Lost Photo’s

March 22nd, 2012

Have you switched your computer system on, logged in, only to discover that your photo’s are not available?

Can you imagine if this did happen to you how you would fee? All your digital photo’s lost, gone, not available, this could be all of the family holidays, weddings, parties and all other events and places you have taken photos of all the memories now lost, so if you are reading this and have not lost your photo’s time to think about backing them up to other storage devices such as external hard drives and disks, never rely on a single disk to store any precious data, utilise at least 2 other forms of storage.

If however you are in the position of having lost photo’s then please do not panic as this will make the situation much worse, you may make a rash decision which will compound the situation further, ask all users of the system who used it last? Did they move the photo’s? Or notice any strange activity such as a virus or malware? Did they run and utility that might have moved the photo’s? If after answering all these questions there are no explantions then a professional data recovery service may be the solution.

Our labs reunite owners with their photos on a regular basis, from home users to professional photographers take advantage of our digital photo data recovery services to both PC and Apple mac computer systems.

Apple Mac systems offer a trash area for deleted photo’s, if this option has tried and failed please switch of the computer and contact the lab for help, similarly with a PC system the file system offer a recycle bin, again if after checking here and no photo’s are showing for restore they may still be available in the slack or orphaned area of the file system, maybe the B-tree nodes are damaged for the Mac? Again professional solutions are here to help restore those important photo’s, it is very important that in these type of situations the computer system is switched off imediatley as further use could destroy and possibility of recovery as the operating system will treat the area of deleted data as available and start to utilise it, thus destroying by way of an overwrite the photo’s.

What about software downloads from the Internet? Again caution should be the by word, unless you absolutely understand the file system you are dealing with, ie. FAT, HFS(+), NTFS how the failure took place and failure type, write blocking / cloning and file system reconstruction then please do not attempt to use data recovery software, as again you could destroy any chance you have of recovery.

Our labs have recovered data which for the client is over 10 years worth of photo’s, one recent case the photo’s spanned back some 40 years and was the entire collection of a family from childhood to grandparents, the hard drive in this instance was a Samsung, it had suffered from a very serious head crash and had been to two of UK’s largest data recovery labs who had failed to recover a single file, following clean room work a massive 800GB of data, and some 50,000 photo’s were recovered for a very delighted client.

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Dell 2950 Poweredge Data Recovery

February 27th, 2012

Recently a Dell 2950 Poweredge serve was hand delivered to our labs, the server setup was Dell Perc controller and 3 x 73GB SAS fibre hard drives, the operating system was Windows 2003 with NTFS.

The actual RAID setup was RAID 5 64 stripe backwards dynamic, the RAID set contained a exchange server and users data, office type data, word, excel etc.

After examining all three disks the RAID was rebuilt with our in house proprietary technology.

After scanning the RAID the MBR and partition information was discovered and the file system was rebuilt, further to this the data was backed up on a 256AES storage device, lastly a full folder and file listing was sent to the client for approval, which they did.

SAS hard drives are usually very reliable and offer many years of service, and are of course the choice to select when building a RAID array, however as they are electromechanical devices they are prone to this failure type as in this instance.

RAID 5 only allows for one hard drive to fail, as was the case here, and depending if it is a parity drive and or a rebuild or attempt has taken place data recovery for end users is not possible, our labs perform RAID recoveries frequently, for all makes such as this Dell Poweredge.

Further to a disk failing the RAID had suffered from a logical issue which halted the O/S from loading and booting the system up, it only requires one sector to be inoperable that is vital to the loading and bootstrap for the system to halt.

If you have a failed or failing Dell Poweredge 2950 with errors messages such as degraded, drive offline or similar non operation error messages please do get in touch today for a solution to recover your business data.

You may be operating your’e Dell server on a non windows environment such as Linux or Unix, again this is no problem as the engineers can deal with EXT/2/3/4 XFS SGS file systems.

It is worth mentioning that a decent UPS be fitted with your Dell server, these will stop any excess voltages, surges or outages that could lead to data loss, in the event of a power down off or outage the system may be setup to auto boot, make sure that the USB com ms cable and required software is connected and installed.

