Hard Drive Data Recovery

How Does Hard Drive Data Recovery Work?

Hard Drive Recovery is the process of extracting and recovering data from a laptop, desktop or external hard drive that has failed lmechanicaly, logically or by user error leaving you without access to your data.

Data Recovery is what we do! We recover data from any type of hard drive failure. Our engineers and technicians are trained to handle virtually every type of failure from any make and model hard drive. Whether your hard drive has been dropped, submerged in liquid, burned, hit by lightning, or it has simply failed on its own, we have what it takes to get your data. We recover data from Windows, Mac and Linux based computers and external devices. We work with hard drives that are clicking, beeping, buzzing, not spinning, dead, not recognizing, and more.

After recovering the data from your device, we will save your data to a brand new USB external hard drive or USB flash drive, depending on how much data is recovered. One of our data recovery technicians will then check and verify the integrity of the recovered data before we return it. We will keep a copy of your hard drive for about two weeks from the time we return your new storage device. This should give you enough time to go through the recovered data to verify the quality of the recovery. After the two week time period, we will wipe your data and close your case.

Logically Failed Hard Drive Recovery

A logically failed drive is generally in good condition mechanically. However, there has been an accidental or involuntary change or corruption to the boot sector, master file table, file system or operating system. In other words, the hard drive is not able to communicate with either the computer or the platters where the data is located. This type of failure prevents a computer from booting properly, accessing data as intended, or recognizing as a storage device within Windows, Mac or Linux. This type of failure typically does not require a clean room to successfully recover your data. Instead, our trained engineers use specialized software tools in combination with our hardware-based equipment to safely recover data from logically failed devices.

Using these tools, our engineers and technicians bypass the logical damage and recover the data from your logically failed hard drive safely. This advanced hardware-based data recovery equipment allows us to make a sector by sector copy of your logically failed hard drive. This is a safety precaution we take to protect against additional problems, accidents, or failures during the recovery attempt. We will then work with the sector by sector copy of your hard drive to recover your data. Using specialized software tools, we bypass the logical hard drive failure, gain access to the data, and repair any file structure damage, if possible.

Mechanically Failed Hard Drive Recovery

Hard drives are mechanical devices. They have a motor that spins metal disks called platters that store your data, read/write heads glide over one or both sides of each platter surface using electromagnetic technology, firmware that controls how and where the data is stored on the platters and a circuit board (PCB) that provides the interface to the computer.

Due to the multiple mechanical and nonmechanical parts in a hard drive, they can fail in a number of ways. The motor can fail, the heads can fail, the firmware can become corrupted or damaged, the PCB can fail, the platters can wear out, and..well...the list goes on.

A mechanically failed hard drive is first opened in our ISO 5 Class 100 clean room. A full, microscopic examination of the platters and read/write heads is performed. Our microscopes help us determine the specific damage that has made your data inaccessible. Next, we formulate a plan to deal with the specific failure and damage. Based on your type of hard drive, its unique failure, and our experience in dealing with similar situations, we devise a strategy to give the best chance for a full recovery of your data. With skilled hands and/or transplanted donor parts our technicians bring your failed hard drive back into a working condition. Finally, our engineers us state-of-the-art hard drive recovery devices to work with the hard drive to make necessary changes to the firmware and calibrate the new parts in order to gain access to your data. The clean room is an important and irreplaceable part of many data recovery issues. But the real magic happens with our engineers in the lab.

Once the initial mechanical damage has been bypassed, we make a sector by sector imaging clone of your drive using a tool specifically designed for this process. This equipment allows us to work with individual parts of the drive, specific zones on the platters, deal with additional firmware problems, and send specific commands to the HDD, thus overcoming and/or skipping damaged areas until we have worked through the problems to complete the best possible recovery of your data.

Using specialized software tools, we then bypass any latent logical hard drive failures, gain access to the data, and repair any file structure damage, if possible.

User Mistake Hard Drive Recovery

Sometimes people screw up, accidentally formatting their hard drive or unintentionally deleting wanted files. This creates a frustrating, often critical, situation when that data is vitally important for work or business Or it could prove very painful if that data is personally invaluable and irreplaceable. In many cases, we can recover your data but you need to stop using your computer or hard drive IMMEDIATELY. When a file is deleted from a hard drive, the data is not immediately wiped from the drive. That space is just reallocated to be used when needed. Success or failure in recovery depends on what is done after the deletion or format. Unlike what is seen on sensationalized crime shows, once a file has been written over, it is just plain gone. That is why it is so important to STOP. Much like a logical failure, we will start by creating a sector by sector clone of the hard drive. We will then scan the image drive using our specialized software. A technician then sifts through the recovered data to find what you are looking for. Basically, we are looking through a brand new puzzle looking for the few pieces that you are missing. It can cost as much to recover deleted data as any other recovery due to the amount of time it takes to we get the specific data you want.