Enjoy the new episode! Sooo much love and work was poured into this so I hope you love it! 🔔And subscribe and stay tuned because on JUNE 29 I'm debunking the Chillwell scam! That's right! I'm revisiting those horrible "Portable AC" units. It's been a while. 😈 June 29!
Chilly Willy (well) is a scam? Holy shit, I'm marking the 29th on my calendar. I wanna see his fall from grace and finally get exposed as not being a cartoon penguin.
Yep. I got burned by a cheap toy that looked like it’d make a great gift. It wasn’t great. It looked nothing like the item in the ad. Lesson learned. Months later, my husband handed me a little thumb drive that he had bought online. He said it was a 2 TB drive. I knew better because I watch Krazy Ken! We plugged it into an old laptop - I wasn’t sticking that thing into a computer I actually use - and transferred about 100 GB of files to it as a test. It looked like it worked, but I made my husband try to open some files. A few opened, but most didn’t. I explained that the little drive was probably a 32 or 64 GB drive at most, any any data that exceeded that amount was just overwritten on the data already written. That was a more expensive lesson at about $120 for the two drives he bought. No more purchases from ads on social media in this household.
Is it bad I paid $22 for one 4 years ago? It's a clamshell like dock so it encapsulates the drive I plug in. It's USB 3.0 and takes 3½" and 2½" HDDs and SSDs. I figure it's better than a ribbon cable doohickey with an adapter hardwired onto it.
Ken, this episode was hilarious and informative in equal measure! I don't like waiting for you to publish content but when it's this good it's worth the wait! Thanks for another superb episode. 👍👍
I have a WD passport Harddisk 5 terabytes. By plugging out it in the wrong way. It can not read the date on the Harddisk in any way. How can I recover the date.
As soon as you showed it in the very beginning of the video I knew it was fake. I have one of those exactly that I ordered off of Amazon. It was advertised as being able to move data from one drive to another over the bridge of multiple ports it has. It can't even do that. It keeps disconnecting. It's okay to read from hard drives with but that's about it
I found these don't handle drive errors very well, if the drive locks up or has to keep retrying, it tends to disconnect as it times out. Your best bet is to get a working desktop pc and plug it in internally.
Literally any hard drive, in seconds? OK, I've got a 5MB MFM drive here the size of a shoebox, ST-506 interface, 40 years old, makes a grinding noise, formatted for Concurrent CP/M-86 on a non-PC machine.
So I had a hard drive crash on my PC. took it to many places was told to send it to a place that can save it. What can I do to recover the info on this hard drive. Important info on the drive.
some of the less awesome chips used in these types of adapters also provide an interesting compatibility concern for some drives, and don't always load up as a standard mass storage usb device in all oses.
I want to ask one of these scam data recovery sh*ts why my MFM drives don't show up on DOS machine even though I connected (using a little brute force) them to the product.
Well, to be fair, if you did exactly what that ad showed them doing with the lighter, you'd be able to use the Zilkee with it. I don't know WHY you would hold a BIC one foot under an HDD for one second, but Zilkee could recover it. Maybe it was Old Man Ken thinking that it was like a stuck jar and if you heat it up, it's easier to get the contents out 😂
I hate that these scam products are trying to target non-techy customers with the promise of an easy solution to their problem. And WHAPAM, they get screwed by their naïvity.
I remember a few months back when there was a scam ad about "how to recover data from water damaged drive" and when clicked, it redirects to a "Wondershare Recovery Data" app that forces you to buy their subscription (It was also explained by Louis Rosmann in his video: "Wondershare is a garbage company") Kinda similar to this type of scam
@@sihamhamda47 My “favourite” is the unusable free versions of various Windows-only partitioning programs like EaseUS Partition Master and AOMEI Partition Assistant. They look like they’re the same program and the free version is literally unable to handle partitioning, so that is basically a mockup of the paid, functioning program. Thank God, EaseUS ditched that handicapped free version for one that can actually do basic partitioning, like what a free version of a commercial partitioning tool needs to do… But AOMEI still has an unusable free version.
Yup, I thought so. Question is, why does TH-cam let crap like this be advertised? Don't they ever check anything ?? A strong case cab and should be made that TH-cam is as complicit with the criminality as the fraudsters themselves.
I accidentally firmware-locked myself out of my MacBook Pro last year. I was doing some maintenance on the battery which required me to disconnect the battery connector. Little did I know, doing so would trigger the firmware lock, which I put on the laptop years ago and had completely forgotten. I had to take it to an Apple store to have them bypass and remove the firmware lock. There was a high chance that all of my data would be corrupted, but thankfully all of my data was retrieved safely! After that, I learned two things: 1) always make backups of your data, and 2) always keep a record of your passwords (or, don't put a firmware lock on a computer in the first place).
The only time I've seen the Mac firmware lock used was on the school library PCs which were all really iMacs (and this was before the coloured ones, if they had those they probably would've bought only silver ones). My guess is that they locked it in order to prevent students from getting into the recovery partition, because I know the school's IT people would get real salty if they saw anyone installing and running their own apps in the home folders on the student accounts (which were all local accounts as the MOE had Active Directory for Windows but not Open Directory for macOS and Linux-based desktop OSes). Edit: The thing about students running their own apps only worked if it was a .app file rather than a .pkg or .mpkg file.
...and 3; If you make any important settings changes, record them in a log book or like I do, in the spare pages at the back of my computers installation manual)
Not only that but we got to find out about Drive Savers. I can guarantee that backing up data is cheaper than Drive Savers. (Thank heavens not from first hand experience.) I had a friend whose BACKUP FAILED and she needed these miracle workers.
