[SOLVED] Not sure where to ask, but fishy story- how can I verify if data recovery company returned correct drive to me?

Jan 5, 2021
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I had a Cavalry brand 400gb external hard drive that fell and stopped working several years ago. I was unable to find a person who could possibly fix it locally and was afraid it would get lost or damaged if I mailed it off somewhere so I kept it stored in a fireproof/waterproof safe in my home. I recently found a data recovery service with a local address so I dropped it off and within an hour I was told that the bearings were seized up but that the "platter" looked to be undamaged and he suspected the data would be recoverable. He stated he had to order replacement bearings and would let me know in about a week or so how things were going. It took several weeks for him to receive the replacement bearings, but by then he had said he was running through it and had come across several bad sectors and recovery wasn't looking good but he would call when he finished the next day... a week later I called him for an update and he told me none of the data was recoverable bc the platter was too degraded. I was confused as he had initially told me that the platter looked fine, but was now telling me the platter was degraded and gave an analogy about the silver metal part coming off a cd as it gets old. I was confused (I am not tech saavy) but took it as a loss and told him I would pick my items up. Fast forward to today. I picked it up, it was no longer in the case which, ok, he had to take it out to take apart to fix, but the hard drive he gave me says "Seagate" on it. I asked him why it said Seagate when I gave him a Cavalry drive and he said the the Cavalry brand was only for the external casing but that the inside drive was actually Seagate and that it was normal.... so I guess I have a few questions. Does any of what that man said make any sense?? How can I tell if this drive is actually my drive? I never removed if from the external casing so I never noted serial number and it looks nothing like it did when I dropped it off so visually I have no identifiers. Would the serial number give me any clues to verify if it could be correct product? Would a Cavalry brand EHD actually have a Seagate drive inside?
 
Solution
An external drive like this?
https://www.newegg.com/cavalry-caxe-series-1tb/p/N82E16822101082

The drive inside might be anything. WD, Seagate, Toshiba...whatever is in their pipeline at manufacture time.
"Calvary" is the just outside enclosure. They do not manufacture 'hard drives'.

If you sent it somewhere for "data recovery", they should have given you the data back. Or whatever they could "recover".
If they had to replace the physical drive in the enclosure...makes no difference.
Jan 5, 2021
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I am concerned about the data, which I was initially told was recoverable and platter (his words) looked perfect but then a month later it was 100% not recoverable bc platter was too "degraded" I am kinda thinking my drive was possibly accidentally switched with another. I am hoping this is the case, which is why I am trying to verify if the drive he returned is actually mine. It doesn't make sense to me that my drive said Cavalry on the outside casing and Seagate on inside drive. Aren't they two different companies? Maybe both are the same company? I just don't know enough.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
An external drive like this?
https://www.newegg.com/cavalry-caxe-series-1tb/p/N82E16822101082

The drive inside might be anything. WD, Seagate, Toshiba...whatever is in their pipeline at manufacture time.
"Calvary" is the just outside enclosure. They do not manufacture 'hard drives'.

If you sent it somewhere for "data recovery", they should have given you the data back. Or whatever they could "recover".
If they had to replace the physical drive in the enclosure...makes no difference.
 
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Solution
Jan 5, 2021
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Yes, it looked exactly like that.

Ok, so thank you the main question was if it would be possible for the drive inside to actually be a Seagate. I don't know really anything about tech stuff so I thought Cavalry was the brand of the drive. I was hoping it was switched with another at some point since it didn't make sense that the platter looked fine and then a month later it was too degraded to recover any data. The only thing that made sense was an accidental swap.

Either way I guess the data is gone.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yes, it looked exactly like that.

Ok, so thank you the main question was if it would be possible for the drive inside to actually be a Seagate. I don't know really anything about tech stuff so I thought Cavalry was the brand of the drive. I was hoping it was switched with another at some point since it didn't make sense that the platter looked fine and then a month later it was too degraded to recover any data. The only thing that made sense was an accidental swap.

