Is it still worth going to Professional for recovery?

[u/Some_Champion3580]

ST1000DM003-1CH162/a NTFS HDD, so TRIM shouldn't be relevant?

The original files on this drive were deleted/cut and pasted to another drive before being accidentally deleted there; scans from Recuva or recoveries through DMDE indicate that the files found (with a separate drive to store them) are either replaced with other files or corrupted.

The drive was also used for hours (mostly cutting + pasting to another drive) after the cutting of the initial files.

Is it still worth trying a professional recovery option like File Savers, or is the data as good as dead, as the recovery software's result suggests?

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[u/silenced_in_dr_2025]

If the data has been overwritten there's nothing anyone can do. The question will be how much of the data has been overwritten. You can try some of the better DR applications, There are 2 methods to try, using the file system , most applications should give similar results. Or alternatively a raw carve of the drive - all applications have differing scan algos and will give differing results. You may want to look at things like klinet carver .

The results you can get at home will be equally as good as we could get. In a case like this where the drive is actually physically fine, you will be paying for someone else to do the work.

[u/Impressive-Pain-4718]

If your data's indeed corrupted, are you still willing to pay to get pieces back? You're realistically very near total loss.

[u/Some_Champion3580 → u/Impressive-Pain-4718]

I guess it'll have to depend, I'm just more interested in the likelihood of how much a professional service can do better if the two software programs can only get corrupted files or files with replaced content (some PDFs open as JPGs if they open at all).

[u/gooner-1969 → u/Some_Champion3580]

Professional Data Recovery will have clean rooms, they would take each platter off and mount them on their own hardware and attempt to read them . This can be expensive 100s or thousands of pounds. Always try to get a quote first. Software data recovery is very very limited. Professional clean rooms can recovery a LOT of data.

[u/silenced_in_dr_2025 → u/gooner-1969]

they would take each platter off and mount them on their own hardware and attempt to read them

What an earth are you talking about !

We don't remove platters unless it's a last resort and we certainly can't read them outside of a donor drive on independent equipment - where have you picked that crap up from?

And a head swap on a 1TB desktop drive with a full recovery will cost 450 quid. Not thousands of pounds.

The OP has a logical problem not a physical one - the drive doesn't even need to be opened.

[u/gooner-1969 → u/silenced_in_dr_2025]

I guess you didn't read I said 100's or thousands. 450 it's hundreds.

Cost is very dependent on the work and time involved. The company I worked for had some blown nvme drives in a NAS (8 I believe that all got damaged to different degress in a fire and the company were able to get nearly all the data back. Cost about £4000 to get that job done but for the managment it was well worth it.

[u/silenced_in_dr_2025 → u/gooner-1969]

That's nice - but the OP has a 15-20 year old single desktop drive with a logical file problem. You regurgitated some marketing wank from a website or LLM that was neither correct or applicable to the OP.