Hi Ken! I have an identical looking unit with a branding of UNITECH. I bought it just to access old drives which it does perfectly. It also has a big button to backup stuff but never used it for that. But they look identical apart from the branding. And it was never advertised to me as a drive fixer.❤ from UK!
@@mustacheboyo yea, it's just such a con marketing as a data recovery unit. And let's be honest, an old hard drive normally means an old person(like me) who may not know that a piece of plastic ain't getting grannys photos back.
I mostly use things like that for when I’m upgrading the drive in a computer to a higher capacity one to clone the old drive onto the new one, then expand the volume to fill the empty space. I have a SATA to USB, SATA to FireWire, and NVME to USB. Sometimes I also use the SATA ones with a pile of 2TB MX500s as cheaper external storage than an actual external SSD.
If the big red button actually initiates a data transfer between drives purely using hardware and not the computer its connected to, thats very useful and quite impressive for a retail device.
As someone who repairs laptops and PC's for a living I have lost count of the times people have come to me for data recovery and I must have said "back up your data" a million times over a 20 year period. I even bought a load of cheap USB2 memory sticks that I gave to customers for free, they were big enough at 8GB to back up your pictures, which is the most common thing people lose in my experience, but even with a FREE stick most people still didn't back up their data. The back up process is even easier nowadays with cloud storage being thrown at you by every tech company going and most laptops/PC's have 2 drives in them making copying a folder so easy it's laughable but people still won't back up their data!!!!!
I know, this drives me crazy too... I've even talked to people who are at least aware they're suffering hard drive problems (odd noises, extremely poor performance, etc., signs of a mechanical drive in death throes) but they still don't have a backup strategy. Maybe in the early 90s the idea of backing up your hard drive to several floppy disks was too much trouble, but these days you can buy flash drives big enough to handle your most critical, irreplaceable files in drug stores. Doesn't have to be anything super fancy or special, just so long as you replicate it to another physical device... or, also a feature these days, "The Cloud", so long as you don't mind your data being physically outside of devices you control.
I used to put a work partition on peoples computers and leave a shortcut on the desktop, and change all the default save directories to that partition so that it was easier for me to recover that data. ....but people still changed it back to default or made thier own folders on the OS partition. Still, it gave me more work.
Some time ago, i had a hdd with stuck head - so i used the oldest trick in the book, placed it in the freezer and saved all the data. Question is, is there some more professional approach you were using at work?
Expecting people to remember to do a thing? May as well be asking them to learn to program in cobol. I'm sure those poor sods didn't know what to do with those sticks... Which is why there are the "just plug this thing in and it'll auto back up all your files" sticks. that they still forget to use. And to be fair, I'm very airheaded and forget to backup my stuff until something reminds me to (which normally winds up being about once a year.) But also my data is automatically in 2-3 places at once (photos stay on the SD card even after being copied to the HD, most active files live on the cloud and are downloaded about once a year for "just in case" and cell phone photos are also cloud backed up until they're downloaded and stuffed on an external. ) Passive data backup strategies are honestly the best way to go because humans are forgetful creatures. Also @CaptainSouthbird Nothing would get me to scramble to find a fresh external drive than my HD acting funny. Weird HD noises/functions are the most paranoia inducing nightmares.... (also, back in the early 90s, it was the floppies that failed more than the HDs, feels like.)
I've had idiots (yes idiots) come up to me and ask me where their documents and emails were when I told them 20 times that the drives would be wiped and everything on it will be gone. Best practice is to never tell anyone you repair computers if it isn't your primary line of work.
A family member bought one for me ages ago when they first came out (like around March). This video is correct, but I've still found many uses for it. Reading older IDE drives, and internal sata drives which I used to do plugging into an old desktop can now be done with USB, I find it quite useful. It is just unfortunate the price.
I bought one of those converters years ago for about $20 just so I could read stuff old hard drives from computers that I had junked. I knew what I was getting and was happy with it for the price.
@@Xiy114 A friend told me he could use his HDMI screen and do it and he did. Plugged my laptop into his screen and then he copied everything onto a flashdrve. I then went and bought my own hdmi screen for $70.
6:50 but this isn’t a hard drive, it’s a SSD At the same time they are still wrong if you have MFM, SCSI or SAS hard drives, none of which can connect to the Zilkee
If you are going to roll back so far in time to bring of MFM, you may as well add RLL and ESDI to your list of antiquated technologies (other than SAS) with which the Zilkee will not interface. 🙂 Beyond that, I agree with you: the NVMe drive mentioned is a solid state drive, not a hard drive. That is like comparing a floppy drive to a QIC-80 or DAT tape drive. They all still use magnetic media but are quite different technologies.
I wonder when Ken will cover the scam that drive savers is. They're charging 3k to people when they don't even diagnose the issue. Ken needs to speak up on this
That is the thing. DriveSaver's reputation has been polarizing. "They were able to recover data from near-impossible cases!" "They charged me $3000 for something that could've been remedied with a $100 part replacement."
It’s nice that you usually have a discovery channel like segment whereby we get to learn the things that go behind the scenes. Any plans to have like a standalone segment separate from the product scams? Haha
Good episode. I liked how you actually showed what data recovery services actually do and how they would diagnose a dead flash drive. How fast was the interface on this product? USB 2.0 I'm guessing?
Lol...this is insane. I say as someone who managed to have the luck to lose the computer drive and the backup drive at the same time and it took the specialists 8 months to get the photos from the self-encrypting modern drive.
No nVME, no mSATA, no SAS, no SCSI, no Western Digital 3.5" external hard drive that uses that f***ing interposer instead of a real SATA port, no Western Digital 2.5" external hard drive that uses that f***ing interposer instead of a real SATA port...
I actually have one of these (different brand obviously) bought it 15+ years ago. Super handy to have in my desk drawer if I want to investigate a random hard drive I've acquired.
