Today a lady called me her hero 😢

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individual101@reddit

When i worked as easy tech at staples, a lady brought in a hard drive with all the pictures she ever had and recently her dad passed. Her drive was dead and she couldn't get them off. My only option was to send the drive into Seagate to get the data off and it was $1k to which she agreed.

3 weeks later the drive came back with all her data saved to 2 other drives. When she picked it up she cried and thanked me. Although I didn't do the work, I felt glad I could offer her a solution and she got her pictures.

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cyberman0@reddit

I'm actually surprised it was that cheap.

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DragonspeedTheB@reddit

I’m surprised it WORKED.

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Valdaraak@reddit

If it was a mechanical drive, I'm not too surprised. SSDs are where it becomes a surprise data got recovered.

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antigenx@reddit

I once replaced a fried board on a Seagate drive with one I bought off the internet. Worked like a charm and saved the drive. When I called them about recovery (before I tried the board swap method) they also quoted me 1K.

Another time I recovered most of the data off a laptop drive that had failed by putting the drive in an ice bath.

Crazy shit, but it worked. 😆

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zaphod777@reddit

I've stuck one in the freezer before and revived it just long enough to get the data off of it.

1/10 times it works every time.

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cyberman0@reddit

Yeah the board trick I hAve done before, but you usually need the exact model if my memory is correct. That said I tend to get 4 or so when I'm doing data management.

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OcotilloWells@reddit

Dang, I have a drive with old pictures on it, I never thought about that. My at the time 2 year old lived to "pushy buttons" and apparently did it to n much and fried the board. You could hear the mechanical parts going through self test normally when you start it, but the operating system wouldn't see the drive.

It's an old PATA drive, I think I still have it but, the drive would be hard to get now.

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antigenx@reddit

They say it's hit-and-miss when it comes to board replacements. Need the same model, same firmware revision, and if you're lucky, the same batch. There was a forum online where folks would post theirs and do swaps, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is or how I found it.

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faceerase@reddit

I mean not what you're referring to but thre's this?

https://www.donordrives.com/

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pompousrompus@reddit

Freezer trick does work for old mechanical drives. Worth a shot if you can find it.

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OcotilloWells@reddit

Maybe. My best guess is that it is mechanically fine, it's the board that is bad.

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pompousrompus@reddit

If you could hear it spinning the board was working in some capacity but you’re right, who knows.

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almightyloaf666@reddit

Well you still had the solution and did coordination. That is both knowledge (having the correct solution for the issue) and work (coordinating the contractor, in this case Seagate)

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e_t_@reddit

I got lucky the last time I had to do data recovery. The computer was a victim of the capacitor plague and wouldn't boot, but the hard drive was actually fine.

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murderfacejr@reddit

Years ago someone stopped by with a broken cassette tape that had a voicemail from his mother in law - it was the only recording of her voice and his wife was inconsolable over its loss. I taped together the snapped part and recorded it to mp3 (took 5 min) - they thought I was the king of technology. Super grateful and would bring the office tamales and lasagna every year at Christmas until he retired.

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FiredFox@reddit

And then you forced her to change her password to something that has at least 60% different characters than her previous password and later in the same day you forced through an update to the video conferencing app in the middle of a call. 🦅

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InfraScaler@reddit

Thank you for your service.

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Smiles_OBrien@reddit

I keep quoting a movie by saying: "Once again, we've saved civilization as we know it" and no one ever knows the response to it.

(c'mon nerds, I know you're in here)

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Grandpaw99@reddit

Great job!

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SubNine5@reddit

Don't give them your direct line.

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Yozzie_ZA@reddit

After 15 years in the industry… this comment hits hard.

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tech_douch3bag@reddit (OP)

It was a skype call

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Fantastic_Gap_6368@reddit

Don't fall. She needs access to something which may not be allowed by the policy.

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RegisHighwind@reddit

I miss the time when I used to directly deal with end users for this reason sometimes. I received so many cards, cookies, cakes, and had dinner/lunch paid for so many times in my years as a tech. It was great. Don't get all that as a storage admin 😂

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BlackV@reddit

the real heros are the friends we made along the way

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Dolomedes03@reddit

Now she will request you, specifically, every time she calls. Welcome to the perks of hero status.

That’ll teach you.

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deweye@reddit

I once help recovered a file which the lady spent a few hours working on it. She was on the verge of tearing and when I recovered it, she said she could make out with me right now. 🤣

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tech_douch3bag@reddit (OP)

Lmao!

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adx931@reddit

For that brief period of time I worked as a hired clown, that's one of my two favorite responses when a customer was satisfied with a fix. The other was, "Send me a bill!"

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Large-Fig5187@reddit

I got a Dodger bobblehead today with a great thank you note. “You answer all my dumb computer questions!” So nice - and her questions are not dumb! ⚾️

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saysjuan@reddit

Tina Turner said it best...

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caIiguIa-@reddit

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urbanflow27@reddit

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PrincipleExciting457@reddit

When I worked at a uni I used to have a woman that worked as an admin assistant bring me fudge every year because after I took over the care of their department everyone was happy with how things ran. The number of complaints/requests that she got hammered with from faculty plummeted to almost nothing, and took so much stress off her. It was honestly the sweetest thing ever done for me in my entire career.

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