HippieTechs

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Spring 2018 Availability Notice

TL;DR HippieTechs in Boise will be closed to drop-offs and pick-ups temporarily while I am out of town. You can still utilize my service via a mail-in option.

The project I am working on in Southern California has grown to an even larger, more time intensive project than I expected. I will not be able to have regular office hours or provide onsite service for a few months in the Boise area.

What I can do is offer my Mac repair and Data Recovery services via a mail-in service. If you would like me to repair your Mac or recover your data, start by filling out the mail-in form. Once I receive the mail-in form I will send you a shipping box with a prepaid Fedex ground shipping label to get your device to me in CA. I will start with a free diagnosis and let you know the cost for the needed service. If you decide to not go through with the service, the charge for the shipping is $15. If you decide to go with the service, there will be no extra charge for shipping.

The best way to contact me while I am away is via text or email. If you call and leave a voicemail I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible, but I can respond faster via email or text than I can via phone.

I am sorry for the inconvenience this will cause. I hope to still be able to help you with your Mac repair or Data Recovery project!

Please text or email with any questions: (208) 288-1793 info@hippietechs.com

-Nathan

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Failing MacBook Hard Drive with Bad Sectors

MacBook Hard Drive Recovery

Failing MacBook Drive Symptoms

Hard drives can fail in many different ways and with many different symptoms. In this case, the hard drive seems to work, the computer boots fully, but then freezes and won’t respond for a few minutes. When it does finally respond, anything you try to click on results in a few more minutes of waiting for the click to be recognized. This sort of symptom is usually caused by the data on the drive not being read properly by the computer. While a failing hard drive is one very plausible cause, this type of behavior can be caused by a bad hard drive cable, bad logic board connector, even bad RAM or OS issue. It is important to start with a thorough diagnosis.

Diagnosis of MacBook Issue

The computer in question here is a 2008 MacBook. This model has very few issues with the hard drive cable (the same can not be said for the 13″ MacBook Pro replacement models), and the logic board connector almost never is the issue. While just by seeing the model of the computer I am almost sure the hard drive is at fault, it is still important to verify the issue and run a full set of tests on the computer.

The best way to start diagnosing a possible hard drive issue is to remove the drive from the computer for testing outside the unit. This way if the hard drive fails testing, you know it isn’t because of a bad cable or connector inside the computer. While the hard drive is completing a surface scan, I like to run standard diagnostics on the computer using a known good hard drive.

In this case the hard drive failed the surface scan almost immediately pointing to bad sectors on the drive at least. When a hard drive reports a bad sector, it could be that the sector is bad, but it could also be caused by a scratch, or a week or broken read/write head. In this case the heads pass a quick test using a data recovery rig, so the data should be retrievable from he drive using standard imaging procedures.

Recovering the data if necessary

Having a backup is extremely important. If you have a current backup of your hard drive, if it fails you have almost nothing to worry about! If you don’t have a backup, then you have to worry about getting the data off the failing drive which is not a guaranteed process. Sometimes drives can fail so catastrophically that the data is not recoverable by anyone.

In this case as mentioned before, the heads inside the drive are testing good, so it is likely that there is a small amount of media damage or some bad sectors at the start of the drive causing the issues. I am extremely confident that the data will be fully recoverable if it ends up being needed.

Data Recovery Services Available in Boise

HippieTechs offers data recovery services in the Boise ID area. We are located in Downtown Boise right next door to the Flying M coffee shop. We always start with our free diagnosis on all data recoveries (and Mac Repairs). Once we get a sense for what is needed to successfully recover your data we will provide you with a quote. We generally have 2 data recovery tiers.

 
 

Need your own drive recovered?

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Snowy Day Liquid Damaged iPhone Data Recovery


For anybody that woke up late today, you won’t believe what you missed! Snow, and a successful iPhone data recovery!

iPhone Data Recovery

It seems like everywhere you look nowadays there is a cell phone repair shop where you can get a replacement screen installed, charger port fixed, and other cell phone repair service. While we do not offer cell phone repair, we do offer iPhone data recovery. Our iPhone data recovery service is available locally at our Downtown Boise location as well as Nationwide through our mail-in recovery service.