This video is exactly why I love your channel so much. Informative with a healthy dose of humor and pop culture references! Makes me happy to be a nerd every time you upload. I knew this was going to be a good one when you said "H-E-double hockey sticks", my favorite euphemism of all time 😂
3:02 the _smoke in the box_ is trying to mimic the *ads* that add _smoke effect_ for a *"fancier"* and *"professional"* look except that it doesn't *fit* well it's been years since i've last watched an entire ad on tvs
Actually it could, but it would go beyond a simple converter. It'd likely be in the form of an ARM SOC running some form of Linux with built-in recovery tools. That would be super redundant though since you could just run those tools on a connected PC. Though there are specific docks useful for data recovery and data forensics such as those from WiebeTech, but their only real party trick is their write blocking capability.
one thing you might wanna have mentioned is that the price for professional data recovery can easily get into the mid-triple digits because of all the cleanroom stuff.
Sometimes the information that needs to be recovered is more valuable than that price...From the photos stored in a broken cell phone to a destroyed server with the data of a company's payroll, if such information can be recovered, it will be worth the price.
@@Nolroa sure i won't deny that, the idea is that knowing what such a recovery costs and why so much normally brings these "miracle products" into a perspective tho.
Personal Backup - I use an external RAID 0 Enclosure with dual 2TB (Sequential Serial Numbers) of HDD Storage (total 2TB Storage). If a HDD fails the device tells me and as soon as I pop in a new 2TB HDD it automatically rebuilds the RAID 0 Configuration.
Another thing that's an issue that wasn't mentioned in the video, is that some buyers leaving comments on social media say that their adapters didn't come with a mains power cable. So you've got people just plugging them in as if they're unpowered USB hubs... and of course, nothing happens when they attach a drive.
Literally any of my hard drives? Including my SAS drives? My MFM drives? My proprietary (actually just ST-506 with a different connector) drives for the IBM PS/2 Model 50? I have lots of weird drives, I'd love something that can connect to literally any of them!
for anyone who has one of these devices and find it disconnecting from your pc randomly , get a higher amp power supply and make sure it is 12 volts or you'll fry it tbh ken i've had worse tech than this in the past that died for no reason (btw mine cost £16.48 or 21.06 United States Dollars from bg ) one thing i found is it won't connect to a 4 to 6 gb hard drive (this might be down to the version i got from bg ) yes folks that was a size of hard drive years ago ,and suprisingly enough to run windows xp (their was even a 2000$ 10 mb version i don't remember the year but ye lol 😀🤣😀😊) another great video though ken 👍
Amazing episode. This Zilkee “data recovery device” is nothing much more than a external storage device with ports for 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch storage with IDE and SATA connectors. You don’t want to buy this product if you want to recover your data from broken drives, but on other hand it can be used as a device that can read and write from different sized drives in different connection types just to see what’s on the storage medium and write files to it, not for recovering data from it.
When I discovered that their product could not just plug into my eternal hard drive with a USB and is incompatible with it I then discovered per their return policy they only accept returns for products that are defective or damaged. Since they ship their product United Stats Postal Service (USPS) can't they be prosecuted on a Federal charge of mail fraud?
My favourite story about data recovery is the case from the 1990s when a man who murdered his wife tried to dispose of evidence by cutting some 5 1/4" floppy disks into pieces with pinking shears (a type of scissors with serrated blades) and the forensics investigators recovered the data by using, as I remember, Scotch tape and and new floppy disk as a template.
I accidentally deleted all my music, google to the rescue. Download a small program for FREE fired it up chose which drive, hit the go button and wala all my music was back. The music was originally backed up, but guess what I lost it in my house somewhere, to this day I still can’t find it, those little bugger sure no how to hide. Great video, cheers from Australia 🇦🇺
I think I saw Zilkee Recovery Converter adds on youtube some time ago. And was thinking yeah this must be a scam. But the adds suddenly diapered from youtube and I forgot all about it. I have a very simple BS detector. If any company offer high rebates like 30% over a long time. It is a dodgy at least. If they offer 70% like Huusk Knife. Just run away
I can't watch too many of your videos at once because I'll just die on the floor laughing. You are so right on about this stuff. And oddly enough I'm looking for a replacement blue screen of death shirt and you're selling them. Lol have you ever gotten a green screen of death. I have and you don't want to have that. Thanks so much for these videos
One thing I'd add is for Backups, follow the 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies of your data on two different media with one copy off-site I have some photos I lost because I forgot the password for the original copy and the hard drive head crashed on my second copy. If i had a third copy off site, i could still have them today.
@8:29 DUDE they have a 4.6 rating, you literally pointed out how 4.6 stars are what you commonly see scams have for their feedback/review score in another video I was watching of yours yesterday, can't remember which I watched a few lol.
So it's good for drives, but not for phones? I swear there were some anecdotes of DriveSavers charging too much for a hard drive recovery. Maybe in the comments of a Jessie Jones video.
Hi, I love your scam buster videos. Actually I always get ads for a alkaline (non rechargable battery) recharger. It seems to be a scam. Would be very cool if you would look into it
You actually can recharge alkaline batteries so these products are not straight scams. The only thing is you're not going to get the full capacity back and you only get a dozen charge cycles at best, with the capacity dropping with each charge. There is also of course the risk of leakage since they were not meant to be recharged.
I have one of these but not this make, they have been around for years, all they do is convert IDE 3.5 and 2.5 and SATA to USB so you can access the drives. They are not magic backup devices and they are not fast. Most of them are USB 2.
Yeah yeah, it’s a scam, I get it, but why is nobody commenting on the skits and bits of humor this guy puts in the episodes? They’re incredible for a channel about tech.
