| Device | Hard drive |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Toshiba |
| Model | DT01ACA200 |
| Capacity | 2 TB |
| Interface | SATA |
| Outcome | Full recovery |
Serial numbers and any customer-identifying details are deliberately omitted.
What came in
A 2 TB Toshiba DT01ACA200 that came in for a different reason than most — not a mechanical failure, but deleted data. Files the client needed had been removed, and they wanted them back.
What we found
The drive itself was physically healthy. This was a logical case: when files are deleted, the data usually still sits on the platters for a while — what changes is that the file system marks the space as free and unlinks the entries, so the files "disappear" from view even though the underlying data is still there until it's overwritten. The priority was to capture everything before any of that free space got reused.
What we did
We made a full image of the drive first, so all of our work happened on a copy and nothing on the original was disturbed. From that image we rebuilt the file system, then extracted and repaired the deleted files — reassembling their structure and content — to recover the data the client had lost.
Outcome
Full recovery.
The most important thing with deleted files is what you do before the drive reaches us: stop using it. Deleted data survives only until the file system reuses that space, so every write after the deletion — even normal background activity — risks overwriting what you're trying to get back. Imaging first, then working on the image, is what protects the recoverable data. See our hard drive data recovery service.
Dealing with something similar? See our hard drive data recovery service, browse more cases in the case log, or read about what makes recovery hard.
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