Category Archives: Disk Data Recovery

Don’t slap it, freeze it, spin it or smother it in peanut butter. Computer users are often frustrated and concerned that necessary data has been permanently lost when a hard drive gives up. To follow are a few facts that you need to remember when facing situations of data loss.

On formatting:
The hard drive won’t die if you format it. Formatting will not magically cause it to gather dust and/or lint on the platter surface. Formatting doesn’t worsen bad sectors nor does it stress the machine. You can format it every day and probably not change the unpredictable lifespan of the drive.

On power supplies:
The information placed on a hard drive has very little to do with its lifespan. The same applies in the case of power supplies. Cheap, low-power cables do not slowly choke your hard drive to death, although a power surge may fry it. Check the connectors carefully, and ensure that you turn off the device and unplug it when it’s not in use. Hard drives recalibrate (spin up and down) to regulate temperature, or when they can’t properly read data from the platters. This may be a symptom of a dying hard drive, but it is not caused by insufficient power. A drive with insufficient energy will simply power down.

On bad sectors:
A bad sector is a part of the drive that can’t be read or written properly. In most occasions logical data recovery will restore misplaced information. In other words, simply reformatting the drive won’t work. Bad sectors are a sign that something is wrong with the drive. You may be able to avoid bad sectors by re-routing and using previously spare sectors – but this pressurises the performance of the heads. Always back up data before attempting to delete bad sectors. Don’t ignore bad sectors in the hope that they’ll go away, as they are a sign of problems to come.

Don’t be misled by zany data recovery myths that have “reportedly” been successful. Save your data and the use of your hard drive by sending it to professionals for reliable and safe data recovery services.

Novell Netware is one of the better prepared operating systems when it comes to providing back ups for its files and securing them against accidental deletion. Netware stores all deleted files and keeps them available in case of emergency recovery.

There is, however, a catch, the feature is invalidated when the user runs a directory purge or when someone runs a purge on the entire volume. In addition to this, when Netware senses that the server is running out of storage space, it will remove deleted files, starting with the oldest, which are deemed the most unnecessary.

It is possible to recover deleted files, corrupt volumes and to save data if the drive can’t be mounted. Certain experts are also able to retrieve data from corrupted, deleted and formatted Netware volumes, and failed drives.

As with all occasions of data loss, once you have realised that the loss has occurred it is important to stop working on your computer at once. Do not try to fix the problem yourself; you will invariably do more harm than good. Take it to the data recovery specialists, they know what they are doing and they have the tools to do it. You can relax, safe in the knowledge that all of your computer concerns will be taken care of.

Hard drive files are stored on areas of the disk called sectors, in units called clusters. Clusters can be strewn across the hard disk, or in a continuous line. A windows file system called NTFS or the older FAT system, logically orders data by assigning a file name to point to locations on the disk magnetic surface. The location contains all data pertaining to that file and the file name holds information about how to reorder or reassemble the data. Because the data may be located arbitrarily around the overall disk surface, it becomes very difficult for a data recovery expert to reconstruct the puzzle that is the complete file. So even if filenames could be recovered and the address on disk of the data could be found, there is no guarantee that all the necessary data can be restored to full original condition. So some, not all scenarios have successful outcomes.

According to a paper by Peter Gutman, New Zealand science professor, from 1996, it is proposed that data can be recovered from disk sectors that have been over written. He outlines how read/write disk heads never travel over the same exact area of the disk twice, so by using a scanning electron microscope, one can reveal a “ghost track” of the old sector. This was based on the type of hard disk drives that preceded the IDE or ATA style drives used commonly today.

Now with a massive increase in bit density per square inch, and a decrease in hard disk track widths (down to nano levels), the possibility of recovering data in this way has greatly reduced.

Thomas Feher has claimed that if a disk drive is opened in a hermetically safe, clean environment, specialized equipment can be used to read residual magnetic traces that surround the newly written tracks and extract old data, even if the data has been overwritten numerous additional times. He claims that one of the Companies that can achieve this level of high-tech data recovery is Kuert Information Management.