I make a rule to never buy anything I see in ads. I don't click them.ever. why do people ever click on ads? Is that what happens when you're brainwashed every day watching ads on Cable? I haven't seen a video advertisement since 1999 (well, not in the wild. I see ads on this series) and my brain now operates at 11% capacity. Don't click ads. Don't buy things you see in ads. Especially on social media. Especially on teh internets. Don't do it. I think my brain must be un-brainwashed by not seeing ads for over 20 years. Yeah, ad blocker. Nothing you see on an ad is better than what you could find with 3 minutes of Googling. Ads cost munny. Even these scam ads. That money gets charged when you buy the product. Therefore, ads *need* to generate income. Therefore they lie thru their teeth. Especially tech ads. Especially on teh internets. Stop clicking ads. I always assumed that people ignored ads.... They're annoying...why would you click on them? They waste ur time and money. I'm not some kind of genius. Just make a rule to yourself. Ignore ads, don't click. This scam problem will not go away, just get worse. The second worst thing about buying a scam product is that you're directly supporting the scammer and giving them reasons to continue scamming. Stop it. Also.... California is expensive. Everything at the local 99 Cent Only store costs $1.49 And rent is stupid expensive. Plus, many people here only rent their land to grapes, which is racist to us non-grape-based beings. Also, plastic bags cost 10 cents and plastic straws are banned. And smoking in public is a $500 fine. But we also have Disneyland! 🍄🦫🙀
Looks like tiktok marketing and bull sheet marketing is a same thing. Anyway this box - nice device, its simply usb to pata/sata adapter. I have one. The only thing i can't understand - where i can get mini IDE drive today, maybe i should rob a museum?
wooow thanks so much youve saved me mnoney now :) So if I have managed to reach my files with a recovery software, but it is all files arranged by type. any chance some software may restore it in the order it was on the HD ? like folders etc... ?
Enjoy the new episode! Sooo much love and work was poured into this so I hope you love it! 🔔And subscribe and stay tuned because on JUNE 29 I'm debunking the Chillwell scam! That's right! I'm revisiting those horrible "Portable AC" units. It's been a while. 😈 June 29!
enjoyin
Ken on a serious note you may wanna blur/black out your recovery key for file vault 4:39
@@dw_2005shush dude
Chilly Willy (well) is a scam? Holy shit, I'm marking the 29th on my calendar. I wanna see his fall from grace and finally get exposed as not being a cartoon penguin.
Man those "portable AC" scam saga never ends
I would burst into laugh if the "Lit Mobile portable solar charger scam" got another sequel
At this point if a product is being advertised on social media I'm just assuming it's a scam by default.
Yep. I got burned by a cheap toy that looked like it’d make a great gift. It wasn’t great. It looked nothing like the item in the ad. Lesson learned.
Months later, my husband handed me a little thumb drive that he had bought online. He said it was a 2 TB drive. I knew better because I watch Krazy Ken! We plugged it into an old laptop - I wasn’t sticking that thing into a computer I actually use - and transferred about 100 GB of files to it as a test. It looked like it worked, but I made my husband try to open some files. A few opened, but most didn’t. I explained that the little drive was probably a 32 or 64 GB drive at most, any any data that exceeded that amount was just overwritten on the data already written. That was a more expensive lesson at about $120 for the two drives he bought.
No more purchases from ads on social media in this household.
@@DaveTexasmobile game ads be like
Anything advertised to death through TH-cam sponsorships is usually also at best a cheap product with a high price tag
Another big red flag is any ad that uses text to speech. I don't think I've seen one using it that wasn't a scam.
I have never trusted any ad ive ever seen on the internet
Wow a $5 USB HDD adapter for $30+. 😐 scammers will stop at nothing 😢
the ones with that many ports genrily run 12-20 bucks. :p
Is it bad I paid $22 for one 4 years ago? It's a clamshell like dock so it encapsulates the drive I plug in. It's USB 3.0 and takes 3½" and 2½" HDDs and SSDs. I figure it's better than a ribbon cable doohickey with an adapter hardwired onto it.
@@Devious_Reviewsthat's different, that's for making an external hard drive, you are paying for the clamshell
Damm, why are there scammers in this word, why?
Thanks for being top comment and being more or less accidently a big spoiler xD
Ken, this episode was hilarious and informative in equal measure! I don't like waiting for you to publish content but when it's this good it's worth the wait! Thanks for another superb episode. 👍👍
Cool seeing my small hometown Novato, Ca. being mentioned
I have a WD passport Harddisk 5 terabytes. By plugging out it in the wrong way. It can not read the date on the Harddisk in any way.
How can I recover the date.
As soon as you showed it in the very beginning of the video I knew it was fake. I have one of those exactly that I ordered off of Amazon. It was advertised as being able to move data from one drive to another over the bridge of multiple ports it has. It can't even do that. It keeps disconnecting. It's okay to read from hard drives with but that's about it
I found these don't handle drive errors very well, if the drive locks up or has to keep retrying, it tends to disconnect as it times out. Your best bet is to get a working desktop pc and plug it in internally.
Literally any hard drive, in seconds? OK, I've got a 5MB MFM drive here the size of a shoebox, ST-506 interface, 40 years old, makes a grinding noise, formatted for Concurrent CP/M-86 on a non-PC machine.
0:27 Interesting wireless handsets - in keeping with the Zilkee?
I clicked faster than I realized that this was a scam
The valve reference was personal 😂 great job on the video
Um, pouring alcohol on an external HDD wouldn't hurt it, It probably wouldn't work while the alcohol was still there... But Once it evaporated...
So I had a hard drive crash on my PC. took it to many places was told to send it to a place that can save it. What can I do to recover the info on this hard drive. Important info on the drive.
