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accidents happen and the team at drive savers deals with

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the fallout of a lot of accidents so they sponsored this video to tour their

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sick facility in california to show the process of recovering the data from

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mobile devices like iphones that have gone through everything from being

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dropped out of a moving car to being thrashed by a gorilla at the zoo to

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being literally destroyed in a plane crash this tour is gonna be a little

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different though because i'm actually in my studio at home due to travel

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restrictions but it'll still be really

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cool

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every phone recovery starts with educating the customer drive savers data

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recovery my name is dylan how can i help you now the average person might think

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that data recovery is similar to what the apple store might do but in reality

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it is very unusual for data recovery to be covered by any sort of manufacturer

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warranty and the process is totally different when you send a device in for

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repair it's much more economical for a company like apple to simply replace

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whatever is broken rather than spending long hours diagnosing and fixing board

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level faults now this would be fine except that they

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see components like the main board as one piece so if there's an issue with it

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or anything that's attached to it it's gone that means no data they operate

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this way because a manufacturer is only concerned with preventing devices from

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breaking it's uneconomical to try to fix them once they do which is why the most

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straightforward data recovery operations are often though not always the ones

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where the issue is logical rather than physical and no hardware actually needs

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to be changed and in order to make this process as smooth as possible drive

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savers has actually developed their own in-house tools to take out some of the

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guesswork something that they're now also using for t2 mac recovery so when a

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device arrives drive saver's first step is to give it a once over if it's boot

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looping in recovery mode or it powers on

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but won't actually boot up there's a good chance that they can connect it

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with a lightning cable and perform the recovery that way

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very convenient but also dangerous

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one of the most important parts of this discovery process is checking the

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voltage and amperage of the device certain readings might point to a

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particular chip that's failed which could result in a data loss if a logical

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recovery is attempted directly it all comes down to experience 0.8 amps or

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higher is typical but other readings can be a strong indicator that it's a

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physical issue and it's time to crack the casing open

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at this stage it's best to start by looking for simple problems like shorts

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on the motherboard this can be done by freezing the logic board with a cold

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spray and looking for areas that thaw too quickly indicating excess heat or

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thanks to the wonders of modern technology it can also be done with a

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thermal camera using this method even very small shorts

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can be identified although finding the source of the short can be an entirely

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separate issue some simple shorts are fixable failed resistors can be replaced

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and burnt traces can in some cases be repaired as long as the technician

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doesn't drink too much coffee ahead of time i actually asked drive savers what

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their most important tool is and i was surprised to hear them say

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really while the particular model comes down to personal preference

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everyone there agrees that it is absolutely essential that the ends line

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up really well otherwise you might be transferring a component to a board only

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to have it go flying out and good luck holding on to something like a micro

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jumper if the ends don't match up absolutely perfectly those puppies are

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thinner than a human hair and even the breeze from someone walking past can

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blow them away never to be seen again other times the shorts are more complex

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or harder to get at if there's liquid damage you might remove the short only

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to find another one then corrosion under the chips and so on and so forth the

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worst is apparently milk now with any corrosion you start with a toothbrush if

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there's gunk under a chip you remove that chip and replace it if the board is

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completely corroded you need to use an ultrasonic cleaner not necessarily a

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super strong one you just want to get off as much of the gunk as you can so

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that you can start to look for shorts sometimes they're so bad though that

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when you start with a soft toothbrush you will literally have components just

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crumbling off the board and in cases like that you might end up doing a full

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chip swap where you are basically rebuilding the phone onto a donor device

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drive savers tries to source individual parts whether new or used but sometimes

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there's no other choice but to sacrifice a brand new device i mean look hey we

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told you data recovery ain't cheap right unfortunately

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yes it gets even worse aside from being a time consuming and risky operation on

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components that are ridiculously fragile this chip swap method also has some

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major limitations unless they could break apple's

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encryption which drive savers wouldn't do even if they could every component

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with apple's security measures baked in needs to be restored to at least a basic

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level of functionality the nand flash is what actually holds the data in an

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iphone so obviously we need that then there's the logic eprom which holds the

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firmware of the device that thing is super small about the size

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of a large grain of salt and if it disappears your data recovery effort is

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done and then finally there's the CPU that's