Cost and Turnaround

We only charge if the iPhone recovery is successful. If the recovery is not successful, there is no charge for the attempt! The charge for a successful recovery is $379. Turnaround time can vary quite a bit on iPhone repairs. We complete most repairs in house in the 1-2 week timeframe. However, sometimes certain chips on the iPhone logic board need to be replaced that we do not replace in house. In these cases we mail-out the logic board for the chips to replaced and the recovery can take 2-4 weeks to complete.

Apple’s Warranty will likely be voided

Keep in mind that most of the time recovery requires us to do logic board level repair on your iPhone. This kind of repair will very likely void Apple’s warranty on the device, and will also likely cause Apple to not offer any further repairs or exchanges on the device.

Issues we can and can not attempt recovery on

We are not able to attempt recovery on all kinds of issues with iPhones. One of the most requested services that we do NOT offer is Deleted iPhone Data Recovery.

Liquid Damage

We can attempt recovery on an iPhone with liquid damage! This is our #1 requested service. When your iPhone is liquid damaged and you need the data off of it, we can attempt a recovery!

Drop Damage

Sometimes after a drop the iPhone needs more help than just a screen replacement. If your iPhone has been dropped and you need your data back, we can attempt to retrieve the data.

Deleted Data

We are NOT able to attempt to recover deleted data from iPhones. If you have a 4S or newer iPhone, it is very likely that no-one can retrieve the deleted data.

Liquid Damaged iPhone Data Recovery

This particular phone only had a few small spots of corrosion from liquid damage. We were able to repair the board enough to get the data off of it!
iPhone Liquid Damaged Recovery

iPhone Liquid Damaged Recovery

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Spin up, seek, spin down. Maxtor 3.5″ 40GB PATA Recovery

Maxtor 40GB IDE PATA Drive Recovery

The clients description of the failing drive was spot on, “It spins up, seeks for a while, then spins back down… it just won’t mount.” The drive was an older (2004) Maxtor 3.5″ 40GB drive.

PATA VS SATA Drive

SATA (serial ATA) drives were introduced in the early 2000’s (I believe 2003). So if you are using a PATA drive (Parallel ATA) to store data, it is likely to be over 10 years old. The older a drive gets, the more likely it is to fail, so we are never surprised to see PATA drives coming in for data recovery. That is not to say all PATA drives are old… some manufactures still make them for older systems that require replacement drives… but if it is an original PATA drive, it is likely very old now.

Tools for a successful recovery

We have the tools needed to recover newer SATA drives as well as older PATA or IDE drives. Sometimes donor parts can be harder to find for older models… but after years in the data recovery industry, we have access to 1000’s of old drives for parts!

The problem with the drive

In the case of the 40GB PATA drive we just recovered, the issue was a week head and bad sectors throughout the drive. We were able to recover 100% of the drive within 48 hours of drop-off. The recovery was covered under our Tier 1 service, and the client was pleased with the results!

Tier 1 Recovery

On this particular drive when discussing the recovery with the client we initially thought the issue may require a Tier 2 (clean room) recovery based on the age of the drive and the way it was behaving. We were pleased to find that it would not require a clean room recovery and could be recovered under our Tier 1 service. We have found that if the drive has not been dropped (this drive was not dropped), tier 1 recovery is possible about 85% of the time.

Bad Sectors

In this case, the drive had 2 issues (bad sectors and a week head), but in many cases the only issue with a drive is bad sectors. Some people are surprised to hear that bad sectors can cause so many problems. We have seen drives with bad sectors not be readable (even for data recovery software and some data recovery tools), make clicking noises, spin down during use, and more!

Week Heads

Hard drives have what are called “heads” that read and write data from the platters of the drive. An overly simplified analogy would be a record player needle. The needle on a record player “reads” the data from the record… if you have a broken needle, you may get some data… but not all the bits of data.

With a week head on a hard drive, it is often possible to carefully recover from all the heads that are still working (if there are multiple heads), then target just the files you need that are saved in the area that the week head is in charge of. It can take multiple read attempts to get each sector of data in a bad case, so a delay in the completion of the recovery is very possible.

Need your own drive recovered?

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