Further advice would be to have suffient extra cooling directly to the hard drives where possible as excess heat can destroy hard drives and disks and degrade performance significantly.

Extra RAM will take the load from the hard drives and store to memory for faster reading and writing of data and over all reliability allowing for a better end user experience and transport of data.

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Seagate HDD not detected – DIY internet advice

November 24th, 2011

Another Seagate not detected by the BIOS came into the labs the other day, the difference with this case was that the client a well known local large electronics company that offers services to the MOD had found information on the Internet and had attempted to repair the faulty Seagate and recover the data themselves.

What commands had been issued to the faulty hard drive remain to be known, however the case was severely compounded by the client issuing commands found from an Internet search, although well intentioned very nearly made a recoverable case into a unrecoverable case.

Firstly diagnosis is required as to the failure type, is it electronic, firmware or mechanical or perhaps a combination of all three failure types?

All computer users and even technicians unless they are hard drive experts will not understand and diagnose a failed or failing HDD, and then to apply what has been found on the Internet can be a serious mistake.

In this case it was a serious firmware failure, the Seagate hard drive would spin up, calibrate and come ready, however no surface access was possible as it was not detected by the BIOS.

The translator had issues and this was compounded by the client issuing commands that could have ‘bricked it’, or shall we say destroyed any chances of any possible data recovery, the case very complex and required senior engineers to handle the case.

The end result was 100% successful, the failed hard drive contained specialist software, CAD data and office type data which was very valuable to the client.

It is understood that current economic times are tough, but to attempt a do it yourself of a complex data recovery case will not help your situation, professional data recovery services are the only option you should consider taking and avoid any Internet self help groups and forums with none qualified advice and help.

Seagate commands are lengthy and complex further to this the diagnosis can only be made by HDD engineers with years of knowledge and experience, as there are different families and models and different modes, some commands will destroy data in a matter of minutes with no reversal, simply hooking up a serial TTL adapter and terminal in to the hard drive will not suffice and should be avoided at all costs.

In essence Seagate data recovery should be left to those that can prove that they have the capabilities, knowledge and equipment to undertake a successful recovery and retrieve your important and precious data, whether that is family photos, business accounts, or a music collection.

Hard drive technology has changed considerably of the last relatively short years, and the cost has gone down and capacity increased, this can lead to a false security in terms of data reliability, hard drive complexity and a data re3tireval service, which will cost more than the original hard drive, data backup on multiple systems will ensure integrity and longevity of data.

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HDD Guru

November 10th, 2011

What exactly is a HDD Guru?

HDD = Hard Disk Drive

Guru = Some one with vast, great knowledge in a specific or defined area of information.

A true HDD Guru would be a someone who possess greater knowledge and understanding of hard drive technology from concept to working directly with this media type.

Many today claim to be Guru’s in many different fields of knowledge, however much of this information is either anecdotal, unverified or not qualified in any way at all, it is often unsubstantiated dribble from self appointed people that hide there identity from scrutiny or further discussions and post there dangerous and misleading comments on the Internet, YouTube videos are a favourite to post ‘data recovery’ and ‘hard drive fixes’ for the desperate to follow.

Classic examples include the freezer trick as it is affectionately called, the videos claim that placing a failed hard drive into the freezer for varying amounts of time will fix the hard drive and help you recover your important data, this is simply untrue and very stupid advice, never place your hard drive in the freezer you will for sure destroy any chances of data recovery.

The Internet is a wonderful resource for information and help and all manner of subjects from health for finance, unless the website has some credentials or is backed by professionals, what value can it be? Would you consider following health advice and personally administering any concoction purchased online? Of course not, how about discount heart surgery? No way I would not do that!, however thousands of desperate computer users that have lost valuable data visit websites to glean information on their failed hard drive and how they can recover the data themselves.

yes the times are tough in an economic sense, and costs are important, but why risk losing all your data by following advice of a self proclaimed HDD Guru? Perhaps you have lost family photos, or maybe critical business data, don’t risk your information by applying a DIY fix.

