Category Archives: Hard Drive Recovery

Hard Drive Recovery

Data loss does not need to be a disaster

Posted on by

You were working on your dissertation and suddenly your computer screen went blue! OK.

You restart the computer, the computer turns on with a long delay. No sign of the Windows logo or anything else! Then you get the dreaded message “The Operating System Not Found!. Insert the boot disk and press any key”. Furthemore, the clicking sound coming from the computer does not look good at all! What a calamity! You realise your hard disk has crashed and all your dissertation including all your emails, photos and other documents are gone! Well, perhaps you can live with the loss of some photos and the emails and some doucuments. But what about your dissertation which is due next week and for which you have been researching for the past 3 months. This is disasterous! You meant to back up your data to an external hard drive several times but you just postponed it until this happened. You bang on the desk and blame yourself for not backing your data and how stupid you were not to have backed up your data. You think you will never get your data back. However difficult this situation is, you should know, that help is at hand. Your situation is not unique. But you need specialist help. The only people who can help is a data recovery company. An IT support person cannot recover the data but perhaps they can help you find a suitable and reputable data recovery company. One such company, who were among the first data recovery companies in the UK established in 2001, is Data Recovery Lab. Just call 0207 516 1077 and they will be very happy to help you recover all your data and advise you on how the process of data recovery works.

Common myths about data recovery: What is right and what is wrong

Posted on by

Right and Wrong About Data Recovery

Losing data can make people desperate and irrational, and it is in desperate situations that people invent all kinds of strange and quite often untrue theories as to how they can recover their data. Data Recovery Lab will uncover what theories are right and what is wrong.

Here are some of the most common myths about data recovery:

  1. “Data cannot be recovered once you have formatted a drive.” WRONG. We CAN recover it.
  2. “Data that has been deleted cannot be recovered.” WRONG. As long as the data has not been overwitten by a new set of data, deleted data such as documents, pictures, music, emails, etc CAN be recovered.
  3. “Data that has been overwritten is recoverable.” WRONG. Overwritten data is NOT recoverable. this is because spaces used by data that has been marked as “deleted” by the operating system is replaced by new data. The more data written onto a formatted hard disk, the less likely to recover the data; However some RAW data recovery may be possible using advance disk editing technicians. Call 0207 516 1077 or visit Data Recovery Lab to discuss the case.
  4. “There is a universal tool available that can recover data from all hard disk drives irrespective of the drive’s state.” WRONG. There is no such general and universal way to recover data from a faulty hard disk; in fact in the majority of the cases each hard drive failure may require an individual aprroach to achieve a full and successfull recovery.
  5. “There are devices that can be placed next to a computer in order to extract the data from a faulty hard disk drive.” WRONG. How can anyone recover any data from a failing hard disk without even CONNECTING it to the failty hard disk which is the subjeact of data recovery.
  6. “A hard disk drive can be wiped by placing a strong magnet close to the drive.” WRONG. Most hard drives use magnetic shielding to prevent any loss of data just in case they comes into contact with device which has magnetic properties such as a speaker, strong electric current, medical equipment, cord;ess phones, mobile phone, walkie-talkies, etc.
  7. “Data is always recoverable.” RIGHT. However there are THREE exceptions to this rule. A) Data is not overwritten, B)The surface of the platters inside the hard disk which holds the data is NOT scratched by landing of a failing read/write head; C)The hard disk has NOT been professionally securely wiped by a military grade wiping tool to ensure permanent clean-up of the data for security and data protection compliance reasons.
  8. “Placing a hard disk drive in a refrigerator solves hard disk failures issues.” WRONG. The shock and contraction caused to the disk can cause even further damage to the heads and consequently head swaps and hard disk repair for the purpose of data recovery will become permanently impossible.
  9. “Blue laser technology can be used for data recovery.” WRONG. Ther is no such thing as blue laser technology to recover data.

