Data Recovery
Computer users and many experts often consider lost data permanently destroyed, with no hope of recovery. And because much of the information about data loss is complex, inconsistent or inaccurate, it's not surprising that data loss and data recovery are some of the most confusing and misunderstood concepts.
At Cyber City we take the mystery and much of the expense associated with lost data out of the equation. Our data recovery engineers have studied data loss and have been performing successful recoveries for 20 years.
Our findings indicate that in most cases, data is recoverable – no matter what the circumstance. So, never assume your valuable data can't be recovered. Always check with a qualified data recovery expert before determining what to do when data loss has occurred.
A common misconception about hard drive data recovery is that repairing hard drives means replacing parts. If only it were that easy! Hard drive technology is always changing— manufacturers are constantly using different mechanical designs.
Today’s hard drives have no room for errors when it comes to platter and head alignment. The tolerances are so exacting that hard drive manufacturers even design ways to keep the Base-Casting Assembly, where all the components are attached to, from shifting due to high temperature situations. For instance, one hard drive manufacturer of high performance SCSI based drives actually designs their Base-Casting Assembly with pre-stress points. The assembly does not line up from corner to diagonal corner—it’s pre-torqued. When the casting assembly heats up, the unit actually twists back (thermal expansion) into a true line-up from corner to corner. With the byte-density of most large hard drives today being 4gb to 6gb per square inch, absolute precision is required for these high capacity and high speed drives to operate reliably. Hard disk manufacturers are working to increase how many bytes can be squeezed into a square inch.
The mechanical precision of today’s hard drives makes head assembly replacement nearly impossible without specialized tools. Platter removal is dangerous and will affect how the drive reads the sectors. As previously mentioned if just one component is out of alignment, the drive will not find the required sectors. If the hard disk electronics cannot find the sectors requested by the controller, it may endlessly try to find those sectors or it will shut down the unit.
Mechanical precision is just one side of hard drive technology - the electronics are just as finite. Exchanging circuit boards between drives used to be a quick way to work around a failed circuit board in the past. The electronics are much more complicated, and as a result the different revisions of a circuit board are rarely compatible. The innovations of the past 15 years have made a circuit board swap as a solution a thing of the past.
Today’s hard drives are designed from basic primary components as the foundation first and then other components are built around that. For instance, research and development improvements in platter and magnetic media require research and development improvements in head design. These designs require that the electronics be ‘custom-made’ for that drive. Hard drives are ‘fine-tuned’ to the properties of the storage media and read/write heads. Similar to how a radio is tuned to a specific radio frequency; hard drives are finely tuned to complement data signals that are read from the storage media.
Hard drive manufacturers make large batches of drives so there will be similarities between drive models. However, the Revision Code (proprietary hard drive read-only software that is used by the electronics to manage and operate the hard drive) changes frequently within the same model and batch. Hard drive innovation requires drives to be constantly improved upon. All of this requires extensive training in electronics and computer science to be able to work with these storage devices.
Qualifications of Hard Disk Recovery
To be able to work on hard drives, Cyber City has partnered with Ontrack Data Recovery. Ontrack Data Recovery has a dedicated research and development department that is made up of clean room engineers from our domestic and international offices. They work together with the hard drive manufacturers to find the best scientific approaches to hard drive failures.
The technological innovations in the hard disk storage industry have inspired Ontrack Data Recovery clean room engineers. They closely follow advancements made within the industry. Ontrack Data Recovery designs it's own software, hardware, and electronic tools to work with hard disk storage devices. Storage hardware should not be considered unrecoverable until determined so by Ontrack Data Recovery’s engineering staff. Ontrack Data Recovery has performed successful recoveries on drives that have been in fires, floods or that have had damage to the Base-Casting Assembly. In some cases where there is physical media damage, Ontrack Data Recovery engineers can force the drive to read around those bad areas using specially designed electronic modules and software that work directly on the hard drive.
What does this mean for you?
Our attention to advancing technology has saved severe losses in time, money and digital resources for thousands of companies.
Ontrack Data Recovery works with hard drive manufacturers in producing software for hard disk installation. Ontrack Data Recovery also writes hard drive analysis software for manufacturers. Many manufacturers and OEMs recognize Ontrack Data Recovery’s leadership in this field. Ontrack Data Recovery’s experience with hard drives goes back to our roots - the founders of Ontrack Data Recovery came from the storage division of Control Data Institute.
Ontrack's clean room staff will not stop until they get every last bit of recoverable data. Their data recovery lab engineers will do all they can to put the file system back in order so that the original data is found. If there should be corruption in some of the files, we will work on the files with Ontrack Data Recovery’ EasyRecovery FileRepair software to get all of the usable data back.
All of this provides you with the edge when a disaster happens.