A user connected a Verbatim drive to their computer, and the operating system reported that the drive was damaged and needed to be formatted. At such a moment, an average user usually does not know what to do, and if there are important data on the hard drive, they seek professional help. And that's the right choice. At the very least, the user will receive a detailed diagnosis of the data medium, which can help them consider their next steps.

In this case, the drive inside the plastic casing was a Samsung model, ST1000LM024, HN-M101MBB. First, we conducted a detailed diagnosis of the internal drive itself to better determine the appropriate next steps. There can be several causes for the described fault. In this case, it was a failure of the data platters' surface, of a less severe nature, but enough to damage the file system. After connecting to a computer, the drive could not correctly register, and the computer offered to format the drive. If the user had chosen this option, it certainly would not have solved the problem, and subsequent data recovery from the disk could have been more complicated.

The mentioned Samsung drive model was manufactured in 2014 and, compared to today's hard drives, is technologically simpler and uses "good old conventional writing," namely CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording). This can be an advantage, even a crucial difference, in resolving some hard drive problems, especially in data recovery. Modern hard drives use shingled writing SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), and this in combination with other technologies of modern hard drives can significantly affect data recovery. Therefore, utmost caution is always necessary if a hard drive starts showing errors and data becomes inaccessible.

In the case of this Verbatim, respectively Samsung drive, solving the problem required working with service data, creating a binary copy of the entire available content of the drive, and then reconstructing the file system. The task was successful, and user data was recovered with high success.

In conclusion, it is important to remember that the best prevention against data loss is regular backup. Some faults in hard drives and other data media are solvable, others may be complicated, and in the most severe cases of data media failure, unsolvable. If you have encountered a similar problem and important data are inaccessible, do not hesitate to contact us for a consultation and a free diagnosis.