Case Study

Recover Photo and Video from Crashed Hard Drive

Emotional stress due to the loss of several gigabytes of precious photographs.

Overview:

An HR professional with an interest in photography had been diligently curating his travel photography collection on multiple hard drives for several years. The photography enthusiast is a member of leading photography groups and forums, who expresses a deep emotional connect with the subject of photography and his own photo collection curated over the past several years.

Problem Statement:

The client had reported that one of his hard drives – having archived several GBs of precious photography collection – had been producing a ‘clicking’ sound for the past few weeks.
He had continued using this hard drive, being unaware of the fact that the drive could fail anytime due to plausible head crash; clicking sound from a drive indicates impending physical failure. So, the drive crashed ultimately while being continually used for a few days after initial occurrence of the clicking sound issue.
As a result, the photos stored on the hard drive were potentially lost unless the hard drive could be restored to a functional state so as to allow recovery operations.
The client was urgently looking for a solution that could retrieve the photos from the hard drive, however, to no avail; he had tried reaching out to local data recovery service vendors and computer hardware repair shops but none of these could offer assurance of successful recovery.
The client’s another concern was the lack of confidence in informal data recovery services, as he didn’t find adequate signs of personalized customer engagement, requisite infrastructure & tools, and clarity on service level agreements.
He didn’t want to take any chances going with local service providers considering the fundamental importance of these photographs and the years of efforts & emotional investment he had made on this photo collection.

Client Assurance:

The client wanted recovery of all the photographs with 100% assurance of success. He wanted to get back the complete collection in its original intact state.
He also desired complete transparency and clarity in communication, with assurance of end-to-end data privacy and personalized attention from the service provider.

Photo Recovery Solution:

Seeking out a reliable data recovery service, the client came across Stellar^® Data Recovery as a key recommendation from the Chief Editor of a leading photography magazine. Considering this advice coming from a highly reliable industry source who also happened to be the client’s personal acquaintance, the case came into the care of Stellar^®.

Data Recovery Actions & Approach:

Stellar® data care experts began with investigating the hard drive and, based on the initial diagnosis, engaged the client in a personalized manner. Considering the importance of photos lost and the specific situation at hand, Stellar® assigned a dedicated service manager for the case, who took a one-to-one customer engagement approach; starting with conveying a simple and clear message on the state of drive along with required procedure to retrieve the data, the service manager also comforted the client with assured recovery & data privacy.
Instead of taking the standard ‘document heavy’ approach involving several fine prints that might invoke a feeling of mistrust and burden, Stellar® chose to take a simple and clear approach to client communication — from job intake and photo recovery to client-side confirmation and final delivery.
The client was shown around the service facility — Class 100 clean room lab where data recovery operation would be performed on his hard drive, people who would take care of the job, rigorous data privacy measures, et al — with complete transparency to inspire his genuine confidence on Stellar’s® technical capabilities, work ethics, and customer service legacy.
Stellar® team began recovery operations immediately after receiving client confirmation on job, and successfully recovered all the photos from the failed hard drive.

Data Recovery Success:

Stellar® data care experts opened up the crashed hard drive in Class 100 clean room lab to find that the head assembly had crashed. The team transplanted a new head assembly on the drive to bring it back to functional state. Next, they cloned the restored hard drive on a brand new hard drive.
After successful cloning, the team then ran a proprietary photo recovery software to retrieve the complete photos which were previewed to check completeness and quality. Next, all these recovered photographs were saved on the drive for client-side verification.
The client visited Stellar’s® data recovery facility to verify the photos (numbers and quality) and after 100% satisfaction was handed over the photos on a safe drive. As a best practice for data recovery service delivery, Stellar® further offered a 7-days grace window for storing a copy of these recovered photos in case if there’s a need to collect them again.

Result

Having provided class-leading data recovery service with 100% assurance, the client expressed his delight with the overall quality of customer service, transparency, personalized experience, data privacy, and proactive communication.
We also offer specialized data recovery services for photo and video recovery solutions for all types and sizes of devices. Check our detailed service and success stories for data recovery here.

Problem Overview

Photo loss due to hard drive crash

Business Need

Recover all the photographs with 100% assurance Complete transparency and clarity in communication, with the assurance of data privacy and personalized attention

Solution Approach

Personalized client engagement Simplified communication with full transparency End-to-end service assurance

Result

Successful recovery of complete data Service delivery with winning exceptional 100% + customer experience rating