Data Recovery

No matter what happens, when it comes to select a Data Recovery Provider you sometimes do not know what to believe anymore. Everyone Data Recovery company has the latest technology, their own cleanroom and you always see man in masks taking care of your data. When you ask some real questions and you are looking for more than a only fancy website sometimes the truth is hard to find.
Keep always in mind that real Data Recovery companies have nothing to hide. They have clear processes in place, which tells you exactly what has happened to your storage media and will definitely not make abuse of the situation you are in. Depending on how valuable your data is you might send your media to the “cheaper” data recovery companies but if your data is really important you always are better off with the companies that have earned their position in the data recovery market.

To help you make a better choice I have come up a list of questions you might be able to ask any data recovery company:

How long is the company doing business?
What kind of diagnostic report are they providing?·
Do they use a third party for their physical recoveries? ·
What kind of guarantees are they willing to give you? ·
Do they have certified processes in place? ·
Can they do all platforms, different OS? ·
Are there any hidden costs like for example transports, spare parts?

With these questions you should be able to do a quick background check and see if the company is a consistent long term data recovery company that really cares about getting your data back. Investigate and take nothing for granted

You also think that one picture says more than a thousand words? Then you should consider this reading this blog entry. In the good old days you have a ‘normal” camera where you were not supposed to hold the film into the light if you would ever see your pictures again. Nowadays most camera’s are digital and you can buy them from a 150 Euro onwards. Maybe you are using the new digital card from 1 or 2 GB and you have stored more than thousand of high definition photos. With some digital camera’s you can buy a so called digital wallet where you can store on a 6 Gigabyte hard drive all your photos. Still the risk of loosing your valuable photos is still there.

Data Loss Prevention

What not to do

To prevent a data loss from happening is always a better option than getting the data recovered. There are some things that are just as simple as using common sense but in practice often they are overlooked. For example you can have a data loss situation if you are pulling out your memory card from of the camera before it has finished writing. Or when you are low on battery the camera could not complete the auto shut down and you have a corruption in the file system of the digital card itself (FAT12/16). Almost the result is that the card is not recognized in the camera as well in any computer (PC- card Reader). If that is the case you should sent the card in to a data recovery provider.

What to Do:

So always make sure that your batteries are fully charged or that you have it connect to an external power source even when you are downloading the files directly into the computer. There might always occur read/ write problems from the digital camera to the Operating System and backwards. With the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system you have the option to use the Safely Remove Hardware icon to the notification area anytime you insert a memory card or connect a digital camera to your computer. You should double-click this icon and click the Stop button before physically ejecting your card or disconnecting your camera. Also make sure you handle the digital memory card with care. The chip inside is electromagnetic charged so with a magnet you can easily corrupt the chip inside. In practice this can produce problems if you a near an electromagnetic area or you are electromagnetic charged.

Data Lost and now What? How to Recover..

For any hardware problems with the Digital Memory card (the chip, interface or controller) you always will need a data recovery company in order to get your data back. If the card is recognized by Windows you would be able to use data recovery software to recovery your data. For example if you have erased you photos per accident you still would be able to retrieve your data with data recovery software very easily. The only thing that matters is if you have erased the card with the PC or with the digital camera itself. Some digital camera finishes the deletion process with writing zero across the board. In this case you will find that you can not recover you data.

Because normally when a file is deleted from a digital media card, the bits that store the information aren't actually removed. Instead, the entry for that file is removed from the "table of contents" (file allocation table, or FAT) on the card, and the space that the file occupied is marked as being available. As long as a new file isn't written over the same location on the card, you will most likely be able to recover at least some files from the card.

When the digital card is not being read, it usually involves corruption in the FAT. For example, if you remove a card from your camera before the data has been completely written, the FAT isn't updated with the latest file information. With a corrupted FAT, the roadmap to the files on the card is destroyed. Even though the data is still there, it can't be accessed correctly. While most of the images may remain intact, your camera or computer won't be able to make sense of the data on the card. In this case you will be able to recover you data by using a piece of data recovery software.

Here are some use full links to download Photo Recovery software:

www.software-recovery.com
www.mediarecover.com/
www.photosrecovery.com
www.imagerecall.com/
www.seagatedatarecovery.com

The data recovery process explained

Whether you have problems with data loss on your Raid 1, Raid 5 Server or with a normal single hard drive or other storage media like USB and Flash media, you might think about opting for a data recovery. Data recovery consists in getting the data recovered from a damaged storage media. This is brand independent. If the storage media is a IBM, Western Digital, Toshiba, Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi; Samsung; Fujitsu ,LaCie you always can initiate a data recovery process.

The data recovery process

Normally with a data recovery you can have a free evaluation before going for the real data recovery. In a normal data recovery process you will receive a first a fixed quote after the analysis. The prices may vary from the type of damage you have sustained. Some data recoveries let you charge for the diagnostic, or for spare parts or for the return shipment and putting the data on a new hard drive or to any additional work that was not included in the first quote. Always be aware of hidden fees and make sure that you have value for your money.

After your approval you the data recovery company goes ahead of getting the data of the damaged hard drive. The data recovery company produces often a file listing where you actually can verify if you data have been completely recovered. After that they will store the data onto a new storage medium and the data recovery process is completed.

Sometimes you actually do not need a data recovery and it’s just a matter of running some DIY software and you can get you data back very easily. The best thing you can look for is for a data recovery company that has a certified data recovery process and that takes on the risk for the complete data recovery. This means that the data recovery does not charge you anything if your data can not be recovered

Raid Recovery Process explained

With a Raid 5 system things get complicated, with 2 hard drives down you might always need a data recovery since with two damaged hard drives you cannot rebuild the complete raid system. With a parity loss a Raid 5 system becomes an unstable system. Raid 1 is a different ball game since this system is based on a striped system. This means having the benefit of getting the maximum amount of storage space but the downfall is that the data is being written at once across the two hard drives. With one hard drive damaged the entiry data structure get lost and the data is not accesible any more.

A Raid data recovery is always more complex due to the fact that when the file system is damaged you need often to reconstruct all data and data files manually. You need to know for example the bandwidth of the raid system (with a Raid 5 system parity information is very important) because every system can write the data on the Raid system in different ways. Some Raid systems uses first a Linux partition and then rest of the drive other operating systems can be used.

It’s also a longer data recovery process than having a data loss on a normal single hard drive. The data recovery company needs to follow a normal data recovery procedure in some cases even several data recovery produces (in case when 2 or hard drives are damaged). After the recoveries are done the data recovery company needs to reconstruct the complete Raid system and needs to check its data integrity. A data recovery process for a Raid 5 system is always a time consuming process where the data recovery expert puts a lot of effort and knowlegde into play in getting the data recovered succesfully.