Recently there has been what can only be described as an ‘explosion’ of data recovery companies appearing and offering their ‘expert’ services to the unsuspecting public.
Claims such as 15 and sometimes 20 years of data recovery experience is given as fact on their websites, but when you look closer at the incorporation data or when the website first went live you discover significantly lower time scales.
What does all of this actually mean? Why is this really important? After all if you are in the unfortunate position that you have lost data you just want it back quickly right? Well you may want to consider what the success rate of the company is, i mean how good are they at data recovery? Will they make the situation worse? Sadly there are companies out there which do not have the experience, knowledge, and equipment, their failed attempts can now either compound the recovery further, render the media unrecoverable or as in some cases we have observed maliciously and willfully destroy the media further to stop any possible recovery attempt by another lab, yes it is shocking but this practice does happen!

Choosing the right data retrieval company is absolutely essential, if the data has any value whatsoever such as personal photographs or business data such as accounts or databases then you must select wisely.
Compare the scenario to your health, after all surely you would not take the absolute advice you discover from an Internet search then self medicate?  Dangerous stuff indeed! however it happens regularly clients either try a DIY approach, a colleague or friend, to ‘just have  a look’ or select a company on a very narrow criteria such as costs alone, with the lowest figure firm winning your attention.
True, costs are extremely important, not least because of the current credit crunch the UK and wider world are going through at present, however the abiding point must surely be , can they actually do the job?

So how can you select from the plethora of options available?
Knowledge. Yes information from friends, family, colleagues, Blogs and groups will give recommendation’s and off course not so glowing and downright avoidance information regarding who they chose and the actual outcome of their data loss.

The usual suspects…
Tell tale signs of all is not as it seems with a prospective DR firm can be they require a diagnosis fee, at first this seems very reasonable, but when they come back with ’sorry your hard drive is unrecoverable’ you get that awful sinking feeling you may have been duped, imagine a business model in which the company simply looks at media all day long for a modest fee, their very happy unfortunately data rarely is recovered.
Another issue is parts or spares, this is a truly legitimate area, but with a caveat, the actual cost of the parts and for what exactly? Hard drives are unique each and everyone is unique to itself this presents challenges in the sourcing of some components, we are aware that some data recovery companies are simply overcharging for parts required and can often run into hundreds of pounds when the actually part may be only £30-£50, the hook point is this, ‘We can recover your data, however we need to purchase spares’, this is wholly misleading unless the company are absolutely 100% sure that the parts will recover the data, as in some instances the procedure can fail for a number of reasons, this must be outlined and explained to you so that you can make an informed decision as to proceed or not.

What data will you actually recover?
A full recoverable folder and file listing must be emailed to you before you make any final decisions, if the all important stuff is not recovered, why pay?

Our labs offer transparent services starting with acknowledgement of safe custody of your media, to a fixed FREE quote,structured turnaround times, any costs explained at the outset for spares and probability of success, and finally a full folder and file listing sent before any final committal.

Our labs have a proven track record with clients from home users to large business accounts and all types media and failure types.

Moving seemingly faster than C or the speed of light the IT sector is perceived grow at an almost exponential rate creating built in obsolesce.

Recently the data labs team were contacted by the local BBC radio station who had been contacted by Ross in bloom flower festival, the organisers had lost a piece of work which was 6 months in the making.
The paper was created in the now defunct Canon Star writer format and as the machine was now no longer operable the floppy disk containing the work could not be accessed via a personal computer system and as the star writer was 15 years old they could not find any service supplier with that particular type of technology, this was a classic technology gap, that is to say that the original equipment no loner functioned, could not be serviced or replaced leaving the data or media ’stranded’ with no ordinary means of being edited and printed.
Upon diagnosis the 1.44MB floppy drive contained the file in question in word star format our engineers were able to manually via a hex editor restructure the contents and formatting and then convert it to a more usable and up to data Word format, the client was very happy as it contained over 5000 words with many hours of research.

Tape systems are now entering this phase of technology gap entropy, that is to say that over time not only will the media degrade due to basic physics but that the system themselves very quickly get left behind in favor of newer system such as disk to disk backup which is now growing in popularity.

A basic audit on a yearly basis can diminish the chances of this type of data loss occurring by evaluating the total IT infrastructure of your organisation you can identify what may be seriously redundant kit with no secondary service or equipment available to replace failing hardware, this would be the time to replace the equipment, but what about the data? Conversion services are available to all formats, operating systems, and custom hard ware and software, for instance converting Mac to PC and vica versa, PC to Unix and application conversion from such systems as loco script, word star, word perfect etc to newer more manageable data sets.

For this particular case the client was extremely happy that the data could be converted and has now invested in a more modern computer set up, there are though countless others such as authors who utilize this perfectly adequate system which is fit for their purpose but their lies the danger so make that audit part of your plans in the near future.

2004 was an eventful year for the data recovery labs no least because of this particular story of data loss.

An Italian restaurateur called our offices regarding his accounts that were stored on his 2.5″ hard drive which he had been working on the morning he called in.
The client was working on the laptop at his breakfast table and finishing his final accounts for that year when he accidentally dropped his coffee cup directly over the laptop.
In his panicked state he immediately attempted switch the laptop back on to see if there were signs of life, however the laptop was dead.
After contacting a friend he removed the 2.5″ hard drive and tried connecting it via a USB caddy to a second computer with no results the laptop media was also dead.
This situation was exacerbated by the client then deciding to open up the hard drive, and in his words he explains how he felt, ‘ I was desperate and panicking, i just thought i would open the hard drive up to see if i could fix anything’, suffice to say there was nothing the client could do as the inside of the hard drive did not yield any meaningful help and looked alien to him as he had never seen inside a hard drive before.

