Case Study

Recovered Photos and Videos from a Non-Detecting Hard Drive

Loss of 1.5TB travel photography collection due to hard drive crash.

Published On : Dec 31, 2019

Parnashree Devi is an avid travel blogger, photographer and passionate filmmaker based in India. Having traveled to more than 300 destinations in 10 countries, including 22 states in India over the past 14 years, Parnashree is a well-known contributor in the travel & photography space.
Storing the captured photographs is a key aspect of preserving and curating her travel memoirs, which requires diligent planning & efforts. These photographs make key constituents of her blog posts and travel storytelling. Parnashree had been using a 2-TB hard drive to store the photographs, and thus preserving her digital memories for years on that single drive.

Situation Overview

For creating an article on Ladakh, she needed to access a certain photographs stored on the hard drive. However, after connecting the hard drive to laptop she found that it had stopped functioning and turned inaccessible. The laptop couldn’t detect the hard drive even after making several attempts.

This was a panicky situation for Parnashree, as her life’s entire work (1.5TB photo collection) was stored on the ‘dead drive’ and there didn’t seem a solution to revive it! Unfortunately, there was no backup of this huge travel photography collection.

Based on immediate advice from acquaintances, she reached out to some local data recovery service vendors for help. However, being unable to get assurance of successful recovery and satisfactory answers from local vendors, she decided to explore more affirmative and defined solutions. That’s when one of her trusted photographer friends recommended seeking the help of Stellar^® Data Recovery, and hence the case came in the care of Stellar^®.

Client Need

The client wanted assurance for recovery of the photographs and other important documents stored on the drive. She wanted to retrieve her photography collection in its original ‘unaltered’ state.
She also expected clear, prompt, and transparent updates on her service request, with the assurance of maintaining the privacy of her data at all times.

Stellar’s^® Approach to Client Service

Considering the significance of the lost photo collection for the client and her expectations, a dedicated service manager was allocated to handle the case. The team began by investigating the hard drive and found it had physically crashed, rendering it inaccessible. It was determined that a head assembly replacement was required.
The service manager adopted a personalized customer engagement approach, starting with clearly explaining the condition of the drive and the necessary procedure to retrieve the data. The client was reassured with promises of recovery and data privacy.
Additionally, the service manager gave the client a tour of the service facility, including the Class 100 cleanroom lab where the recovery would take place, introduced her to the engineers handling the job, and explained the rigorous data privacy and security measures in place.
This one-on-one, transparent approach played a key role in earning the client’s trust and made her comfortable with the technical skills, work ethics, and practices of the team.
After receiving the client’s confirmation, the experts began the recovery process and successfully retrieved all the photos from the physically crashed hard drive. Throughout the recovery, the team provided prompt updates to keep the client informed about the progress.

Photo Recovery Approach & Final Delivery

Stellar^® data care experts opened the crashed hard drive in the Class 100 cleanroom lab to replace the head assembly and restore it to a functional state. After transplanting the new head assembly, they created a clone of the restored hard drive.

Next, the team used a photo recovery tool to scan the drive and recover all photos which were then saved on the drive for client-side verification.

The client visited Stellar’s^® data recovery facility to verify her photos and after 100% satisfaction was handed over the photos on a safe drive.

Customer Delight

The client expressed great delight for the service quality and overall customer experience delivered by Stellar^®. She mentioned the company’s professional expertise in data recovery, which helped her regain all the lost photographs including the photobank in original condition.

Stellar’s strong commitment to data privacy and proactive updates on job progress were other highlights of delivering a great experience for the client in this case.