How To Deal With Data Loss and Where To Get Help

Posted on by

Here is the latest video released by Data Recovery Lab. It explains how you can deal with a data lost situation and where you can get help. Filed under: Apple Mac Data Recovery, Data Recovery, Hard Drive Recovery, RAID Data Recovery, USB Data Recovery

View article:
How To Deal With Data Loss and Where To Get Help

Data Recovery Guide

Posted on by

How does the data recovery process work?

Once we receive your hard drive, it will be logged into our system & queued for evaluation by one of our data recovery technicians.

An initial FREE data recovery diagnosis report will be produced and emailed to you which tell you about the failure mode of the drive. Hard disk failure mode can be either Logical, where a drive is working, but the data is no longer accessible or electronic failure where one or more components have failed on the electronics board or logic board on the back of the hard drive. Another possibility is that the internal pre-amplifier circuitry located inside the disk has failed. Another mode of failure is mechanical failure which means either the read/write heads or the motor have become faulty; This is normally associated with clicking or a grinding noise when you power up the hard drive. For a successful data recovery, faulty parts have to be replaced in a class 100 clean room using a donor hard disk. This will repair the hard disk temporarily and allows the data technicians to recover or extract as much data as possible. The report will contain the nature of the failure, cost of data recovery and an estimated completion date with various service options.

Upon receiving your approval to proceed, your hard drive will be “cloned”, to safeguard the integrity of your data as all recovery procedures are performed on an exact sector by sector duplicate of your original drive and queued for the actual data recovery procedures.

If your hard drive is repairable, and passes all the “hard drive fitness test” then we will return your data on your repaired drive. If it is determined that your drive cannot be repaired or the repair is temporary just for the sake of data recovery, we would then return your recovered data in a variety of ways, including copying it onto a new hard drive or writeable CD/DVDs. If you have brought your laptop or PC for data recovery, then we would replace the faulty hard drive, reload your Operating System and copy the recovered data back onto the computer’s new hard drive. (Additional costs may apply in this case therefore we will seek your approval before doing so.)

The data on the image media would be tested for accessibility and integrity and that the critical files open within their respective programs, any further logical repairs are made if necessary.

We will keep a copy of your data for 8 days week to ensure the successful your data has been received safely. After 8 days, your data will be automatically erased from our data recovery servers.
Defective Hard Disk Drive Heads: Commonly known as the ‘Click of Death’. Your hard drive is on its way out, along with your data. When the drive initially powers up, a logical procedural check is initiated to ensure that the drive has gained the required level of speed before positioning the heads across the platters. If the drive does not reach a ‘Ready’ state, the logic is repeated for a set number of times causing a clicking sound, after which it stops trying. The hard disk drive will appear dead.

Do not run “software” recovery programs in this state. They cause Disk I/O read / writes, and
this exerts a lot of stress on the read/write heads, which in turn causes errors to be written onto the disk, further decreasing the chances of data recovery.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF HARD DISK FAILURES

Crashed Hard Drive Heads: In the event of a head crash, the hard drive will most likely make a grinding or scraping noise. This is very serious and may stripping the magnetic coating off the platters. This is highly damaging to the drive. Immediately turn the drive off and disconnect it from your computer. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO POWER ON THE COMPUTER OR THE HARD DRIVE AS THIS MAY CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE. At this stage, you need to call the Data Recovery Lab technicians on 0207 516 1077 who will advise you what to do next.

Hard Disk Drive Motor Failure: A typical hard drive motor usually spins between 4200rpm and can go up to 15000rpm in high-end end desktop or server hard drives. This is precisely controlled by firmware- information held in the system area of the hard drive-to enable synchronisation for reading the data from the platters. Hard drive motor can fail in two ways; it won’t either spin or won’t start. In this case the motor gets stuck and you can usually feel a slight vibration or hear a humming sound on the drive when it powers up. Erratic speed variations of the motor may cause the drive to take an extended period of time to come to the ‘Ready’ state. Please note that prolonged or repeatedly powering up the hard drive could cause further damage. Turn the computer off or disconnect the hard drive and call the Data Recovery Lab technicians on 0207 516 1077 who would advise you what to do next.