The data recovery industry often will use such terms as diagnosis, prognosis, Patient and donor, yes these are also used in the medial world, and in many ways they are apt, for instance are you aware that each hard drive manufacture is unique just as you are? and that often times a unique solution will be required to solve your data loss issue?

Self administration whether for medical ailments, or for data recovery are not wise, as always the best way forward is to consult a professional with years of experience in a particular field, the old adage also comes into play, ‘a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing’.

So how will you know if the company or organization you are dealing with are HDD Guru’s?
Have they performed the same type of recovery that you require on the same model of hard drive?
How long have they been in business? Obviously the longer the better.
Can they show independent verification form existing clients?
Do they outsource or do they have their own laboratory? Ask or look for proof of this.

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Google freshens stuff up

November 4th, 2011

Google announced a ‘significant update’ to its search algorithm as of yesterday 2 November 2011.

The latest update from the worlds most popular search engine effects  ’35%’ of searches and followes on from Caffeine update, the latest update is more of an algo change.

As the Internet grows an almost exponential rate many users are looking for fresh content specific to their requirements, this update is aimed at delivering the freshest content to searchers.

searchers will be able to see if the data is historic or is very current.

A spokesperson for google announced on the company blog;

“Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”

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Buffalo TeraStation Data Recovery

November 1st, 2011

Buffalo TeraStation is a popular NAS storage device with computer users from across the globe.

The actual configuration the NAS is dependant on the model, and hard drive configuration such as RAID 0, 1 or RAID 5.

Actual failures that you may have experienced vary from power failure or outages, hard drive crashed, firmware failure, logical failure to the file system, there are many failure type scenarios that you may have experienced, our labs are here to help recover your lost Buffalo TeraStation data, however it may have failed.

Following a failure of the RAID you may have tried to rebuild the data, this is not a good idea as you may actually destroy the data you require.

Any individual hard drive that may have a specific issue such as clicking or unusual noises may indicate a physical failure of the drive and so a rebuild will not complete, or may drop the drive from the array and rebuild without the data set, additionally the damaged drive will become more damaged with prolonged attempted use, our advice is to switch off and contact our labs for a solution.

Errors may be seen via the web based control panel and will give specific error messages pertaining to the exact failure that you have please make note of this error when contacting the lab.

The file system is based on xfs and is considered a Linux box.

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Data Recovery London

October 27th, 2011

Are based in London and have a data recovery request? Look no further our labs can help you however your media may have failed we have solutions to recover your lost data.

Overwhelmingly 0ver 90% of the clients we service are from London and the surrounding area, our labs can arrange a free collection and diagnosis of your failed hard drive or disk.

Please visit our clients pages where you will discover a brief selection of clients that we have helped, there you will see some of the largest companies and organizations not only on the UK, but the world.

One famous client is The Imperial College London and the British Library, both needed our services for failed external hard drives which were very badly damaged and required complex work to recover their data, both cases were successful.

Our sevices can be used for hard drives, disks, ipads,  PDA’s, iPod in fact there is no media that our labs aren’t able to deal with, file systems include Windows, Apple Mac, Linux, Unix and proprietry file and operating systems.

RAID systems require specialist knowledge, sometimes clients attempt a rebuild of the array, this procedure could actually destroy and useful data and should not be attempted.

With on site in house clean room facilities you can be sure that your data is in safe hands at our labs.

A free collection and diagnosis is also available to all clients based in the London area.

A recent article found here;

http://www.haringeyindependent.co.uk/news/topstories/9088343.Health_bosses_deny_risk_to_patients_over_data_loss/

This article was based on lost laptops from the NHS North Central London, a spokesman for the NHS claimed there was “a very low risk” patients could be identified from it.

This article pinpoints the value of data today and the need to protect and preserve the security held on computer system, and as such there are a variety of systems available to accomplish this task.

Passwords are very important, and to this end there are several types of passwords, such as applications passwords, that is to say a password with the application itself such as Microsoft office Word passwords, secondly and more importantly there are ATA hard drive passwords which offer very high security, these passwords are locked to the disk in question.

Our labs can advice you on data security and data recovery issues that you may be experiencing.

Data centres based at canary Wharf in London store the UK’s vast majority of information and some petabytes of data travel through the network on both inbound and out band excursions many websites both for business and home users utilise their infrastructure on a daily basis.

