Testing the limits of hard disk recovery

As our digital appetites increase, so does our need to store our data.

But as we move into the terabyte age with trillions of bytes of storage available for a few hundred pounds, can we rely on hard disk drives to safeguard precious information? And what happens when they do fail or are damaged?

When I had my first computer in 1983 it had 32KB of memory and it was not until 1988 that I had my first hard drive - which had 40MB of storage.

Almost 20 years later and my main desktop can store 160GB of data while my laptop has 120GB and I have a pocket drive with 40GB more capacity.

My back-up routine is poor - I have my music and photos archived on several DVDs but it has been months since I last backed them up.

If the hard drive in my main computer were to fail, I would lose thousands of photographs and hundreds of songs. Every hard drive is a crash waiting to happen and so it is clear I should invest in a back-up storage system.

With 500GB of external hard disk storage available for as little as £89 online and the first terabyte single hard drive released at the start of the year, there is no excuse not to back up.



Inside the hard drive

A recent report from Google engineers suggested that there is no link between heavy use and hard drive failure.

Hard drives less than three years old that are used a lot are less likely to fail than similarly aged hard drives that are used infrequently, according to the report.

However, a Carnegie Mellon University report recently suggested that the failure rate of hard drives used in the business sector was a lot higher than manufacturers' claims.

So what happens if your hard drive fails or is damaged in an accident? To test durability we put a basic 40GB external hard drive through a series of vigorous challenges.

On it we had some photographs and documents and challenged data recovery firm Kroll Ontrack to retrieve our data.

We dropped the drive out of a second storey-window, immersed it in a pond, drove over it and hit it with a hammer.

Was the firm able to retrieve our information?

Rob Winter, chief technology officer at Ontrack, said: "It was very badly damaged and we couldn't recover the data.


Open up the picture to see what happened to our hard drive.

Enlarge Image

"The fundamental reason it wasn't recoverable was that many laptop hard drives have platters made of glass and in this case they shattered. When that happens it is impossible to get the data back.

"Usually laptop hard drives are glass while workstation platters are metal. If the platters had been metal we might have been able to get something back. It all depends on the dents and kinks in the platter."

We went to extreme lengths to damage our drive - too extreme as it turned out. But what are the typical types of damage seen at the firm?

Phil Bridge, managing director at Ontrack, said: "Dropped laptops and spill damage is common. We also see a lot of drives where data has been deleted accidentally.

"In those cases we can typically retrieve 100% of the data."

Mr Winter said: "The first thing we do is make an exact image of the media on the drive. The reason for that is that the drives are often failing or have failed and the best way of preserving the best image we can get is to process the hard drive on to an exact copy.

Data Recovery in Desktop Systems

As the use of laptops are becoming more but also it is not enough to replace desktop especially in offices. In offices still large no of Desktop systems are available which are in use. And so the Data Recovery or the protection from data loss or disk crashes is the must. Always go for the right data Recovery solutions available in the market. As the office data is one of the most precious one to be lost by any firm so management of data from data crashes is the must to be taken of.

Although there are a large number of companies which provide these solutions but choose the most reliable one from tem. As the office desktop uses the local Hard Disk or the centralized disk storage system to store the data in it so a s to backup the data when any crash occurs. There are many methods involve in doing so. RAID is one of the most important techniques which are followed in the windows based system. Another thing to do for the prevention from the loss or recovery of the lost data if the data is stored locally on the system is to opt for a Data Recovery Software which promises to recover almost whole of the data lost. So follow above steps so as to make your desktop system free from any data crashes or loss.

Data Recovery

While in this modern world where the use of electronic goods mainly the use of computer has been risen to a much large extend. Now every individual knows or has good hands on computer. But as the use of these computers is growing day by day their problems are also rising. The main problem which most of us face is the loss of data or the dusk crash. This is the major problem and as the size of the memory chip is getting smaller and smaller with larger disk space this has raised to large extend.

So one must take an extra care to avoid these data losses and also disk crashes. As many of the work today has become online or through net connect these system falls to virus attacks and results to a data corruption or full disk crash. In any of the way you are going to have the loss of the data. So it is better to have a data recovery technique or something like that so a s to recover the data even after data loss or the crash has been occurred. Before having to use your system for storing important data make you system first of all free from virus attacks so as to prevent your Hard Disk crash and then go for Data Recovery techniques. As it is always said "Prevention is better than cure"

HDDlife for Notebooks 2.8.99 (shareme.com)

The simplest and most reliable method to protect data on a hard drive is to monitor its health. Even within a standard operating system, you will be able to protect your notebook hard drive if you add the HDDlife drive health monitor to standard utilities. It constantly monitors the drive state and shows you the health percentage. HDDlife gives recommendations and takes measures to ensure the health of your drive.

