External Hard Drive Data Recovery

Andrew Juan asked:


Hard drive recovery is the process of extracting data with the help of software utilities or disk internals level operations plus software tools from logically or physically corrupted hard drive. The best practice is to create a disk image before carrying out any recovery. A disk image is an exact copy of a hard drive or an affected partition/volume. It is created to avoid any data loss during the recovery procedure. We should always maintain an updated data backup on a secondary storage device like an external hard drive to avoid any recovery requirements. If we have all the data backed up, we can simply perform a clean reinstall and restore the data as per our last directory structure. In addition to this we should use hard drives with highest MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rating and S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) support. We need to enable the S.M.A.R.T option in system BIOS (Basic Input Output System) to make it check the hard drive for any physical issues and proactively inform us.

A hard drive is divided into various sub-parts. They can be broadly divided as moving and non-moving components. The moving components are: Spindle Motor and Spindle, Read/Write Head, Actuator Arm, Head Actuator and Platters. The non-moving components are: 1.) Hard Disk Controller 2.) Head/Disk Assembly 3.) PCB (Printed Circuit Board) 4.) Input/Output Connector etc.

The Hard drive Recovery can be done by following these two approaches as per logical or physical drive failure:

i.) Hard Drive Recovery Software: These are utilities that are developed based on file system structure information to enable the software to find the files, file signature information to recognize the file header and footer and advanced scanning algorithms to efficiently scan the hard drive. A home user can easily use these software to scan his hard drive after data loss. Some data recovery software also offer bootable media like CD or DVD to boot the system from them in case the system is not able to boot. We need to attach an external hard drive (USB/Firewire: IEEE 1394) or flash drive (USB). We can boot the system using the bootable media and scan the hard drive. We can even preview the lost files in good quality data recovery software and then save the files in the external hard drive or flash drive.

ii.) Hard Drive Recovery Service:  The Hard Drive Recovery service for of lost data is carried out by Data Recovery experts with rich industrial experience and exposure to the hard disk internals. Such recovery procedures often deal with dismantling the hard drive and repairing or even replacing certain components like the read/write head, actuator arm if they have failed. The Hard Drive Recovery is performed under sterilized environment of Clean rooms. The lab environment of Clean rooms offer controlled temperature, pressure, humidity and no dust particles to ensure maximum protection to hard disk internals.

The data that we save in the hard drive actually gets stored on the platters. The less these platters are the easier it is to recover the lost data. In case, a platter has physically failed has developed physical bad sectors we cannot retrieve our lost data from that platter and the area affected by physical bad sectors will become unavailable for recovery due to unreadable media. Such physical bad sectors cannot be repaired or removed like the logical bad sectors.

Hard drives offer large storage capacity and are very cost effective as compared to other storage media. Today hard drives are available in the market up to 2 TB of storage. When we delete data in any operating system like Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS or Linux, the files don’t get deleted in actual. It is just the file reference that gets removed by the operating system. In other words, the files still remain on the hard drive though we cannot access them using the operating system. The same is true in case of lost or corrupted data but the corrupted data files need to be repaired as well.

The partition or volume loss also follows the same rule that is the data still resides in the partitions or volumes but we cannot access them. The common reasons behind such errors are system software conflicts, erroneous deletion, operating system warning related to partition health, virus infection etc. If we face any of the above issues and the hard drive data becomes inaccessible, we should not use the hard drive any further other than Data Recovery from it in order to avoid any disk overwriting. After the lost files get replaced by any erroneous user operations like overwriting the drive with some new files like by a paste operation, it becomes impossible to recover the files as their start and end points get changed by the new files.



Xavier

Thomas Husnik asked:


Copyright (c) 2008 Thomas Husnik

We are sometimes spoiled these days when it comes to data and software on our personal computers. We can store so much of it on one disk drive and we can retrieve it very quickly. And these personal computers just hum along for week after week with no problems whatsoever. We are even prudent in backing up our “My Documents” folder to a re-writeable CD once in awhile.

Until one day, you computer does not boot up. You take it to a computer repair shop and they replace the disk drive, reload Windows, and deliver it back to you. You then reload your Microsoft Office, copy back your “My Documents Folder” from your CD-RW disc and you should be back in business. Except a short time later you find out that you are missing that spreadsheet that took days to build. What happened? Then you remember that you had stored the spreadsheet on the C:spreadsheets folder and not “My Documents.” The spreadsheet and all the work that went into it is goneforever.

The above scenario happens way too often in today’s world that is so dependent on computer information. The point you should see here is that even though the user was doing a backup, the backup did not include everything required in order to one day do a successful recovery. While our example is simple, imagine a computer where there are data files stored all over the disk in many different folders other than “My Documents.” And in most cases a couple of CD-RW disks are too small to backup everything. You need to acquire and implement a backup system and strategy that gives you the space required to store all your critical files plus one that allows you to backup and recover quickly.

Backups are typically done using tape or external hard disk drives. The latter is becoming more and more popular because of the speed of the backup media. An external hard drive can basically be a mirror of your internal hard drive. However, you don’t have the redundancy (multiple copies) of disk files that you could get with tape unless you purchase several disk drives (which could be expensive). But, with an external drive, you can just copy folders from your system drive to your external drive and you have a quick data backup that is very easy to recover.

The other long-time popular method for doing backups is tape. Tape backups have been around for a long time and for good reason. You can store an incredible amount of data on one tape and you get the benefit of being able to take that tape and store it at some alternate location so that you can recover in the event of some physical disaster such as fire, theft, or flood. If you stored external disk drives offsite, you would lose the benefit of being able to use that drive. There are a couple of drawbacks to tape. One is that tape breaks much easier than an external drive. The other is that tape drives come with proprietary software in order to compress and transfer data to the vendor’s model of drive. In other words, they are not native to the operating system like Microsoft Windows. But it usually is only a matter of installing the software on the computer system you are recovering the data to.

There are many variations to tape and external disk drive backups but the important thing to remember is that you cannot recover if you do not properly back up. You should periodically test your recovery plan so that you know it is ready when you need it.



Lamont

Zoe asked:


Data security and Data recovery for information management is attention-grabbing as always, to improve information management, all the enterprises and government sectors should much more concern about data security and data recovery at any time.

                                                      

A wide variety of external or internal factors may cause the critical data loss or disclosure in the course of information management. According to United States reports, after losing necessary data for 10 days or more, 93% of companies have to file for bankrupt, because of failures of data security center in governments or enterprises. However, at the same length of time, 50% of these companies with no self-owned and in-house data recovery center will soon enough file for bankrupt. Now that risks are inevitable in the IT world, government sectors and enterprises need pre-treatments withstanding in the resulting risks, so as to reduce any possibility to minimum.

SalvationData as one of the world largest data recovery companies for professional research dept., has launched a fourth generation device for data recovery, namely Data Compass which is highly beyond the world level. It allows real-time and secure control of the data recovery flow, and was designed to work automatically. Therefore, it is very easy to use with its friendly its friendly interface. This portable USB device which can be connected to a laptop easily helps you in any working conditions. Especially for those medium or large size companies, the data recovery technician can offer in-house services on site using a laptop. This improves work efficiency and reduces labor cost.

Data Compass owns build-in software, dedicated to logical data recovery, not only can solve hard drive partition damage, documents damage, etc., also directly access to the target data with rapid and success recovery rate, even only for a few minutes. DC panel build-in software support for real-time control of DC hardware, easily solve the problem of physical sector scratch issues.

To learn much more about hard drive data recovery solutions, please visit www.salvationdata.com where you can get more free information on specialized data recovery equipments and firmware repair tools.



Andy