4 Data Recovery Attempts—Then DriveSavers!

In her own words, Haley Mead, a professional wedding videographer, thought her external SSD was immortal. She learned a hard lesson, but her story had a happy ending, just like the wedding videos she nearly lost!

One day, while transferring files to her SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD, Haley’s Macbook Pro showed an error code (“Error Code -36”), and the SSD disconnected from her computer. When she tried plugging it back in, the drive connected momentarily before disconnecting again. After that, it no longer registering on the computer or in Mac’s Disk Utility.

Haley realized she had lost two terabytes of irreplaceable wedding footage in about thirty seconds! She panicked.

Frantically trying to get her clients’ precious memories back, Haley sent her drive to four different places for data recovery—all with zero success. Finally, the fourth business she worked with suggested DriveSavers.

With all the research involved in hunting for a resolution, Haley learned that each attempt at data recovery severely decreases the next person’s chance of success. She was nearly out of hope when she came to DriveSavers, her fifth stop on this journey. However, the company’s no data—no charge policy made it easy to move forward, despite her low expectations.

DriveSavers flash device engineers, who have considerable experience recovering data from all varieties of SSD, used proprietary techniques to achieve victory! Even after multiple shops had worked extensively on Haley’s device with zero files recovered, DriveSavers successfully pulled a 100% image with zero errors. As Haley says in her video,

In the end, all of Haley’s newlywed clients received their treasured memories in Haley’s unique, beautiful videography style. Watch her video to see some of the touching moments recovered by DriveSavers and enjoy Haley’s humorous and entertaining story-telling of this traumatic yet triumphant adventure.

Transcript:

First of all, do you use these? (holds up external SSD) If so, go back it up. Right now. Then backup your flash drive, your hard drive, your laptop, your cell phone, and your firstborn child.

However, if you are here because you are like me and thought that your SSD was immortal, then hello. My name is Haley Mead, and I am a wedding videographer in South Carolina.

So what happened here? Well, I was in the process of transferring files to my external SSD when my computer suddenly threw me an error code and the SSD disconnected from my computer. So naturally, I tried to plug it in again. It popped up momentarily and then disconnected again. It would not register at all.

Cue panic.

Did I seriously just lose TWO TERABYTES of irreplaceable wedding footage in the span of, like, 30 seconds? Yes. Yes, I did. The answer is yes.

Cue: frantic Google searching for my chances of survival. And guess what? It didn’t look good.
It, in fact, looked horrible.

I sent in so many inquiries to so many companies, one of which called me almost immediately. Like, too fast. I explained the situation, and they quoted me $200 to $300 pretty confidently, like—with their whole chest.

Spoiler alert: it was nowhere close to $300.

Okay, guys, quick interjection from Future Me. Lost data can be a really emotional topic, you know—it can be difficult to navigate. And I think a lot of companies take advantage of that. So, just keep that in mind when you are talking to these companies, or you can just keep watching, and I can tell you exactly which company to go to. (:

Jumping right back in—

I got the invoice, I said ‘heck no,’ and I had them return it and sent it to a local guy to give it a shot. Negative. “This drive is dead,” he said.

Okay, it’s fine. Everything’s fine! I have Reddit! So I go to my data recovery forum, ask the Redditors for their advice, and they sent me to a company in Georgia. Negative. I send it to Reddit’s second suggestion in California—Negative. Although this company’s email started off pretty bleak, they ended it with a much-needed sliver of hope and suggested I try DriveSavers.

So, I had it sent to DriveSavers for one last ‘hurrah.’

Now, if you have read anything about data recovery, then you know that each attempt at data recovery SEVERELY decreases the next person’s chances of a successful data recovery. My drive went through five. FIVE! With the last one being DriveSavers—fortunately for me.

I truly had no hope of this data being recovered. I had emails typed out to my clients telling them that their wedding was gone forever because I had no backup.

I received a call shortly after my SSD arrived [at DriveSavers] with some pretty promising news. They were pretty certain that they could do this, they gave me a quote- to which I agreed, and they went to work.

Seven days later, I got the call that my data was Fully. Recovered. Every folder in place, every file playable.

[Wait, what did you just say?]

I chose to pay through one of their payment options, Affirm—which was so easy. They sent me a link. Boom boom boom. My drive was here in three days after that.

Okay, so- I wanted to have a little box-opening moment for experience’s sake, but I was just too eager to see the footage with my own eyeballs. So—what we DID have was my new drive in here, my old drive—they do return it, [instructions on] how to proceed with your data, and the cutest part of it all—this little keychain flashlight. Adorable.

This data should not have been recovered. And if it was recovered, statistically speaking, those files should have been corrupt. I have no idea what kind of big-brained sorcerers DriveSavers has working in their labs… but I am pretty certain that there is nowhere else in the world with that kind of expertise or professionalism. And I thank my lucky stars every day that I decided to give it one last try.

Do not be like me and waste your time and money, ping-ponging your irreplaceable data *ping ping ping* around the world, okay? Just start here, and thank me later. DriveSavers helped me when no one else could. And while hopefully, this never happens again, I do know who I will be going to for help if it does…and hopefully, you do too.

Good luck to you and your [data] recovery efforts.

B-Bye!