Initial steps in hard drive recovery (free-backup.info)

If you find that your hard drive is no longer functioning, remember that a hard drive recovery is nearly always possible, so there is no need for panic. Data loss is not unusual and in nearly all cases the data can be recovered. Only in severe severe cases involving platter damage, magnetic degradation, or over-write of a file will the data be practically unrecoverable…

Data recovery firm sounds Mac hard drive damage alert

Updated Data recovery company Retrodata has challenged Apple to come clean about what it claims is a "critical manufacturing flaw" affecting some hard drives used in MacBook laptops and desktops like the Mac Mini - an issue that could result in data loss.

According to Retrodata, its customers have sent in a much higher number of failed Seagate 2.5in SATA drives made in China and loaded with firmware version 7.01 than of any other current hard drive model.

Disk data loss caused by magnetic avalanches

Scientists have discovered that "avalanche" effects in spinning magnetic fields can cause data loss in disk drives - and are working on changes to recording layer chemistry that should give us more reliable storage.

Crashed Hard Disk Drive Heads

The hard drive is most likely making a grinding and scraping noise. Think dentist drill, its painful, and thats how it feels for your drive. Sounds nasty and is stripping the magnetic coating off the platters. Immediately turn the drive off and disconnect it from your computer. Then call us. Repeated use in this state is rapidly decreasing the chances of recovery. The sooner we can start the recovery, the greater the chance of success before it totally corrupts the hard drive data platter.

Again, do not run 'software' recovery programs in this state. They cause Disk I/O read / writes, and this places increased stress on the heads, which causes errors to be written to the disk, further decreasing the chances of data recovery.

Common Faults observed in Hard Disk Drives - Failure - Failed - Dead!

Commonly known as the 'Click of Death'. Your hard drive is on its way out, along with your data. One of the noisy hd faults.
A common fault which is usually easy to spot. When the drive is initially powered up, a logic check ensures that the drive has attained the necessary speed before launching the heads across the platter. If the drive can not attain a 'Ready' state, the logic is repeated for a pre-determined number of times causing a clicking sound, after which it stops trying.Your hard disk drive now appears dead.

Do not run 'software' recovery programs in this state. They cause Disk I/O read / writes, and this places increased stress on the heads, which causes errors to be written to the disk, further decreasing the chances of data recovery.

Hitachi Laptop Hard Drive Data Recovery

There are many laptop manufacturers who use Hitachi notebook hard disk drives. You can find them in Dell and Sony's to name just a couple. As you are probably aware, Hitachi purchased IBM's hard disk drive division in 2002. I remember the date well since it was on my birthday June 4th. Hitachi kept the 2 primary hard disk lines going: Travelstar and Deskstar.

With the takeover, quality of the hard drives didn't fall off, in fact the drives actually got better! Take for instance the Deskstar. This drive was commonly referred to as the Deathstar drive in the computer repair industry. Now it is one of the better drives. Since Hitachi maintained, if not increased, IBM's market share of hard disk sales, DTI sees a lot of Hitachi hard drives sent in for data recovery. This isn't a statement against Hitachi or the quality of their drives. ALL HARD DRIVES FAIL! If you are interested in the reason for the failures read my wife's post Why Hard Drives Fail .
OK the sales portion of the post is over so lets start talking about specific hard disk recovery issues we run into with Hitachi laptop or notebook drives. The most common Hitachi laptop hard drive is the Travelstar.

Here is a collection of model numbers with current faults we are seeing although this is not gospel and diagnostic procedures need to be run before accurate fault prognoses can be found

Drivecrash.com Hard Disk Data Recovery

Drivecrash.com specializes in recovering data from all types of data storage device/media. We have access to leading-edge data recovery technology, which allows us to recover data in the fastest and most efficient way.

If you have just suffered a loss of access to your hard drive, then the first thing to remember is not to panic!

In most cases (in fact over 97% of them), using correct procedures, data can be recovered from inaccessible or defective storage device.

A desperate action to remedy a data loss issue can often compound the problem, with a serious possiblity of causing irreversible data loss.

At Drivecrash.com, we understand that an unexpected loss of data can cause not just a break in business continuity, but also a degree of stress.

From our experiences of dealing with past clients, we find that loss of data strangely always seems to occur at the worst possible moment.

If you are currently suffering a fault, rest assured that we will do our best to ensure that your missing data is retrieved in no more time than is necessary.

Whether it be a missing client database critical to the running of your business or vital financial records for the tax man, let us give you the professional support and reassurance that you deserve.

All recovery jobs are treated on an urgent basis and recovery in most cases takes less than 24 hours to complete. Of course, recoveries requiring that special components be ordered may take a little longer.

Drivecrash.com specializes in recovering data from all types of data storage device/media. We have access to leading-edge data recovery technology, which allows us to recover data in the fastest and most efficient way. If you have just suffered a loss of access to your hard drive, then the first thing to remember is not to panic! In most cases (in fact over 97% of them), using correct procedures, data can be recovered from inaccessible or defective storage device.

All recovery jobs are treated on an urgent basis and recovery in most cases takes less than 24 hours to complete.