1:58 So that's why they call it Burn a CD, it comes from burning your HARD disk. Noice!
The cloud ??? Why would you think your data is safer on someone else's computer ?
"that's a sm,art idea, JUST BURN IT"
AND THE VIDEO PAUSED TO BUFFER RIGHT THERE.
I genuinely thought the phone gag was gonna have to do with Ken's phone not being plugged in.
some of the less awesome chips used in these types of adapters also provide an interesting compatibility concern for some drives, and don't always load up as a standard mass storage usb device in all oses.
Mine , a different model, presents itself as a SATA controller, so works fine on PCs and Macs, but not on my iPad.
I want to ask one of these scam data recovery sh*ts why my MFM drives don't show up on DOS machine even though I connected (using a little brute force) them to the product.
Can it recover my SCSI drive? It said LITERALLY any hard drive.
Okay what’s the reference at 12:55? I imagine it’s some sitcom or movie location?
it's the house that was used as Watterson's home from The amazing world of gumball!
Its funny how few people know about Novato.
how to recover a zilkee hard drive
step 1: burn it
What is he doing that is killing his hard drives "time and time again"?
Ken is so advanced that he calls the future with a corded phone that’s cordless. Damn. That’s high tech. That lair is some place.
What can I say? I like being ahead of the times.
Sent from my BlackBerry Storm.
That's the best use of retro technology I've seen for ages!!
@@ComputerClan Hey, can I come over?
@@ComputerClan 🤣
Naw - it's a wireless radio phone ! I'm old enough to remember using such like . The antenna must not be extened !
Zilkee: "RECOVER YOUR HARD DRIVE"
Also Zilkee: *"Burns it."* 😎
*Proceeds to burn it*
Well, to be fair, if you did exactly what that ad showed them doing with the lighter, you'd be able to use the Zilkee with it. I don't know WHY you would hold a BIC one foot under an HDD for one second, but Zilkee could recover it. Maybe it was Old Man Ken thinking that it was like a stuck jar and if you heat it up, it's easier to get the contents out 😂
I hate that these scam products are trying to target non-techy customers with the promise of an easy solution to their problem.
And WHAPAM, they get screwed by their naïvity.
I remember a few months back when there was a scam ad about "how to recover data from water damaged drive" and when clicked, it redirects to a "Wondershare Recovery Data" app that forces you to buy their subscription (It was also explained by Louis Rosmann in his video: "Wondershare is a garbage company")
Kinda similar to this type of scam
How did you get the double tittle
@@sihamhamda47 My “favourite” is the unusable free versions of various Windows-only partitioning programs like EaseUS Partition Master and AOMEI Partition Assistant.
They look like they’re the same program and the free version is literally unable to handle partitioning, so that is basically a mockup of the paid, functioning program.
Thank God, EaseUS ditched that handicapped free version for one that can actually do basic partitioning, like what a free version of a commercial partitioning tool needs to do…
But AOMEI still has an unusable free version.
@@rudeskalamander tittIes normally come in pairs anyway... That's a capital i in there!
Yup, I thought so. Question is, why does TH-cam let crap like this be advertised? Don't they ever check anything ?? A strong case cab and should be made that TH-cam is as complicit with the criminality as the fraudsters themselves.
YT would probably make the argument that "The advertiser signed a contract saying they would follow all appropriate laws"
-"iam always tight "
-"I didn't need to know that "
that made me laugh !!
I accidentally firmware-locked myself out of my MacBook Pro last year. I was doing some maintenance on the battery which required me to disconnect the battery connector. Little did I know, doing so would trigger the firmware lock, which I put on the laptop years ago and had completely forgotten. I had to take it to an Apple store to have them bypass and remove the firmware lock. There was a high chance that all of my data would be corrupted, but thankfully all of my data was retrieved safely! After that, I learned two things: 1) always make backups of your data, and 2) always keep a record of your passwords (or, don't put a firmware lock on a computer in the first place).
3) Better ask real independent repair shops like Louis Rossmann because chances are pretty high to get help when Apple tells you something else.
The only time I've seen the Mac firmware lock used was on the school library PCs which were all really iMacs (and this was before the coloured ones, if they had those they probably would've bought only silver ones). My guess is that they locked it in order to prevent students from getting into the recovery partition, because I know the school's IT people would get real salty if they saw anyone installing and running their own apps in the home folders on the student accounts (which were all local accounts as the MOE had Active Directory for Windows but not Open Directory for macOS and Linux-based desktop OSes).
Edit: The thing about students running their own apps only worked if it was a .app file rather than a .pkg or .mpkg file.
...and 3; If you make any important settings changes, record them in a log book or like I do, in the spare pages at the back of my computers installation manual)
Why did you assume that data would be corrupted? The computer was turned of and there is no reason for it to have corrupted the data...
Way to take a dry subject like scam busting and make it comedic and entertaining! Well done!! I really enjoyed this episode!
Thank you!
I think you'd really like Kit Boga. He is a hilarious scambaiter
Not only that but we got to find out about Drive Savers. I can guarantee that backing up data is cheaper than Drive Savers. (Thank heavens not from first hand experience.)
I had a friend whose BACKUP FAILED and she needed these miracle workers.
@@subtledemisefox Nah, his content is mid and he is kinda toxic.
One of the most polished and interesting tech shows on TH-cam
Definitely
Thanks 😎
@@ComputerClan remember the circuit board I was talking about?
The sonar ping in the background is unnecessary and distracting.
Hi Ken! I have an identical looking unit with a branding of UNITECH. I bought it just to access old drives which it does perfectly. It also has a big button to backup stuff but never used it for that. But they look identical apart from the branding. And it was never advertised to me as a drive fixer.❤ from UK!