Hard Disk Drive not seen in BIOS: BIOS stands for Basic Input/Output System and it simply provides a set of instructions to your computer, telling it how to start, and how to interface to the first ‘Boot’ device. When it reaches the first boot device, it then receives further instructions from there to follow up, and eventually loads your operating system if everything is OK. During the start-up, the BIOS may fail to detect the hard drive, and therefore it is not listed by the BIOS during POST. First, check all connections and try again. If it still doesn’t work, failure to recognise the hard drive may have been caused by a number of factors, like corrupt boot sector. However, at start-up, your computer you can tell whether the drive has been detected by the BIOS or not. Power up the computer, and look for the on-screen instruction to tell you how to enter the BIOS. Usually this is achieved by pressing F1, F2 or DEL keys. Examine the menus for options on viewing the BIOS IDE peripheral setup and set your BIOS to automatically detect IDE drives. On some BIOSes there is an option to “automatically detect hard drives now”. If you run this option and the computer ‘hangs’ or appears inactive for a a minute or more then it is likely that your Hard Disk Drive has failed to be recognised by the system BIOS. Before getting too worried, power down the computer and unplug the hard disk and check if all the jumpers on the hard drive are set correctly according to the hard disk manufacturer’s instructions. Incorrect jumper setting can prevent the hard drive from being detected by the BIOS. In some hard drives such as IBM and Hitachi, incorrect settings will corrupt the data and damage the logical structure of the hard disk. Again, at this stage, you need to consult a Data Recovery Lab technician who would advise you what to do next. Remember, data recovery analysis and consultation is FREE with Data Recovery Lab. Unlike many other UK data recovery companies, we do not charge for data recovery analysis or data recovery consultancy. You only pay if we successfully recover your data.

Power Surge, Reversed Polarity, Power Supply plugged in the wrong way around: This is a frequent occurrence – particularly plugging the power lead in the wrong way around. Despite the shape of the Molex connector, the cheaper versions are often are made of a soft plastic and can easily be plugged in incorrectly. Often this results in the drive appearing totally dead with no noise coming from the motor and an unpleasant burning smell. This is specially true if you try to plug a laptop hard drive in a USB enclosure or if you plug the laptop hard drive to a an IDE-to-laptop connector incorrectly. You must make sure you do the right the thing as the outcome of your mistakes can be disastrous. Similar faults occur when the power surge can damage the computer motherboard and hard drive circuitry. In this case, you must immediately unplug the computer from the mains power supply and withdraw the hard drive to a safe place until data recovery can take place.

Data Recovery Lab technicians can recover data from the following faulty hard drives:

* Desktop/Laptop/Notebook USB & Firewire IEEE1394 hard disks;
* Repair / Recover fix Mechanical / Electrical / Firmware Hard Disk drive Problems;
* Hard Disk Drive not recognised in BIOS;
* Noisy Hard Drives with clicking, scraping or clunking sound;
* Hard disks with read/write head crashes;

File Repair and/or data recovery from the following file systems:

FAT FAT32 and NTFS file systems; Linux with EXT2fs, EXT3, XFS, file sytems on standalone & RAID volumes; Data recovery from from faulty or corrupt partitions, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged; Data recovery from all Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, NT 4.0, Windows™ XP and Windows™ 2000 systems;

Data Recovery Lab technicians are able to recover / retrieve files in the following situations:

- UNC Uncorrectable Data Error – especially Maxtor SATA;
- Damaged Hard Drive As A Result of Power Surge;
- Hard drives damaged as a result of reversed power polarity and/or voltage from incorrectly plugging in power leads or cable;
- Data corruption in FAT/FAT32/NTFS File Systems
- Recycle Bin emptied or files were deleted without Recycle Bin;
- Data Loss As A Result Of Hardware or Software failures;
- Data loss As a Result of Power failure and power outages;
- Data Loss as a result of virus attack or virus infection;
- Data recovery from formatted or repartitioned hard drives;
- Data loss due to improper system shutdown;
- Data loss due to partitioning or boot sector problems
- Data loss due to hard drive PCB or logic board failure
- Data loss as a result forgotten or lost ATA password or decryption key

> If you have any questions or concerns, please do contact us on 0207 516 1077. We are fully committed to easing the fear and frustration that is normally associated with recovering from a data loss. Next time, do make sure your back up your data!


