Cheap Data Recovery Service - Physical vs. Logical Damage

If your hard drive is physically damaged, meaning that it has for example experienced an excessive shock, dropped to the floor, broken, short-circuited, fallen into the sea, etc. then it is likely that the computer BIOS (Basic Input Output System) may not be able to recognise it. A physical damage can be either electrical or mechanical in nature. In such cases, the drive must first be either repaired using spare parts, for instance, or it must be opened up in a specialised cleanroom (a dust free medium) where its magnetic content is copied to another disk by the aid of sophisticated laboratory equipment, after which data recovery may become possible.

A cleanroom is an environment, typically used in manufacturing or scientific research, as well as data recovery centres, that has a low level of environmental pollutants such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles and chemical vapours. More accurately, a cleanroom has a controlled level of contamination that is specified by the number of particles per meter-cubed and by maximum particle size.

The air entering a cleanroom from outside is filtered to exclude dust, and the air inside is constantly re-circulated through high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) and ultra low penetration air (ULPA) filters to remove internally generated contaminants. Staff enter and leave through air locks (sometimes including an air shower stage), and wear protective clothing such as hats, face masks, boots and cover-alls. Equipment inside the cleanroom is designed to generate minimal air contamination. Common materials such as paper, pencils, and fabrics made from natural fibres are often excluded. Low-level cleanrooms are often not sterile (i.e., free of uncontrolled microbes) and more attention is given to airborne particles. Particle levels are usually tested using a particle counter.

Some cleanrooms are kept at a higher air pressure so that if there are any leaks, the air rushes outside. This is similar to the lower pressure used in biological hot zones to keep the microbes inside.

Maintenance of such laboratories is hence implicitly costly and companies running a cleanroom facility need to manage their budget so as to cover up these costs. Usually, this will be enforced upon the end user, i.e. customers.

Logical corruption, on the contrary can be catered for without the use of sophisticated laboratory equipment and can be done outside a cleanroom. Examples of logical damage to the media include:

• Accidental formatting of Hard disk
• Accidental Deletion of Data
• Data Loss due to virus/spyware attacks
• Boot & Partition Structure Corruption
• Drive crashes
• Human error
• Backup failure
• System boot error

Logical Data Recovery Centres, such as 'Data Recovery Console', utilise sophisticated software solutions making it ideal for your recovery requirements in terms of logically damaged disks as well as certain kinds of physical damages, such as development of hard drive bad sectors, in that they could charge you much less compared to any other recovery service. Other recovery companies need to charge extra amounts in order to cover their sophisticated laboratory's maintenance costs, a feature that is not necessary for many of their clients (about 70%). Companies such as Data Recovery Console simply won't carryout sophisticated laboratory work and concentrate on logically damaged disks, hence reducing the overall cost for you.

What ever the reason for your data loss, if your drive is recognised by the computer BIOS a logical data recovery specialist should be able to extract your data, given that you act promptly. So if you happen to be among the 70% of the people who are experiencing a logical data corruption, then look out for those logical data recovery centres who will charge you much less and avoid the high costs!

Source: Free Articles

Steps to Ensure Successful Data Recovery

We store a lot of information on hard drives are other storage devices that is very important to us. We can have important work files, personal work that could take months to re-do and precious family photos and videos. So when data loss occurs it is understandable that many people will panic when they don’t have a back up. It’s not the end of the world though, data can be recovered.

Take the following steps to ensure that you are able recover your important data. To avoid permanent data loss it is important you follow these guidelines:

1 If you hear strange whirring, grinding or clicking sounds, shut down your computer immediately. Severe or complete data loss could occur as the heads in the drive could be hitting the platters that store the data.

2 Take care and unplug the computer before removing the hard drive. You have to be very careful when handling the hard drive as physical jolts can cause damage and are sensitive to static electricity.

3 If your have critical data you want to recover then make sure you choose a well known recovery firm or one recommended from a friend or colleague. Even simple attempts to recover a physically damaged drive can end in making it completely impossible to recover data anymore.

Remember the first recovery attempt offers the best chance of recovery. If you have very important information, don’t take the risk, pay a professional so if there is a chance to recover the data; they will be able to do so.

When problems happen:

1 If it is possible, back up the data straight away

2 Don’t power up any device that has been making strange noises or clearly has physical damage

3 Don’t use utility software if the hard drive is making clicking, humming or tapping noises.

4 As soon as you notice any symptoms of hard drive damage shut down the computer immediately to avoid further damage.

5 Finally don’t attempt to recover the data yourself for severely damaged machines as the system will be very vulnerable, any attempts to recover can spell permanent data loss. Seek professional advice for data recovery.

http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recovery-articles/steps-to-ensure-successful-data-recovery-1172352.html

When Computer Systems Fail, Professional Data Recovery Can Set Your Mind at Rest

Computer systems are prone to data loss with relative regularity, often precisely because they are always becoming faster and more complex. Data loss can take the form of crashes, corrupted hard disks and server failures.

A professional service will swiftly send a courier to collect the failed hard disk. Back at the laboratory, technicians will mount a close inspection of the hard drive in order to provide the client with an estimate of the severity of the problem, the length of time that it will take to fix and the cost of data recovery.

A timescale for data recovery will be agreed with the client before the hard disk is repaired and data restructures restored, the raw data is extracted and the file listings are analysed. Data files are usually returned on new media, such as DVDs or an external hard drive.

The length of time that it can take to recover data from a crashed system depends upon the nature of the crash. The failure can be due to something relatively simple, such as a crash of the computer’s operating system or simple human error. However, there can be more complex reasons for a crash, such as attacks by hackers or infection by computer viruses or malware. Most seriously of all, hard drives can become physically damaged or corrupted.