I have the same one as you. These devices mostly afaik use the InnoStor 611 chipset
@@mustacheboyo yea, it's just such a con marketing as a data recovery unit. And let's be honest, an old hard drive normally means an old person(like me) who may not know that a piece of plastic ain't getting grannys photos back.
I mostly use things like that for when I’m upgrading the drive in a computer to a higher capacity one to clone the old drive onto the new one, then expand the volume to fill the empty space. I have a SATA to USB, SATA to FireWire, and NVME to USB.
Sometimes I also use the SATA ones with a pile of 2TB MX500s as cheaper external storage than an actual external SSD.
If the big red button actually initiates a data transfer between drives purely using hardware and not the computer its connected to, thats very useful and quite impressive for a retail device.
As someone who repairs laptops and PC's for a living I have lost count of the times people have come to me for data recovery and I must have said "back up your data" a million times over a 20 year period. I even bought a load of cheap USB2 memory sticks that I gave to customers for free, they were big enough at 8GB to back up your pictures, which is the most common thing people lose in my experience, but even with a FREE stick most people still didn't back up their data. The back up process is even easier nowadays with cloud storage being thrown at you by every tech company going and most laptops/PC's have 2 drives in them making copying a folder so easy it's laughable but people still won't back up their data!!!!!
I know, this drives me crazy too... I've even talked to people who are at least aware they're suffering hard drive problems (odd noises, extremely poor performance, etc., signs of a mechanical drive in death throes) but they still don't have a backup strategy. Maybe in the early 90s the idea of backing up your hard drive to several floppy disks was too much trouble, but these days you can buy flash drives big enough to handle your most critical, irreplaceable files in drug stores. Doesn't have to be anything super fancy or special, just so long as you replicate it to another physical device... or, also a feature these days, "The Cloud", so long as you don't mind your data being physically outside of devices you control.
I used to put a work partition on peoples computers and leave a shortcut on the desktop, and change all the default save directories to that partition so that it was easier for me to recover that data. ....but people still changed it back to default or made thier own folders on the OS partition. Still, it gave me more work.
Some time ago, i had a hdd with stuck head - so i used the oldest trick in the book, placed it in the freezer and saved all the data. Question is, is there some more professional approach you were using at work?
Expecting people to remember to do a thing? May as well be asking them to learn to program in cobol. I'm sure those poor sods didn't know what to do with those sticks... Which is why there are the "just plug this thing in and it'll auto back up all your files" sticks. that they still forget to use.
And to be fair, I'm very airheaded and forget to backup my stuff until something reminds me to (which normally winds up being about once a year.) But also my data is automatically in 2-3 places at once (photos stay on the SD card even after being copied to the HD, most active files live on the cloud and are downloaded about once a year for "just in case" and cell phone photos are also cloud backed up until they're downloaded and stuffed on an external. ) Passive data backup strategies are honestly the best way to go because humans are forgetful creatures.
Also @CaptainSouthbird Nothing would get me to scramble to find a fresh external drive than my HD acting funny. Weird HD noises/functions are the most paranoia inducing nightmares....
(also, back in the early 90s, it was the floppies that failed more than the HDs, feels like.)
I've had idiots (yes idiots) come up to me and ask me where their documents and emails were when I told them 20 times that the drives would be wiped and everything on it will be gone.
Best practice is to never tell anyone you repair computers if it isn't your primary line of work.
When will Crazy Ken finally learn that Electronics + Fire = Goodness
Toasty.
The last advertisement wants you to restore your Zilkee with another Zilkee, I think
I’m in California, trust me, San Francisco is not the place you want to be.
A family member bought one for me ages ago when they first came out (like around March). This video is correct, but I've still found many uses for it. Reading older IDE drives, and internal sata drives which I used to do plugging into an old desktop can now be done with USB, I find it quite useful.
It is just unfortunate the price.
I report these scam products to facebook all the time and they do nothing.
I bought one of those converters years ago for about $20 just so I could read stuff old hard drives from computers that I had junked. I knew what I was getting and was happy with it for the price.
Knowing where to look I’ve seen them for around 15. This is clearly trying to profit on the tech shy.
Yea they're great little devices. SATA only ones are so cheap that nearly every SATA SSD comes with one now.
Can I use a converter to retrieve photos from a laptop that has a broken screen?
@@johnsmith-td9ty it should. The mechanics themselves should still work.
@@Xiy114 A friend told me he could use his HDMI screen and do it and he did. Plugged my laptop into his screen and then he copied everything onto a flashdrve. I then went and bought my own hdmi screen for $70.
6:50 but this isn’t a hard drive, it’s a SSD
At the same time they are still wrong if you have MFM, SCSI or SAS hard drives, none of which can connect to the Zilkee
If you are going to roll back so far in time to bring of MFM, you may as well add RLL and ESDI to your list of antiquated technologies (other than SAS) with which the Zilkee will not interface. 🙂 Beyond that, I agree with you: the NVMe drive mentioned is a solid state drive, not a hard drive. That is like comparing a floppy drive to a QIC-80 or DAT tape drive. They all still use magnetic media but are quite different technologies.
Man, all this data recovery info is not the content we asked, but the content we deserve.
I wonder when Ken will cover the scam that drive savers is. They're charging 3k to people when they don't even diagnose the issue. Ken needs to speak up on this
That is the thing. DriveSaver's reputation has been polarizing.
"They were able to recover data from near-impossible cases!"
"They charged me $3000 for something that could've been remedied with a $100 part replacement."
It’s nice that you usually have a discovery channel like segment whereby we get to learn the things that go behind the scenes. Any plans to have like a standalone segment separate from the product scams? Haha
Good episode. I liked how you actually showed what data recovery services actually do and how they would diagnose a dead flash drive.