Please make sure that you have a data disaster continuity plan in place and that you have sufficient current backups of all your data.

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Western Digital 1TB hard drive dropped

October 27th, 2011

Western Digital WD hard drives and disks are now a very popular brand and are used by many of the worlds largest computer builders due to their excellent ROI and performance.

Our labs have been recovering data from WD Western Digital hard drives for over 7 years and have solid track record in recovering lost data from this brand of hard drive, from all types of failures such as dropped, clicking, noisy , virus damage, formatted, not detected in the BIOS, there is no issue that our engineers haven’t seen.

Some users have reported that their WD hard drive may spin and and appear to be working but then report back to the system that it is 0MB, or no capacity shown, so the logical / physical geometry of the HDD appears to be dysfunctional, this issue is regularly fixed at our clean room labs to the delight of end users, the cause is usually based around the firmware and requires specialist knowledge and equipment to access the system area and undertake a diagnosis and subsequent repair.

WD hdd are often seen in external storage devices and are now very popular, increasingly the Labs has seen dropped Western hard drives, especially while the drive is operating, it can happen quite easily as often the hard drive is near the computer system where it can be accidentally moved or knocked, many users report that it it fell on its side or that the disk only fell onto the floor, in the R&D lab engineers have simulated such failures and have seen first hand what happens to a dropped hard drive from just 1″ or less, the damage is quite severe.

Users often ask why is there so much damage from only a small fall? The reason is that the heads fly at less than 1 micron above rotating platters of typically 7200RPM, so they do not have to travel very far at all to come into contact with the disk surface, hard drives and disks are precisely tunes and setup and are very delicate devices.

Recently the lab received a dropped Western Digital WD hard drive, in this instance the failure was compounded by seized bearings this then required a platter transplant, this procedure is the most complex undertaken for any lab and involved moving the platters to another good working donor hard drive chassis, this procedure is often mentioned by clients who assume that is the way to fix all HDD, this is not so and should only be undertaken for seized bearings, never attempt this procedure yourself as you will destroy the hard drive and any data on the disk.

The outcome for the dropped WD hard drive was a successful data recovery for the client who was absolutely delighted with the result.

If you are reading this blog and have other external hard drives and disks make sure that they are in a decent position and that you have the data duplicated elsewhere in case you accidentally drop or knock your hard drive.

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Can you crack the secret code?

October 27th, 2011

Our video that is located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B328FiPqSDU has been viewed nearly 5,000 times yet despite this and the fact that it has been available for over 2 years nobody has actually cracked the code? Can you?

The team have received some very elaborate and complex answers to the embedded secret code that is contained within the video sequence but as of yet know one has actually given the correct answer, in fact it has led the team here to consider offering prize money to the first person or organization to crack it.

Considering the UK was the a powerhouse of thinkers ranging back to the days of Enigma and the second world war we are absolutely sure that this cipher can be decoded very easily!

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NAS Data Recovery

October 27th, 2011

NAS data recovery to Buffalo Terastation PRO back up 4 x 250 gig Seagate hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration was successfully completed on a emergency service level via our engineers.

The client ( A very large PLC) contacted our lab to explain that the Buffalo was ‘dead’ or had failed and on inspection it was discovered via our engineers that the unit had suffered from multiple failures, electronically, surface issues of the media and severs logical corruption of the file system which was Linux.

125 GB of very important data was recovered, a file listing was sent to the client via our IntegriCheck, who confirmed all mission critical data had been recovered, this recovered data was then copied to a new Seagate external hard drive and shipped to the client via an fast courier service.

Typical failures of this type of drive are LED and or audible beeping from the unit.

Error codes displayed range from E00 to E23, for a full list of codes and explanation please call our labs for further help and information.

Rebuilding a failed RAID array after a failure is not the way forward and may in certain circumstances completely destroy or at the very least compound the recovery further, and issues with your RAID contact us now.

Setup and configuration is based around the web app called Buffalo NAS Navigator which will identify what and where any NAS units are on your local network, there are plenty of options from RAID 0, 1, 5.

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