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K1VC
#1 Posted : Tuesday, April 10, 2018 1:09:58 PM(UTC)
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Hello All,

I lost my main hard drive back in January 2018. I did a LOGic backup in December 2017 but lost all QSO's from Dec 2017 until Jan. 29, 2018. I sent out my hard drive to a data recovery company. They had my hard drive over 3 months and said they couldn't find a 'donor hard drive' to replace the bad head on my hard drive because my hard drive was old, not to mention, they NEVER provided any updates to me unless I called them. There's more to this but I won't bore you with it.

They diagnosed the issue as having a bad 'head that would not read". I did an online search and came up with several data recovery companies.

Have any of you lost data and used a data recovery company with success and one you would recommend?

Thank you,
Vin, 73
K1VC
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w2zi
#2 Posted : Tuesday, April 10, 2018 3:05:13 PM(UTC)
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Can only tell you one NOT to try: Outsource Data Recovery. Great YouTube videos. After the initial review, the quote was $1200. We got the drive back. It would not even read the raw data (under Ubuntu) it did before sending it.

Oh well.

Don,
W2ZI
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K1VC
#3 Posted : Tuesday, April 10, 2018 5:53:57 PM(UTC)
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Thank you Don. Sorry about your experience with Outsource Data Recovery. I'll scratch them off the list.

Vin
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WN4AZY
#4 Posted : Tuesday, April 10, 2018 10:14:23 PM(UTC)
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Have the QSO's been uploaded to LoTW per chance? If so you can get them from there. Go to QSLing/Import LoTW QSLs. Checkmark "Download ALL QSLs...."

73,

WN4AZY
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K1VC on 4/25/2018(UTC)
wa4pgm
#5 Posted : Wednesday, April 11, 2018 2:16:55 PM(UTC)
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I lost a hard drive last year and did the recovery myself using "Seagate File Recovery for Windows".

It's not a free program but I was able to recover everything.
Good Luck,
Kyle, WA4PGM

PS: The hard drive was a Western Digital and not Seagate so the program works with many drives.
PPSS: Forgot to mention you can download the program and use it for free. If it recovers anything you've have to pay at that point. I think the cost was around $100 which is cheap when you lost everything.
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WN4AZY on 4/12/2018(UTC)
K1VC
#6 Posted : Thursday, April 12, 2018 7:37:20 PM(UTC)
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Hi Dennis: Honestly, I don't remember if all of my QSOs were uploaded to LoTW prior to the hard drive failure because it happened over 3 months ago but I'm pretty sure 99% of them were uploaded (if that makes sense).

Hi Kyle: I will look into 'Seagate File Recovery for Windows'. I was told by the tech the hard drive head would not lock on to read the data. I'll do some reading and see if this program will allow the drive to read the data.

Thank you,
Vin
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wa4pgm
#7 Posted : Friday, April 13, 2018 2:09:13 PM(UTC)
kchavis

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Vin,
When the hard drive was once installed do you remember if at power up the hard drive sounded normal or did it kinda beep beep beep?
Kyle
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WN4AZY on 4/25/2018(UTC)
K1VC
#8 Posted : Monday, April 16, 2018 1:48:48 PM(UTC)
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Hi Kyle,

There was no beeping at all. The pc would go through the initial system check and when it came time to load Windows, I got black screen saying "no hard drive detected". When I went into the BIOS settings, I clearly saw the hard drive listed in the boot up tab.

Vin
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wa4pgm
#9 Posted : Monday, April 23, 2018 9:34:29 AM(UTC)
kchavis

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Vin,
Sorry my reply is so slow.
I would reinstall the hard drive and see if BIOS recognizes it. If not the HD is probably bad.
If you're coming to Dayton and think about it bring the HD with you and stop by my spot 7677 & 7678.
73 Kyle
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WN4AZY on 4/25/2018(UTC)
K1VC
#10 Posted : Tuesday, April 24, 2018 7:02:03 AM(UTC)
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Hi Kyle,

When I go into the BIOS, I can see the hard drive. I placed the hard drive in an external enclosure, it powered up, I heard the head trying to engage to read data but it just won't lock in.

Unfortunately, I won't be going to DaytonSad I am going to give it one more try with another data recovery outfit and at the same time, I'm going to install LOGic9 on my new laptop, renew my LoTW certificates and hopefully, like Dennis says, download my log from LoTW and see if I can recover all my contacts.

Thank you,
Vin, 73
K1VC

UPDATE:

Bad news: Just got my diagnosis and cost to retrieve my data from a bad hard drive. The company that was looking at my drive caused additional damage to the hard drive. It's going to cost over $2000 to get my data, if it's even possible.

Good News: I logged into my LoTW account and I found that my last upload to LoTW happened 3 days before my hard drive crashed. I probably lost a few contacts in the 3 days so if I can retrieve my logs on LoTW, I will have 99.99% of my log!
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K1VC
#11 Posted : Monday, April 30, 2018 2:50:22 PM(UTC)
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One happy camper !!!!!

I updated my LoTW certificates, installed LOGic9 and it's updates and I was able to recover my entire log from LoTW.
I backed it all up on an external drive and a flash drive, you can never be too sure !

Vin, 73
K1VC
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WN4AZY on 5/1/2018(UTC)
N5XZ
#12 Posted : Tuesday, May 1, 2018 5:20:07 AM(UTC)
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Congrats! How many contacts?
73, Allen N5XZ
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wa4pgm
#13 Posted : Tuesday, May 1, 2018 8:15:24 AM(UTC)
kchavis

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Great news Vin glad to see you were able to recover most of your log!!
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WN4AZY
#14 Posted : Tuesday, May 1, 2018 8:41:32 AM(UTC)
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Glad you got it.

Everyone check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/...=9EYu0rfCM1w&t=117s
"Cloud backup, networking, and multiple databases"

Please subscribe to our channel if you haven't already.

Tnx & 73,

Dennis WN4AZY
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K1VC
#15 Posted : Tuesday, May 1, 2018 9:07:58 AM(UTC)
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I recovered my entire log from March 1982 until the hard drive crashed Jan 17, 2018, a total of 18,569 QSO's. I had many periods of inactivity (high school, college, moving to new house, raising kids, starting new jobs) so I don't have a lot of contacts but I'm glad to have them back.

It's not the full detailed log with comments, split frequencies, and other details I manually entered but it does have the DXCC, band, mode, and confirmed QSO's. I ran my progress report and I am missing 2 confirmations, (I had 331 confirmed, it's showing 329) so when I have some free time, I'll run my progress report again and filter the report so I can see the 2 missing confirmations.

This is a HUGE lesson learned. Back up...back up...back up. I made copies on multiple external and flash drives so I don't go through this again.

Vin, 73
K1VC
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