This is the actual 2.5″ Hitachi laptop hard drive with coffee spillage.

Our labs took safe custody of the hard disk the very next day and sure enough the hard drive was covered in coffee stains.
It was immediately moved to our class 10 clean room area where engineers started to asses the situation and make decisions as to the best possible action, which in this case was specialist cleaning as dried coffee contain many elements.
Cleaning was successful then the hard drive was rebuilt with all damaged components such as head stack assembly replaced , work on the printed circuit board was the final physical part of the recovery this included replacing damaged surface mount components.
Finally the drive was ready to be imaged via our cloning team who made an exact replica of the user data area which was then scanned via a hex editor to recompile the raw image back into meaningful and launchable files, the accounts were totally recovered along with family photos and other personal data.

Opening of the hard drive by the client could have made the situation unrecoverable , especially if the media was allowed to spin for a period of time in this state.
Occasionally our labs will receive media which has been opened in no clean room conditions and invariably the data is not recoverable due to the extra damage suffered on the surface of the platters, never open hard disk drives in non clean room conditions unless you want to compound the recovery or create an unrecoverable situation.

Many people have heard of the term spontaneous human combustion (SHC) this belief of some is that the body ignites and burns without any external influence whatsoever, of course this is not a qualified or exact science and is consigned typically to the anecdotes of history, however our labs received a hard drive which did spontaneously ignite and smoke while in the users hands.

The story began back in 2005 when a lady on an extended sabotecial from the USA contacted our labs for help here data and that of here partner which was a three year thesis and some 100,000 words was stored on said hard drive.
Following the computer system at here home failing she inlisted the help of here IT department, sensible move especially as the IT department was a division of the MOD with high end equipment and well trained professionals.

Technicians at the clients workplace connected up and switched on the power to the 3.5″ Maxtor hard drive, instantly the drive began to smoke a few seconds later the drive popped with a flash clearly seen and heard within the department.

After they had cleared the smoke filled room they realised that this possible recovery was beyond their capability and enlisted our services.
What has caused such a seemingly catastrophic failure?
Upon diagnosis at our labs it was imediately apparent that there was a major issue with the PCB or printed circuit board as one the chips was completely charred and burnt.
What chip had blown?

Hard drives are comprised of spinning magnetic media commonly known as platter(s) these platters are span via a spindle motor and bearing system, the spindle motor is controlled via a smooth chip, this smooth chip which had died can suffer from several conditions that may cause premature failure such as thermal changes within the computer system and if the actual hard drive has no adequate cooling it can cause thermal runaway of the component which will cause it to fail as in the particular case.
Further examination of the hard drive revealed more damage to the media and the head stack assembly (HSA) was diagnosed as faulty this issue was compounded as the Maxtor drive was not a widely used model and the head preamplifier was difficult to trace.

Logistics and hard drive tracing department sourced a drive from the USA following clean room work on the disk enclosure which involved head stack replacement and surface mount electronic repairs access to the user data area was established.

Imaging was then initiated from the begining to the end of the user data area from this image our engineers were able to extract all the required information including the 3 year thesis.

During 2005 our labs received a phone call and subsequent email from a distressed Gentleman from Norway.
While enjoying the afternoon with his family on a Norwegian beach his laptop which was being used to backup photos from his digital camera accidentally fell into the Norwegian sea!

Suffice to say the client was extremely distressed to discover that the laptop would not boot up and displayed the message ‘No valid boot disk’. This error message created a great deal of gloom for the family because not only did the laptop contain that days photos but others from years previous.
Following an online search for data recovery services the client was eventually directed to our website where he duly contacted us for advice and help as to how to retrieve the precious data on the laptop hard drive.
During the conversation the client admitted to trying to gain access to the drive by connecting it to another computer system, this we informed the distraught client was not wise as water ingress would have probably occurred as it would have gained access to the disk enclosure and entered into the hard drive cavity and due to the properties of sea water there would be much specialist cleaning required, it was imperative that the drive not be switched on again and that it should be shipped to our labs a.s.a.p.
Following our safe receipt of the 2.5″ media our support staff phones the client to inform him that we have safe custody of the device and that an immediate free diagnosis of the media would begin.
The diagnosis involved examining the PCB or printed circuit board and the disk enclosure in our class 10 clean room environment.
It was clear from the beginning that minerals from the sea salt water had been deposited and that specialist cleaning would be required to take the recovery to the next stage.
Following the cleaning of the hard drive media the engineers attempted access to the user data area and with success! from this point the drive was handed over to the imaging team that created an exact clone of the media from the beginning to the end of the user data area.
Logical structure and file checking was next in the stages of recovery with specific attention paid to the .jpg or photo files that was required with engineers launching a random amount of data to check the integrity and usefulness of the file structure, all files that were required were recovered and moreover they were fully functional!
This was achieved with 48 hours of the labs receiving the 2.5 laptop hard drive media the drive was then returned to the client, his kind words of appreciation was typical of thankful computer users who have suffered data loss.
The real moral here is never try to attempt a data recovery to any media which has suffered from physical damage and as in this instance with water damage never switch the drive on, then contact professional data recovery labs for assistance.