• Week 2017-0730 in the Lab

    by Aug 06, 2017

    Here is a random look at some data recovery cases from the week of July 30th 2017. At Blizzard we always try to perform a temporary repair on broken USB flash devices before we resort to chip-off recovery. We replace the connectors, check under a microscope for cracked solder joints, lifted TSOP48 pins, blown littelfuse […]

  • WD40EZRZ 4.0TB Hard Drive Head Swap

    by Jun 15, 2017

    We recently had a case where a 4.0TB Western Digital hard drive had been dropped. When a hard drive is dropped, the read/write heads are typically damaged and need to be replaced. In the best cases, there is no platter damage, but on average there is some damage, even if it’s just to the edge […]

  • SM3257EN 4GB USB Flash Recovery

    by May 14, 2017

    This is an example of a recent recovery we did at Blizzard Data Recovery. In this case the USB flash drive had been broken in half. Some cases are just a matter of replacing the broken connector, testing for shorts or open circuits, and then recovering the data. Although that doesn’t sound too difficult we […]

  • We Make Data Recovery Affordable

    by Apr 02, 2017

    “We make data recovery affordable” We continue proving to new customers that we are more than competitive. This past month we received cases for hard disk drives that had already been quoted by Drive Savers and Secure Data Recovery. Here are two examples. Case number 1 was a Western Digital SATA drive model WD5000AAKS. The […]

  • Samsung SP2514N and SP2504C Head Swap

    by Jan 28, 2017

    This week’s special case was a 2007 PATA HDD. This Samsung SP2514N was in an external enclosure and got knocked over. Since the drive was identified as dropped and “previously opened” we first opened it in one of our laminar airflow workstations. Upon inspection we noticed a stiction mark on the top platter but the […]

  • WD 6GB AC26400 Recovery

    by Nov 18, 2016

    This weeks special case was a 6GB Western Digital EIDE hard disk drive. That’s right! That was not a typo, six gigabytes of storage in one desktop hard drive that was manufactured in 1999. The data was distributed across two platters but only used 3 heads. This hard drive was making some very unusual screeching […]

  • A Week in the Data Recovery Shop

    by Sep 13, 2016

    In a typical week for some data recovery shops you’ll get standard recovery jobs where drives or files are not accessible to the end user, or maybe an easy, dropped drive case where there is no platter damage and you just need to swap out the head stack assembly. You might also get 1 or […]

Topics