Case Study: USB Data Recovery—Paralegal Business Rescued from Devastating Data Loss

Using precision tools and specialized workstations, engineers carefully removed the NAND memory chip from the flash drive’s printed circuit board (PCB)—a technique known as chip-off recovery. This process bypasses damaged controller components and gives engineers direct access to the raw data stored on the chip.

Once removed, the chip was imaged using proprietary DriveSavers hardware and software. This imaging created a bit-for-bit forensic replica of the chip’s contents, enabling engineers to perform analysis and recovery without further risking the original data.

During forensic imaging, the team identified a FAT file system containing roughly 974MB of readable data. Further analysis and additional extraction passes—using DriveSavers proprietary USB data recovery tools—yielded two major batches of recoverable data: one totaling approximately 985MB and another exceeding 2.6GB.

Some image files (mainly JPGs) exhibited up to 32% corruption during early reads. However, repeated passes, re-reads, and validation allowed engineers to reconstruct most of the damaged files and dramatically reduce the corruption rate.

The final phase involved rebuilding the recovered data into an organized file structure, as close to the original layout as possible. Any partially corrupted or miscellaneous files were included and clearly labeled for review.

Once verified, the complete data set was transferred to a new, functional USB flash drive and returned to Jeff—fully recovered and ready for immediate use.