Data loss and what to do next

Posted on by

What a calamity! I have lost my data! What do I do?

Imagine a situation where you have been working on a university, business or school project and exactly at the time you want to put the finishing touches onto your completed projects, you get the dreaded blue screen on your computer and every goes bang. You desperately try restart the PC but you find no joy in getting the beast to restart! How disappointing! How heart breaking! Now it is time to cry out loud and blame yourself why you did not fulfill your promise of doing a backup. Certainly need someone get you out of this misery. It is devastating to find out that your deadline will come to an end in 3 days’ time and your hard disk has just failed and your data has vanished. Don’t panic and just keep cool. You are not alone in big trouble. Unfortunately there are many people like you who have lost their data and your situation is not unique. The good news is that all is not lost and data recovery specialist can indeed help recover all your data. It is reassuring to know that in such a terrible state to know someone can help you retrieve all your lost data. Data recovery technology has made massive progress since 1998 when the first specialist data recovery companies began operating in the UK. Now it is possible to recover data from any faulty hard disk no matter how bad the damage is.

Logical vs Physical Data Recovery

Generally, your hard disk may have failed in several ways. Here are some of the possibilities:

  • Your dropped your external hard disk or your laptop:

This most probably will cause serious physical failure which may lead to read/write head seizure; this is analogous to human cardiac arrest. In order to recover the data from a hard disk which has suffered from a physical failure, it has to be taken apart in a dust-free environment and read/write heads have to be replaced. In addition to this, the the motor, which spins the platters, has to be re-aligned. In prectice, this means athat a temporary repair of the hard disk is required in order to keep it alive enough to clone or image it bit by bit. Once we have the image, data can be recovered from the image. The repaired hard drive is no longer required and it may even fail after it has been imaged.

  • Your hard drive has been damaged as a result of a power surge:

Unregulated power, wrong polarity or power surge is a major cause of hard disk failure. This normally results in the burning out of the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) on the hard drive. Sometimes a chip on the PCB may be fried and it can be visibly detected. The common misconception among most users is that if you buy an exact match of the failed hard disk from eBay or some other online shop and swap the PCB, the hard disk will work and data can be accessed without any further action. This is wrong!This can be potentially dangerous because if you do not have the correct PCB with the exact firmware version, you may even damage your hard drive and render your hard drive completely inaccessible. In most cases, a data recovery technician would repair the original circuit board and the replace the faulty chip or power component using special tools. This requires a special hot air gun to be blown onto the faulty chip or electronic component so that the data recovery technician can replace the faulty parts without damaging the adjacent miniature components. Quite often, even after the hard disk PCB has been repaired, the data stored on the partition, is not yet accessible because the original electrical fluctuation and wrong polarity may have corrupted the partition. Therefore when you mount the disk after the repair, it shows up as “unallocated” in the disk management utility. In order to recover the data from the corrupted partition, the disk has to be edited manually using a hexadecimal editor by a suitably trained data recovery technician.

  • Logical or soft hard disk failure:

This happens when your hard disk becomes inaccessible as a result of a virus infection, partition corruption or multiple bad sectors. A more serious failure in this category is when the SMART- Self Monitoring And Reporting Technology -which is responsible for recoding the bad sectors and error correction, fails. This can extremely slow down access of the data on the hard disk and in some cases, will completely render the disk inaccessible. Recovery of data from logical or soft failures is less complex and data can recovered more quickly and cost-effectively.

