Cases solved
Real data recovery cases from the OmniData lab.
These anonymized case studies show how failed devices are diagnosed and recovered inside the North York lab. Private customer information and file details are never published.
Featured cases
Recovered devices and recovery methods.
More cases can be added as separate pages as we document them.
Flash drive recovery
32GB PNY USB flash drive with SM controller corruption
A monolith USB flash drive chimed when connected but would not mount on the computer. Recovery required pinout tracing, direct NAND access, and controller reconstruction.
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RAID & NAS recovery
Company 5-drive Drobo NAS failure recovery
A company Drobo storage system failed with two drives out of five. Recovery required a difficult RAID rebuild using 2 imaged drives and 3 hardware drives.
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Hard drive recovery
Damaged WD 4TB USB drive recovered after drop damage
A dropped native USB external drive had severe head and platter damage. Recovery required decontamination and repeated optimized read cycles.
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SSD recovery
Samsung 850 PRO 128GB SATA SSD recovered after sudden failure
A failed SATA SSD stopped allowing file access after a long period of slow operation. Recovery was difficult because internal encryption and limited chip-off options narrowed the path.
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Phone recovery
Samsung S25 Ultra recovered after 3 days underwater
A phone rescued from 30 feet of lake water needed liquid damage cleaning and board-level data access work because encrypted phone data requires the original device state to be usable.
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