Eleven years of family photographs recovered from a clicking drive
Father of three · Edison, NJ
94%
Photos recovered
9 days
Recovery time
3
Copies now
Monthly
Restore tested
The challenge
What was going wrong
An external drive holding every family photograph since 2013 began clicking and stopped appearing on the computer. It was the only copy. Another shop had already attempted a recovery by repeatedly powering it on, which had made the mechanical damage measurably worse.
The solution
What we built
We stabilised the drive, imaged it sector by sector with bad-sector handling, and reconstructed the file system from the image. We recovered 94 percent of the photographs, then set up automatic backup so it cannot happen again.
How we approached it
Stage 1
Advised him immediately to stop powering the drive on
Stage 2
Free assessment establishing mechanical head damage
Stage 3
Stabilised the drive for a limited number of controlled read attempts
Stage 4
Imaged sector by sector, prioritising the photo directories first
Stage 5
Reconstructed the file system from the image rather than the drive
Stage 6
Provided a preview of recoverable files before any payment
Stage 7
Delivered everything on a new drive plus cloud backup
94 percent of photographs recovered, including all wedding and newborn folders
The 6 percent lost fell in a region already damaged by the earlier attempts
Automatic backup now runs to three destinations
A monthly restore test verifies it actually works
“The first place kept switching it on and telling me to hope. Stravix explained why that was making it worse, then got nearly everything back. My daughter’s first two years are on that drive.”
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