How fast was the interface on this product? USB 2.0 I'm guessing?
12:40, "Sorry, I'm not very good at geometry." Did you mean geography? 😂
Don't worry I'm better at geometry too.
Aggretsuko, scams, Martha, Amazing world of gumball house.....this video has it all
Lol...this is insane. I say as someone who managed to have the luck to lose the computer drive and the backup drive at the same time and it took the specialists 8 months to get the photos from the self-encrypting modern drive.
Any of my hard drives? ANY of them? I have some U-scsi 3 drives and sas drives that may argue.
LITERALLY ANY
No nVME, no mSATA, no SAS, no SCSI, no Western Digital 3.5" external hard drive that uses that f***ing interposer instead of a real SATA port, no Western Digital 2.5" external hard drive that uses that f***ing interposer instead of a real SATA port...
I actually have one of these (different brand obviously) bought it 15+ years ago. Super handy to have in my desk drawer if I want to investigate a random hard drive I've acquired.
This video is exactly why I love your channel so much. Informative with a healthy dose of humor and pop culture references! Makes me happy to be a nerd every time you upload.
I knew this was going to be a good one when you said "H-E-double hockey sticks", my favorite euphemism of all time 😂
0:06 - Canadian detected
Also, entertainment value is 10x what Ive seen before. Rewound this one several times. Bravo Ken!
Triplicate. All drives backed in triplicate. Lost 1TB of my precious memories before I learned what RAID is.
3:02 the _smoke in the box_ is trying to mimic the *ads* that add _smoke effect_ for a *"fancier"* and *"professional"* look
except that it doesn't *fit* well
it's been years since i've last watched an entire ad on tvs
even though CONVERSION TECHNOLOGY is cool, there is no way a converter can do what they claimed
Actually it could, but it would go beyond a simple converter. It'd likely be in the form of an ARM SOC running some form of Linux with built-in recovery tools. That would be super redundant though since you could just run those tools on a connected PC. Though there are specific docks useful for data recovery and data forensics such as those from WiebeTech, but their only real party trick is their write blocking capability.
I should've known better than to trust a converter that claims to bring data back from the dead. Now I'm off to find a real wizard to fix my files
one thing you might wanna have mentioned is that the price for professional data recovery can easily get into the mid-triple digits because of all the cleanroom stuff.
Sometimes the information that needs to be recovered is more valuable than that price...From the photos stored in a broken cell phone to a destroyed server with the data of a company's payroll, if such information can be recovered, it will be worth the price.
@@Nolroa sure i won't deny that, the idea is that knowing what such a recovery costs and why so much normally brings these "miracle products" into a perspective tho.
I have a Unitek unit that is identical even the power switch. its just a usb adapter. haha
i NEED to see what’s on the other flask drive NOW.
No one can see Martha 😔
(Old Man Ken told me to say this)
OLD KEN FOR THE 50TH TIME I. AM. NOT. MARTHA!
Personal Backup - I use an external RAID 0 Enclosure with dual 2TB (Sequential Serial Numbers) of HDD Storage (total 2TB Storage).
If a HDD fails the device tells me and as soon as I pop in a new 2TB HDD it automatically rebuilds the RAID 0 Configuration.
Another thing that's an issue that wasn't mentioned in the video, is that some buyers leaving comments on social media say that their adapters didn't come with a mains power cable. So you've got people just plugging them in as if they're unpowered USB hubs... and of course, nothing happens when they attach a drive.
Literally any of my hard drives? Including my SAS drives? My MFM drives? My proprietary (actually just ST-506 with a different connector) drives for the IBM PS/2 Model 50? I have lots of weird drives, I'd love something that can connect to literally any of them!
So WiebeTech has you covered, but be prepared to pay a pretty penny as that's specialty equipment.
3:34 I LOVE this part! Keep it up Ken! You're doing amazing videos!
Thanks! I had a lot of fun making that part. (I rewatched it a lot.)
You're very welcome! ❤
The real question is, what's the music, I've been trying to find it for the past hour lol
@@supersillysammy272 Cold Light from Jay Ray
@@JackThunder67 Poggers, thank you
for anyone who has one of these devices and find it disconnecting from your pc randomly , get a higher amp power supply and make sure it is 12 volts or you'll fry it
tbh ken i've had worse tech than this in the past that died for no reason (btw mine cost £16.48 or 21.06 United States Dollars from bg )
one thing i found is it won't connect to a 4 to 6 gb hard drive (this might be down to the version i got from bg ) yes folks that was a size of hard drive years ago ,and suprisingly enough to run windows xp (their was even a 2000$ 10 mb version i don't remember the year but ye lol 😀🤣😀😊)
another great video though ken 👍
Amazing episode. This Zilkee “data recovery device” is nothing much more than a external storage device with ports for 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch storage with IDE and SATA connectors.
You don’t want to buy this product if you want to recover your data from broken drives, but on other hand it can be used as a device that can read and write from different sized drives in different connection types just to see what’s on the storage medium and write files to it, not for recovering data from it.
When I discovered that their product could not just plug into my eternal hard drive with a USB and is incompatible with it I then discovered per their return policy they only accept returns for products that are defective or damaged. Since they ship their product United Stats Postal Service (USPS) can't they be prosecuted on a Federal charge of mail fraud?
All you need is the right cable, ddrescue (not dd_rescue) and photorec. Job done, every time.
My favourite story about data recovery is the case from the 1990s when a man who murdered his wife tried to dispose of evidence by cutting some 5 1/4" floppy disks into pieces with pinking shears (a type of scissors with serrated blades) and the forensics investigators recovered the data by using, as I remember, Scotch tape and and new floppy disk as a template.
