Hi,
In the last weeks, I was looking for a new service I can offer when the repair business is dead. And one of the closest services, that I can offer is the recovery of data from HDD, SSD, USB-Sticks and SD-Cards or Phones and maybe navigation systems as a part of forensic work.
First of all, the people are willing to pay money for the data recovery. And in most cases the recovery is a straight forward process.
First of all, lets take a HDD. First of all, I thought, I need a clean room for the process. Well, small companies doesn’t have a clean room. They use Glove Boxes for their work and even some of them thing that it’s unnecessary.
And what do you have to do in data recovery of a HDD?
First of all, you can have electronics problems, so you have just to clean some contacts of ultrasonic the board. Or you have real hardware issues. You open the disk. Sometimes you have heads, which are stucked to the Surface of the platter. You just move the heads back und you are done. In few cases you have to switch heads or the platter to a donor HDD. It’s something you can do with tools for about 1k.
For SSD you have also electronics problems. But the most problems are software / firmware based. So you just have to put the drive into tech mode and “repair” it with a software for just 2k like PC-3000 SSD from ACE Labs.
Well, for USB Sticks most of all, you have damaged electronics or USB Port you just have to solder back on. Or you have to extract the NAND Chip and recover it like a SD-Card.
For (monolithic) SD-Cards you have to use a sandpaper to get to the internal contacts of the PCB and microsolder some jumper wires to it. Then you can use a tool / software to recover the data. The invest is about 2k for the kit.
So what do you think, is it worth to diversify in to the data recovery business?
Against the diversification you have the low prices for SSD, where you don’t have the problems of the most HDDs. About the stability of the SSD Firmware I can’t say anything.
Another “Problem” is that backup solutions are getting cheaper and cheaper. You today you can buy a cheap 3TB USB-Drive for 70€ for backups or use one of the Cloud-Backup Services.
Another thing, I can’t talk about is the worth of the Data of a user. What do you think, how many users are going to pay 600-1.000€/$ to get the data back?
On the other hand, the invest isn’t that much. You just need 2-4 Jobs of about 15min-1h each and you are even.
In the last weeks, I was looking for a new service I can offer when the repair business is dead. And one of the closest services, that I can offer is the recovery of data from HDD, SSD, USB-Sticks and SD-Cards or Phones and maybe navigation systems as a part of forensic work.
First of all, the people are willing to pay money for the data recovery. And in most cases the recovery is a straight forward process.
First of all, lets take a HDD. First of all, I thought, I need a clean room for the process. Well, small companies doesn’t have a clean room. They use Glove Boxes for their work and even some of them thing that it’s unnecessary.
And what do you have to do in data recovery of a HDD?
First of all, you can have electronics problems, so you have just to clean some contacts of ultrasonic the board. Or you have real hardware issues. You open the disk. Sometimes you have heads, which are stucked to the Surface of the platter. You just move the heads back und you are done. In few cases you have to switch heads or the platter to a donor HDD. It’s something you can do with tools for about 1k.
For SSD you have also electronics problems. But the most problems are software / firmware based. So you just have to put the drive into tech mode and “repair” it with a software for just 2k like PC-3000 SSD from ACE Labs.
Well, for USB Sticks most of all, you have damaged electronics or USB Port you just have to solder back on. Or you have to extract the NAND Chip and recover it like a SD-Card.
For (monolithic) SD-Cards you have to use a sandpaper to get to the internal contacts of the PCB and microsolder some jumper wires to it. Then you can use a tool / software to recover the data. The invest is about 2k for the kit.
So what do you think, is it worth to diversify in to the data recovery business?
Against the diversification you have the low prices for SSD, where you don’t have the problems of the most HDDs. About the stability of the SSD Firmware I can’t say anything.
Another “Problem” is that backup solutions are getting cheaper and cheaper. You today you can buy a cheap 3TB USB-Drive for 70€ for backups or use one of the Cloud-Backup Services.
Another thing, I can’t talk about is the worth of the Data of a user. What do you think, how many users are going to pay 600-1.000€/$ to get the data back?
On the other hand, the invest isn’t that much. You just need 2-4 Jobs of about 15min-1h each and you are even.