Data loss can break your heart but not necessarily your back:

If you have lost data in any of the above ways, you must seek help as soon as possible because hard disk failure is progressive and the hard drive can degenerate quite rapidly. Data Recovery Lab specialises in data recovery services including hard drive recovery, RAID data recovery, PC recovery, Mac recovery, laptop data recovery, USB external hard disk data recovery and computer forensics. Recovers data from faulty or damaged hard drives and computers. It provides free data recovery analysis and free quotes. Operates a no-data, no-fee guarantee. Data Recovery Lab has ISO-certified data recovery lab facilities employing highly experienced data recovery technicians equipped with advanced data recovery tools. Data Recovery Lab has been serving business as well as private customers since 2001. For more details, visit datarecoverylab.co.uk or call 0800 840 21 31.

Hard Drive Recovery Tips: How To Deal with Data Loss

Posted on by

The hard drive or HDD is probably not the most vital part of a computer. But, once it gets corrupted, inaccessible or damaged, it will turn into the most valuable assent in a PC. All precious videos, photos, favourite MP3′s and important written works and documents can be lost in an instant. Keeping a backup is the utmost solution for data recovery. Important files must be saved in other types of media such as external drives, optical media or through an online file storage facility.

In today’s technology where everything is electronic and digital and uses a hard disk,  anyone may experience data loss in one way or the other. So, it is important to know what to do in case this happens to you.

If you have a faulty hard drive,  stop writing on it. It might further damage the hard disk and the problem may get worse. The best initial thing to do is identify if the damage is physical or logical.

If the hard disk is physically damaged, it will usually click or make unusual sound will not show up  in Windows disk management. In this case, no software on earth can recover from it. It is advisable to hire professional data recovery company to retrieve the files you have lost.

Note that there are a limited number of companies who can help you. Go for companies who have the resources and the expertise to perform data recovery. One key requirement is that they must have an ISO-certified clean room in which they are able to repair the faulty hard disk by swapping the head assembly using a donor hard disk. Some IT companies pretend to be data recovery companies. These companies will not be able to recover your data successfully and may actually damage your hard disk in such a way that a qualified data recovery specialist will not be able to help you. Therefore it is wise to take all the necessary precautions and ask all the right questions when contacting a data recovery company. You may have to travel or post your hard disk to your chosen data recovery company. It is highly unlikely to find a data recovery company in the high street or anywhere close to you.

How does data recovery work? — Part 1

Posted on by

In this video, a Data Recovery Lab technician explains how the process of data recovery works.

Read the original post:
How does data recovery work? — Part 1

Hard Drive Recovery: we are in the business of making people happy!

Posted on by

Wondered how a data recovery company can make people happy? Here we explain that.

See more here:
Hard Drive Recovery: we are in the business of making people happy!

Retrieving Lost Data – File Recovery Tools: How Good Are They?

Posted on by

Can I use data recovery tools so heavily advertised on the internet?

If you search for “data recovery software”  in the Google search box, will be surprised to find hundreds and hundreds of websites and online shops trying to offer you “FREE” data recovery software. Almost all these developers or data recovery software marketeers claim their software does just magic and can bring all your lost and deleted data back from the dead!

But how can we be certain this is true?

At first sight, they claim the the data recovery software is absolutely “free” by which they actually mean it is free to “download and try”. When you download and install these applications, you will also realise that these recovery applications will scan your hard disk and find some files but when you hit the “recover” button, you will be asked to upgrade the free version and pay for the right data recovery tool. OK. you purchase the software and do a full scan and attempt to recover the data. But does actually work? You may be disappointed to know that the majority of these so-called “data recovery tools” are actually reverse-engineered or white label versions of other software developers with mixed capabilities in tackling data loss. Don’t be surprised if you are disappointed if you find out that after spending £60-£95 no data has actually been recovered. At this point, you wish you might have been better off to call a specialist data recovery company and save time and money.

Unfortunately the consequences of using a data recovery software application is unpredictable. Some are good and some others can make a successful data recovery just impossible. If your data is important, do NOT risk it by using a downloaded data recovery software as you may never your get data back.

DIY data recovery is not recommended in cases where critical data is involved and data loss can be disastrous in on business or personal level.