I'm Josh.
This is the lab.

I got into data recovery the same way I get into most things: curiosity. It started with VHS tapes, figuring out how they worked, why they degraded, what it actually took to pull a signal off aging magnetic oxide. That rabbit hole led pretty naturally into hard drives, and from there into just how fragile the things we store our memories on really are.

The deeper I got, the more I wanted to understand the actual mechanics of it: the physics of magnetic degradation, how read heads fail, the specific ways an NTFS or APFS volume corrupts and what it takes to reconstruct it from raw sector data. I built workflows. I bought equipment. At some point it stopped being a rabbit hole and started being the work.

The Attic Lab is a home operation in Pittsburgh. A focused practice, not a franchise. That means you talk to the person doing the work, you get a straight answer about what's possible, and you don't pay if I can't recover your data.

How I work

Every recovery starts with a full sector-by-sector image of the drive before any analysis begins. Working from a copy (not the original) means the source drive is never modified during the process. If a first pass doesn't capture everything, I run additional passes targeting missed sectors until I've extracted everything the drive will give up.

A hardware write blocker stays in the chain whenever a drive is connected. Nothing gets written to a drive I'm recovering from. Ever. The analysis and reconstruction work all happens on the copy. The approach is methodical by design: slow and careful recovers more data than fast and hopeful.

For tape digitization, I run a calibrated VCR through a Time Base Corrector before capture. The TBC stabilizes the sync signal and corrects the tracking inconsistencies that make VHS look jittery on a direct capture. It makes a real difference in output quality, especially on older tapes.

What I do

• ✓ Logical recovery: deleted files, formatted drives, corrupted file systems (NTFS, APFS, HFS+, ext4, exFAT, FAT32)
• ✓ Mechanically degraded drives: bad sectors, slow or struggling platters, drives getting progressively worse
• ✓ PCB and USB bridge controller failures on external drives
• ✓ Partial physical recovery: drives with failing heads that still have readable platter regions
• ✓ RAID arrays (0, 1, 5): discuss the configuration first
• ✓ VHS, VHS-C, Hi-8, and 8mm tape digitization with Time Base Corrector for stable output
• ✓ Windows, macOS, and Linux file systems
• ✓ Most major drive families: WD, Seagate, Toshiba, HGST, Samsung, Crucial, Kingston

Where I refer out

Some failures require a Class 100 cleanroom: head stack replacements, platter transplants, drives with contaminated or physically damaged media. I don't do that work, and I won't attempt it to avoid saying so. If your drive is in that category, I'll tell you and point you toward the labs that handle it: DriveSavers and Gillware are both reputable.

• — Head stack replacement (requires Class 100 environment and matched donor drives)
• — Platter transplants (same requirements; referred to the same labs)
• — Firmware-level failures on specific drive families (certain Seagate and WD models)
• — Fire-damaged drives with warped or contaminated platters
• — Encrypted drives where the key is unknown

Pittsburgh

Based in Pittsburgh. Born here, stayed here, run the lab here. It's a city that respects people who actually know how to do things, which is about all I can ask for.

Get in touch

Fill out the intake form or email me directly. I respond to everything within 24 hours. If your situation doesn't fit the form, email anyway. The form is for convenience, not gatekeeping.