Guess that was her scissors he used as well... The cheek of it... 😑
You're very good at exposing scams and making a video that's both entertaining and informative, all at the same time. Great job!
I accidentally deleted all my music, google to the rescue. Download a small program for FREE fired it up chose which drive, hit the go button and wala all my music was back. The music was originally backed up, but guess what I lost it in my house somewhere, to this day I still can’t find it, those little bugger sure no how to hide. Great video, cheers from Australia 🇦🇺
“I’m always tight :)”
“And I didn’t need to know that”
Why did that make me cackle lol
I think I saw Zilkee Recovery Converter adds on youtube some time ago. And was thinking yeah this must be a scam. But the adds suddenly diapered from youtube and I forgot all about it. I have a very simple BS detector. If any company offer high rebates like 30% over a long time. It is a dodgy at least. If they offer 70% like Huusk Knife. Just run away
It can't do SCSi at all.... scammers
14:49
*Teleports*
*Ken realizing he can teleport*
Wait, if I can teleport, why the (no) did I pay for a flight?!
Can I connect my 5.25" full height 150MB ESDI drive from my old 386DX20 to it? 😀
12:55 Is that is the house from The Amazing World of Gumball?
I can't watch too many of your videos at once because I'll just die on the floor laughing. You are so right on about this stuff. And oddly enough I'm looking for a replacement blue screen of death shirt and you're selling them. Lol have you ever gotten a green screen of death. I have and you don't want to have that. Thanks so much for these videos
This feels extra awkward now..
You are wrong for the seconds. Any amount of time can be expressed in seconds. Literally
Education and debunks, perfect. Video
One thing I'd add is for Backups, follow the 3-2-1 rule:
3 copies of your data on two different media with one copy off-site
I have some photos I lost because I forgot the password for the original copy and the hard drive head crashed on my second copy. If i had a third copy off site, i could still have them today.
data is valuable
but i don't really want to spend $15000 to recover some cat photos
7:07 "Let's take a look at their web presence" [ sees bootleg Samsung SSD ] Oh my BS detector is already in Maximum Overdrive with his one.
@8:29 DUDE they have a 4.6 rating, you literally pointed out how 4.6 stars are what you commonly see scams have for their feedback/review score in another video I was watching of yours yesterday, can't remember which I watched a few lol.
that thing is quite useless it cant even connect to scsi harddrives
drive savers is kinda a scam for phones, hard drives its fine tho
So it's good for drives, but not for phones?
I swear there were some anecdotes of DriveSavers charging too much for a hard drive recovery. Maybe in the comments of a Jessie Jones video.
Hi, I love your scam buster videos. Actually I always get ads for a alkaline (non rechargable battery) recharger. It seems to be a scam. Would be very cool if you would look into it
You actually can recharge alkaline batteries so these products are not straight scams. The only thing is you're not going to get the full capacity back and you only get a dozen charge cycles at best, with the capacity dropping with each charge. There is also of course the risk of leakage since they were not meant to be recharged.
@@antikommunistischaktionReally? Thanks
Will Zilkee work on my SCSI drives??
LITERALLY ANY
I swear your production values just double with every video. I came here from the first scam buster video, and that feels BASIC compared to this!
Thank you!
I disappointed this did not have a SAVE MARTHA joke
we need an Aggretsu-Ken doing the metal voice.
I have one of these but not this make, they have been around for years, all they do is convert IDE 3.5 and 2.5 and SATA to USB so you can access the drives. They are not magic backup devices and they are not fast. Most of them are USB 2.
Yeah yeah, it’s a scam, I get it, but why is nobody commenting on the skits and bits of humor this guy puts in the episodes? They’re incredible for a channel about tech.
I make a rule to never buy anything I see in ads. I don't click them.ever. why do people ever click on ads? Is that what happens when you're brainwashed every day watching ads on Cable?
I haven't seen a video advertisement since 1999 (well, not in the wild. I see ads on this series) and my brain now operates at 11% capacity. Don't click ads. Don't buy things you see in ads. Especially on social media. Especially on teh internets. Don't do it.
I think my brain must be un-brainwashed by not seeing ads for over 20 years. Yeah, ad blocker.
Nothing you see on an ad is better than what you could find with 3 minutes of Googling. Ads cost munny. Even these scam ads. That money gets charged when you buy the product. Therefore, ads *need* to generate income. Therefore they lie thru their teeth. Especially tech ads. Especially on teh internets.
Stop clicking ads. I always assumed that people ignored ads.... They're annoying...why would you click on them? They waste ur time and money. I'm not some kind of genius. Just make a rule to yourself. Ignore ads, don't click. This scam problem will not go away, just get worse.
The second worst thing about buying a scam product is that you're directly supporting the scammer and giving them reasons to continue scamming. Stop it.
Also.... California is expensive. Everything at the local 99 Cent Only store costs $1.49
And rent is stupid expensive. Plus, many people here only rent their land to grapes, which is racist to us non-grape-based beings. Also, plastic bags cost 10 cents and plastic straws are banned. And smoking in public is a $500 fine. But we also have Disneyland! 🍄🦫🙀
If this was sponsored by drivesavers you really should tell us. Are they sponsors?
Looks like tiktok marketing and bull sheet marketing is a same thing.
Anyway this box - nice device, its simply usb to pata/sata adapter. I have one. The only thing i can't understand - where i can get mini IDE drive today, maybe i should rob a museum?
wooow thanks so much
youve saved me mnoney now :)
So if I have managed to reach my files with a recovery software, but it is all files arranged by type.
any chance some software may restore it in the order it was on the HD ?
like folders etc... ?
Terra-bytes.
So it can store 6 Earths?