Dataquest

Data Recovery You Can Trust

Category: Hard Drive

Posts about Hard Disk Drives, ie. most of our posts!

  • Help! My PC Won’t Start

    Here are some common troubleshooting tips to use if your PC won’t start. This will help determine if your hard drive is having problems, and therefore if you need data recovery.

    There are two main types of hard drive failure: Hard drives that are still recognised in the BIOS and hard drives that are no longer recognised.

    You may also like to read 5 DIY Data Recovery Tips

    Hard drives that are still recognised

    Some common error messages:

    • 1st / 2nd /3rd Master Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD, Backup and Replace
      Press F1 to Resume
    • WARNING: Immediate back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.
    • Windows logo, with a progress bar underneath that just keeps whizzing round and round.

    These hard drives are partly functional. They are communicating back to the PC, but may not work well enough to boot up. It is important at this stage to asses the value of the data on the drive. If it is absolutely crucial then don’t mess around with it. Our success from this type of drive is very high. On the other hand, if the data is of little or no value then you could try getting the drive to boot again, but beware: anything that runs for hours on a failing drive could be destroying the data instead of repairing it. You could end up in the category below.

    Hard drives that are no longer recognised

    Some common error messages:

    • Error loading system disk
    • Reboot and select proper Boot device
      or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key_
    • DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

    These drives are completely unable to communicate with the PC at all (or they are not connected properly – check the cables). In this case, you will not be able to run recovery software on the drives as the software won’t be able to identify the drive.

    These drives require a proper diagnosis to find out the cause of failure. This could be anything from an electronic fault, firmware fault or physical damage to the internal parts.

    We can recover data from all sorts of hard drive failures. If the data is important, don’t risk losing it. Get it straight to us.

  • 5 DIY Data Recovery Tips

    There is never a good time for your hard drive to fail. It always happens when you have something urgent to work on. Before you start frantically trying to gain access to your data, take a deep breath and read our top 5 things to look out for. It could just save your files.

    1. Don’t assume that recovery software will work on your failed hard drive. If your computer cannot see the drive then neither will the recovery software. Some drives need more than software to get the data off in good condition.
    2. Don’t put the drive in the freezer. This myth has been floating around the internet for years, but no real data recovery has ever required a freezer.
    3. Don’t run Checkdisk, Scandisk, Spinrite, Disk Warrior or anything that could WRITE data to your failing drive. If the drive is failing then you could be accidentally overwriting the data you want back.
    4. Don’t try swapping the PCB from one drive to another. A once-simple fix (circa 1990) is now very unlikely to work. Most of the firmware to control the drive is actually stored on the disks, so swapping the card won’t work. Also most drives now have unique PCB information which varies from drive to drive. We usually have to adapt a replacement PCB to make it work with another drive.
    5. Don’t panic. The data is probably recoverable. If the drive has just failed and you haven’t tried any recovery software there is a good chance that we can get back all of your data.

    Contact Us Now…

    For a fast reply from a real person.

  • Help! My Mac Won’t Start

    Here is a simple flow chart for diagnosing Mac startup problems. This will help you find out if your hard drive is the cause. If it is then we can recover the data.

    Help! My Mac Won't Start
    Help! My Mac Won’t Start

     

     

    An alternative text version is below:

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  • USB Powered Portable Hard Drives Failing To Spin

    We see a lot of portable hard drives that don’t spin up when plugged into a USB port. All brands of hard drive can be effected including Hitachi, Western Digital and Seagate. The problem can be caused by power loss or sometimes due to mis-plugging of the USB lead. This causes the internal read heads to sit on the disc instead of parking on the ramp at the side.

    The only way to overcome this problem is by taking the hard drive into our clean room to replace the damaged heads with good ones. This allows us to copy the data from the drive and store it on our server.

    The repaired hard drives are not suitable to be reused after this sort of work as they will not work correctly, or fail after a very short time.

  • Toshiba Desktop Hard Drives

    Western Digital Toshiba Drive
    Western Digital Toshiba Drive

    Western Digital want to buy Hitachi Global Storage. The FTC will only allow this if WD sell of some manufacturing capabilities to Toshiba. This seems to be due to some anti-competition type laws. The strange thing is that Toshiba don’t currently make 3.5″ drives, so perhaps we will see some strange Toshiba branded WD drives? Who knows.

    Maybe it will be like when Maxtor were bought by Seagate and brought out the STMXXXXXXXXX drives, which were simply Maxtor branded Seagate drives.

    Complicated stuff. Read the overview at Slashdot which has links to the FTC etc.

  • Warning to customers with new WD hard drives

    Warning to customers with new WD hard drives

    Newer WD External drives come with password protection and 256-Bit encryption as standard. Even if a password is not set the encryption is still applied to the data written to the drive. The 256-Bit encryption is controlled by ROM on the USB controller. On portable USB powered hard drives the encrypted ROM is on the actual hard drive. On external desktop drives the ROM is on the interface controller within the external case.

    Make sure you keep hold of the external case the hard drive was in. Although not always needed, it could be  important later on. If you’ve lost data, have a look at our Western Digital Data Recovery service.

  • What is Hard Drive Encrytion

    What is Hard Drive Encrytion

    Encryption is a process to protect data by using sophisticated mathematical functions. Data is scrambled when written to the drive. This data is then not readable by an unauthorised person. When data is read back from the drive by an authorised person it is then converted back into readable data. Usually authorisation is provided by a password of some sort.

    When using encryption, there are few things to watch out for

    • If you forget your password, you will be locked out of your own data. Be careful.
    • If your hard drive starts failing you could lose access to all your data.
    • You need regular backups if using encryption, as it is usually uncrackable.
    • Data is encrypted when the computer is off, but if someone accesses the disk while powered on they can access the data the same way you can.

    Ideally, if you plan to use encryption try to speak to somebody knowledgeable about the system you have. The way a Mac handles things is very different to the way Windows does, which is different again to the third party options.

  • Apple Mac Time Machine Back Up

    I have lost count on the amount of times we have received hard drives for data recovery from Mac customers, who are not aware of the Time Machine back software. Time Machine has been preinstalled in every version of OS X since 10.5. This software is easy to setup, and once the first backup of the internal hard drive is complete, it will then carry on backing up as you create new data.

    As a small business or personal user it is ideal for your everyday backup needs.

     

  • ST9320421ASG Head Crash

    This hard drive was from a Macbook Pro. As you can see in the image, loss of data was caused by a severe head crash.  The damage is so severe you can actually see through the top foil layer to the glass platter beneath. Another good reason why Mac users should make sure they backup regularly.

    ST9320421ASG Head Crash
    ST9320421ASG Head Crash

  • RAID 5 HP Smart Array E200i Recovered

    Smart Array E200i SaS Drive
    HP Smart Array E200i SaS Drive

    We have just competed a successful recovery from an HP Smart Array E200i RAID array. Not a standard case this. It had x3 DG146BB976 2.5″ SaS drives, two of which had been overwritten with a new RAID 1 mirror.

    We found the disk order which was not the same as the labelled numbers. This is often the case. Also, due to the rebuild that had occurred we had to drop one of the disks and virtually rebuild it using the parity information from the other disks.

    3 DG146BB976 SaS ST9146802SS Drives
    3 DG146BB976 / ST9146802SS SaS Drives