A simple problem with the operating system usually means that all the technician has to do is use their expertise to extract the data and copy it on to a new form of media, such as another hard drive or disk.

In the event of a faulty or corrupt hard drive, the technicians will have to take more drastic steps, such as making repairs to the file directory itself or by attempting to retrieve the data with the use of specialised software.

In this scenario, the technician will use a powerful microscope to examine the hard drive itself for signs of damage. A similar analysis will be carried out on the system’s electronics and electrical systems, such as its power source, servos and interfaces. The technician will carry out the same level of examination for the drive’s magnetic media, such as its read/write heads.

If the examination reveals faults or complete breakdown, the offending components will be repaired or completely replaced, allowing the disk itself to be cleaned under safe, clean lab conditions, before being upgraded and reprogrammed.

The disk will now be functional once more, whereupon the all-important data will be able to be accessed and extracted. Professional data recovery services have special proprietary programs to read any data stored on the disk’s magnetic platters.

When the data is extracted, it will be transferred to the lab’s own secure servers, before being carefully checked for errors and gaps. If any bad sectors are found, they will be repaired in consultation with the client.(Olivia Wilson)

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4676.shtml

7 Must Have Online Data Recovery Tools

by: Kara Hugg

The entry of a virus, malfunctioning software or a plagued operating system may cost you some important files. Below is a narrowed down list of some helpful online data recovery tools, which you can use to retrieve your important files.

TestDisk

TestDisk complements Windows, Mac and Linux data recovery needs. It is a powerful open-source tool that can ‘undelete’ suddenly lost and accidentally deleted files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 file systems. It also hosts other useful functionality. It helps recover the damaged boot sector from a backup, rebuild that boot sector and find lost partitions in dozens in format to locate the lost data and copy deleted files from partitions.

Recuva

Recuva is a Window-based tool that holds the power to resurrect missing files via its file-recovery wizard or application manual mode. When you are not quite sure of where your files are located or lost, the file-recovery wizard proves to be handy not only in retrieving missing files but also locating long forgotten files. Its manual user mode is helpful in file location.

PhotoRec

This program is a perfect complement to the TestDisk applications. It may not hold GUI capabilities but is certainly is one powerful online data recovery tool. Among its great features is that it does not mess with your computer partitions as it does not tend to rebuild your master boot record. This application is more focused on file types and operating-system agnostic. It offers help in quickly and safely copying all your suddenly lost files to another disk.

Restoration

Restoration could be the most helpful addition to your Windows-based USB toolkit. Not only does it help restore missing USB files but also your personal computer files. While it lacks the advanced functionality of most online data recovery tools, it is a very effective and generally reliable. Despite its meager 406k size, it outweighs any other data recovery tools out there when it simple applications.

Undelete Plus

Undelete Plus is a data recovery application that works on all versions of Windows as well as incarnations of FAT and NTFS file systems. It works by assigning recovery probability to searched files, depending on the severity of the damage. It allows easy file sorting by type and easy setting of filters, which will help sift through every deleted file in locating your missing files.

GetDataBack

This software helps recover lost data from your hard drive’s partition table, boot record, FAT/MFT or root directory. With the use of advanced algorithms, it ensures that all directories and subdirectories are put together and reconstructed properly. Perhaps the greatest GetDataBack feature is its capacity to enable regular users to conduct his own data recovery by guiding him in every step while giving the advanced users the leeway to interfere with the recovery operations to improve data search and retrieval results.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery

This software will provide you with the complete solution to all your data recovery needs. It works great in retrieving all the data lost after operating system corruption, file system damage, accidental deletion and damage to the USB flash drive. With its improved recovery applications for FAT and NTFS file systems, it helps recover lost logical drives, do hard drive cloning and imaging and recover photo, music and video files from your system.

Given this chance to look over the few notable online data recovery tools, you can now pinpoint which application(s) will assure the recovery of your missing files.

Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/computers_and_internet/article_4801.shtml

The first step of data recovery

Data will be saved if more easily observe the following.

Do not store important files on the system partition, for example, drive C, in many cases I find that many users, especially MS word and other similar direct clicks diskette icon, which will be stored in the folder "my document" which is located in the partition system, for it to move only partition with a right-click the folder "my document" after the move and click the button to move a partition that still has a lot of space.
Do defrag regularly; files stored sequentially in the cluster, this occurs only if many partitions are available. Removal and writing regularly drive on the file will cause the split, as in the example below:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) - should represent a small 8

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) - now files (2), (4), (7) and (8) were deleted

(1) (9) (3) (9) (5) (6) (9) (9) - the disk is fragmented if a larger file is stored

If a file is deleted, then the new data will fill an empty cluster. If new data is greater than the old data, the data will be placed in a related but fragmented. When reading fragmented files, the head moving "jump" that will cause a decrease of read & write speed that will affect overall system performance. So that the head can read & write in effisien, do defragmentasi regularly, after defragmentasi, the files will be placed in a sequence, as in the example:

(1) (9) (9) (9) (9) (3) (5) (6) - after the drive is defragmented

Non-fragmented disc will increase the level of efficiency saving data, because the whole data will be stored in a first cluster file system & improve performance.
Do not store data on the drive with a small, because a large fragmentation occurs.
Data recovery software must be installed on a separate drive from the target drive, if it does not happen will be overwriting the data that will be saved and the data will be difficult to recovered. Do not perform any activity on the target drive, including store & delete files, and will be better if the recovery software installed on the 2nd hard disk.