What are some of the Recovery Techniques?

The term “data recovery” herein refers to accessing logically and/or physically damaged storage media, for which no functioning backup exists.

Techniques for recovery from logical damage can be done through data recovery software downloaded from the web; these data damage are more closely related to operating system and the software programs used to create the data, and not the hard disk itself.

Techniques for recovering data from physically damaged hard disk can be described as “part replacement” whereby printed circuit boards (PCBs) are swapped; heads are transplanted; motors and base castings are “replaced” by remounting the disks onto the spindle of a donor drive; and firmware or system information is replaced or “refreshed” by rewriting it. Placing the disks in a donor drive swaps everything – except for the on-disk system information. Data stored on portions of the magnetic layer of the disk that have been physically removed; such as due to a slider (head) scraping away the surface, cannot be recovered.

Industry best-practices include never writing anything to the damaged drive. This is probably the most common mistake of do-it-yourself recovery attempts. Instead the malfunctioning drive is “cloned” as soon as possible. The cloned image on a new drive is then used for all data recovery procedures.

As newer drives are being introduced, data recovery gets more difficult. The hyper-tuning that simultaneously enables higher data density and higher yields causes the data recovery industry’s traditional hardware repair method of part replacement to fail in more drive models. While some drive models currently have recovery success rates above 90%, and others are above 60%, an increasing number have practically no chance of recovery for most part replacements.

Current state-of-the-art research for system area refreshing focuses on developing algorithms that can  quickly and adequately re-optimize all important channel, preamp, and servo system parameters without rewriting over data. This capability is needed both when the system area information is corrupted and when a headstack transplant is necessary.

IMPORTANT - Do’s and Don’ts 

To avoid further damage to your media and prevent extended data loss:

• Do not perform any operation on the storage device that will cause physical damage to the device or the data on it
• Do not write to any of the files on the device or add additional files
• Do not format the drive
• Do not modify the partitions on the drive (using  FDISK or any other partitioning software)
• Do not try to open the device to see what is wrong. (Hard drives are particularly sensitive to contamination and   should only be opened in a microscopically clean environment)

Cease using the hard drive or storage device that requires recovery.

If your drive is making unusual noises or showing other obvious signs of distress, shut it down immediately and do not power it up again. Before you forget them, write down all symptoms of the failure and all recent actions and events involving your computer.

Contact ReTriev Systems for additional advice (which will depend on the type of media involved).

If you have a backup, evaluate how current it is and if it will fulfill your needs. Consider restoring your backup to a different system in case you find that critical files are missing or outdated.

Do remember that professional data recovery is a skill learned from practice and requires highly specialized tools.

While data recovery can seem expensive because it is a highly technical and labor intensive process, recreating your data may be significantly more expensive. Also, the turnaround time for data recovery is usually much faster than the time it would take to recreate your lost files from scratch.