Either way I guess the data is gone.
Absolutely.
As said, "Calvary" is not a hard drive manufacturer.
Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba...those companies make hard drives.

Was probably a Seagate in there before. Probably the same drive, and he just spouted some technobabble about bearing replacement.
He actually did nothing except take your money.
 
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Jan 5, 2021
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Nobody replaces bearings. If the spindle motor were truly seized, the platters would be transplanted into a donor drive, as well as the PCB.

***This may have been what he did. He explained it to me over the phone and I remembered "seized bearings" and that he had to order something, but expected that he could do a full data recovery



Head/media damage is common for a dropped HDD, especially if the drive was spinning when it fell.

***The drive was in use at the time it fell
 
Jan 5, 2021
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Does the part about the "degraded platter" make sense? If I understood the analogy correctly he said that the platters are kinda like cds in that the data is stored on the shiny part of a cd, but as the cd ages the shiny stuff can degrade and flake off?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Does the part about the "degraded platter" make sense? If I understood the analogy correctly he said that the platters are kinda like cds in that the data is stored on the shiny part of a cd, but as the cd ages the shiny stuff can degrade and flake off?
'degradation' could have been the result of dropping it.
The actual platter surface messed up.
 
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Jan 5, 2021
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Did you actually get any data back from this?
The physical drive inside that box is (mostly) irrelevant.


I got only the drive. He said he could not do a recovery due to too many bad blocks...

Does that mean there is possibly still some good blocks where small pockets of data could be restored? Maybe photos?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
I got only the drive. He said he could not do a recovery due to too many bad blocks...

Does that mean there is possibly still some good blocks where small pockets of data could be restored? Maybe photos?
Absolutely completely unknown. Totally unknown what he did or did not do.

If he said that, he was way out of his depth in trying any "data recovery".
 
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Jan 5, 2021
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Absolutely completely unknown. Totally unknown what he did or did not do.

If he said that, he was way out of his depth in trying any "data recovery".


As I said before, I am far from tech saavy, but I have in the past used data recovery software for deleted files. Actually it was when I dropped this hard drive I tried to recover the deleted files from the computer I had originally stored them on. (I moved them to the EHD) bc I need space on the computer.

I was able to recover many photos, but of course since time had passed and several areas had been overwritten I was not able to recover the files in the folders they were stored and organized in... it was just randomly recovered photos.

I was thinking he would have at least been able to recover some of the data in a similar way if there were bad sectors then there could possibly have been good ones too.

The drive was 400gb capacity and only had about 20 to 30 gb of data saved to it, so I had thought maybe with so much of the drive being empty that even with bad blocks there was a good chance of finding data in "good blocks" but again- I really don't know enough.
 
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And, if I may be that guy....

Backups are your friend.
Free software and another storage space....your data will never be at the mercy of a dropped drive or a shady "data recovery guy".


Lol. Funny story. I did have backups, the hard drive was the back up to my back up. I had everything saved on cds (back in the day) except for 3 months worth of photos and videos that I hadn't saved to cd yet and for the data that WAS backed up on a cd but gave to my friend bc it had my photos from her wedding that she had lost. I meant to make another copy of it but forgot. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️When I dropped the drive I asked that friend if she still had the cd but she had "lost" it. Of course it had more than just her wedding pics on it so I lost all of that info as well... lesson was learned. I should have just made her her own data cd instead of giving her the one with all my other files...

I have back ups to my backups now, and I never reuse my original camera SD cards anymore either, but I had still hoped I could recover that lost data someday.
 
Jan 5, 2021
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After speaking with you both I think everything mostly makes sense now. The drive is likely different because he swithed the platter to a donor drive and it may not have been compatible with the original casing which is why I only got the drive back.. And since the drive fell while running, the degradation is to be expected, although I still don't understand why he initially said the platter looked fine and he thought recovery was likely.

I do very much appreciate the both of you for taking the time to answer my questions and help me understand.