestDisk Deeper Search, but it's throttling badly and only moving at just 1% per hour (at 25% now). I only need to salvage 1.75TB of meticulously cataloged multimedia (movies, video, and other large files). Should I kill TestDisk to save the physical motor from a 3-day grind, and will a filesystem tool like DMDE parse the HFS+ catalog tree faster without data loss?

I know it is $20 vs. FREE with TestDisk and I only have three days left but still... 🤷🏻‍♂️

AYUDAAA

No recuerdo la contraseña de mypassport ultra. del Disco WD externo de 1 TB.
Estan todas mis fotos, soy fotografa... ayuda. que puedo hacer???

I accidentally deleted some very important files and tried recovering them once I realised about an hour later, I tried using disk drill and while it does show some files that aren’t on my Mac usually, it is not showing the specific files I just deleted that I want to recover. I saw online that Mac’s have something called trim and they could be completely gone because of that but other places say I can recover deleted files so I’m very confused.

TLDR: Are my files gone and there’s no recovering?

Hi Everyone, my ADAT exam is on August 31st, I am just wondering how you are preparing yourself using ADAT KO? do you review the topic or just solving the questions?

My external hard drive with all of my digital art and design for over the last 13 years wont read on any computer and I unfortunately didnt back it up elsewhere. My computer can see there is a drive but it says not initialized. I have tried disk drill and easeus data recovery, but neither program can see the drive to recover files.

Also I am on Windows 11 PC and the drive is a WD passport 2tb drive

I am curious if anyone can recommend anything else or if you can recommend a place to send it out to? Anything is helpful, I have developed quite a mental block around this problem and it would be great to work through and get this problem solved or to move on.

Thanks so much!

Hello, I need help! My iPhone 12 Pro randomly died in the middle of the night. A guy I had an appointment with at Apple said it will never be turned on again. I didn’t back up my photos or videos, there were over 30k of them. I am utterly shattered. Especially because I had so many of my son. Does anyone know of a place in Melbourne that can do data recovery? Is it possible to recover photos and videos on an iPhone that won’t turn on? Any help would be very much appreciated.

Hello, I'm sorry for the long post but I figure the most detail possible is better.

I'm hoping for some advice on which might be safest (main priority) and cheaper (preferable option) to getting my files off of a dying/dead iPad 7th generation!!

My iPad died randomly a week ago. It wasn't charging above 5% and I figured it was the battery being a little weird so I intended to turn it off and back on. However when I turned it off, it did not turn back on. Tried force restarting, tried leaving in charge for several hours undisturbed, tried leaving it unplugged in case it needed to die fully and be plugged back in once that happened after 24 hours. Nothing.

I took it to a repair shop to see if the battery needed replaced, they said it was stuck switching between charging and not charging and could not be repaired, no battery switching and LCD screen changes worked. They said it's the motherboard.

I have a few art program files I desperately want off of it. I can retire the iPad and get a new one if I can just back up the art files to the cloud. The rest of my stuff would be NICE, photos and videos and such, but are not my priority. My art files are.

I've been looking around at data recovery options to get the data off of it and found out that it's actually done through microsoldering, which makes me wonder if it's cheaper and faster to possibly just get the iPad temporarily fixed/repaired in order to back up and get off all the things on the iPad I want, rather than paying for a full, entire data recovery.

Or is it not guaranteed that a micro soldering will repair the iPad enough for that, and it's just safest if I get the full data recovery?

Any advice or opinions are appreciated, thank you!

Hi everyone, I'm in a bad situation and hoping someone with experience can give me some guidance before I send this drive to a lab.

**What happened:**

I rebooted my Windows 11 PC after a routine Windows Update. On boot, Windows detected my 6TB WD Red Pro data drive (where I store all my photos and documents) needed repair and automatically ran CHKDSK. It got stuck at 99% for several hours. I eventually had to hard power off the machine. After that, the drive is completely undetected in Windows — doesn't show up in Disk Management or Device Manager at all.

**What I've tried:**

- Booted into Ubuntu via a Rufus-made USB drive — Ubuntu *can* detect the drive

- Ran `ddrescue` to try to image the drive to another disk — it read **0 bytes** and stopped after about 4 minutes

- Ran `smartctl` to pull the SMART data

**SMART highlights (it's not good):**

- `Load_Cycle_Count`: **204,492** — VALUE at 1 (worst possible)

- `Power-Off_Retract_Count`: **204,492** — VALUE at 1 (worst possible)

- `Reallocated_Sector_Ct`: **484**

- `Current_Pending_Sector`: **28,608**

- `Offline_Uncorrectable`: **603**

- `Raw_Read_Error_Rate`: **305,742,939**

- `Power_On_Hours`: **73,457** (~8.4 years of runtime)

- Multiple SMART log reads failed with: *"scsi error medium or hardware error (serious)"*

- Drive has **6.0 Gb/s SATA** connection and is running fine electrically — it's the heads I'm worried about

The combination of 28k+ pending sectors and ddrescue reading zero bytes makes me think the read/write heads are gone. I've stopped powering it on to avoid further platter damage.

**My questions:**

1. Given ddrescue read 0 bytes, is there *any* software approach still worth trying before going to a lab? I've seen some people suggest trying `ddrescue` with `-b 512 -c 1 -r1` — worth a shot or will it just stress the heads more?

2. Has anyone had success recovering from a drive in this state (28k+ pending sectors, 0-byte ddrescue read)?

3. I'm leaning toward **Gillware** or **DriveSavers** for professional recovery — any firsthand experience with either for a mechanically failed HDD? Also considering **Ontrack** since they have a WD partnership.

4. Are there any DIY tools or methods I haven't tried yet that could help me recover data myself before committing to a lab? Anything else worth attempting on a drive in this state?

5. Does anyone have experience with what a **fair and reasonable price** looks like for a Data recovery lab on a 6TB drive (3TB data) ? Any labs that offer good reasonable pricing and reliable?

Any advice is hugely appreciated. 🙏

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*Drive: WDC WD6002FFWX-68TZ4N0 (WD Red Pro 6TB, 7200rpm, 3.5") | Firmware: 83.H0A83 | S/N: K1H9LJMD*