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tied to the eeprom and to the nand flash so for any recovery effort to be

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successful it needs to be working or at least mostly working a pretty

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famous internal story at drive savers is about an ipad that was pulled from a

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literal plane crash the board was so destroyed that it's a miracle they

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didn't just turn it away in the first place but after a full transplant as

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they call it they were actually able to get the device working enough that with

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clamps on the device to apply a little bit of extra pressure on certain

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components and by emailing the data to themselves rather than trying to

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transfer it over a cable which appeared to put too much strain on the CPU or

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something they were able to recover the needed flight recorder data one of their

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methods for these CPU transplants is rather ingenious i asked them why a cnc

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machine is part of their essential tool kit and it turns out that iphone 6 and

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6s have the RAM on top of the CPU with

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glue surrounding them so if you use too much heat the RAM can't breathe and

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it'll just pop or crack so get this depending on the device they

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can sometimes use the cnc to go in through the back precisely cutting away

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the logic board leaving only the exact dimensions of the CPU behind

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it's slower but it's a really clean way to do it and gives a higher success rate

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which is the most important thing they often prep their donor boards in the

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exact same way using their cnc from the top side to remove the CPU and RAM and

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expose the pads then it's a matter of aligning the solder pads from the old

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chip onto the new donor board that is a tough thing to get just right i actually

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tried that once with a macbook chipset in new york and

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well let's just say it's still dead

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fortunately drive savers is better at this stuff than i am and this kind of

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careful methodology has resulted in successful full transplants on even

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devices that have been driven over multiple times on the highway there's

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one that was dropped down a multi-story garbage chute that they pulled off and

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yes what i said before was true they actually managed to repair one where a

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gorilla like a real actual gorilla got its hands on

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the device when it was dropped into a zoo enclosure ironically though after

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all this drivesaver's biggest message in this sponsored video is

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back up your data so we never have to recover it whether it's on icloud a

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network storage device or a usb hard drive a second

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physically isolated copy of your important documents in media is the best

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insurance policy in the case of an unexpected disaster

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now common failures do come from user error

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like folks who think their device might be more waterproof than it is you know

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hey maybe if i just dip the the camera corner into the water drive savers has

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seen plenty of final videos like that but also don't trick yourself into

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thinking well i'm super careful it couldn't happen to

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me bad luck can happen to anyone and they've seen

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everything from phones that managed to slip through the crack in an elevator

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and fall all the way down the shaft to ones that fell out of a pocket and got

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stuck in the motorized reclining mechanism of a couch that's one that

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could easily happen to me my phone comes out of my pocket all the time their

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second message is to make sure that if you didn't pay attention to message one

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you're paying extra close attention to message two which is to only send your

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device to a trusted shop they've seen unrecoverable cases where if it wasn't

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for the ineptitude of a previous technician it would have been fine a

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classic example of this is iphone 6 screen replacements they had a case

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where a shop put a poor quality home button on a 6s

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plugged it in and shorted a resistor that on one side went to the home button

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and on the other side went to the CPU they did manage to dig out that trace

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and replace it but even though it was such a simple error that story

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unfortunately ended in heartbreak drive saver's process is to use the device as

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intended so a dead CPU that's a no go there's no substitute for

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expertise and that's kind of hard to get unless you're dealing with a lot of

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devices an example of this one was a weird update in the fall of 2019 where

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particularly the seven plus would get stuck on the apple logo which on the

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surface smells like a logical problem but then after seeing a bunch of them

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drive savers figured out that there was a physical fix by shorting the speaker i

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see that would somehow bypass whatever that logical problem was

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so then if they grabbed all the data unshorted a particular resistor then

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performed a factory reset and restored the data back onto the phone it was

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golden logical problem weird physical

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workaround so bottom line back up your data and if you didn't give drive savers

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a call they're well worth the money and after being the first to recover data

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from one they have over a decade of experience recovering iphones they don't

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even charge you unless they actually recover your data the consult and even

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the shipping to them is free if you guys enjoyed this video you might

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also enjoy a look at drive saver's hard drive data recovery process it's very

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very different and equally fascinating we're gonna have that linked below and

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we did that video a long time ago so it i was actually able to physically be

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there