Data Recovery Blog
A selection of our articles, written by us and not Ai generated. These are generally details of some of the recoveries we’ve completed, or other associated info.
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PC World Data Recovery Know How Now Who?
We recently noticed our local PC World store has stopped advertising data recovery services. They used to offer a simple in-house recovery backed by a large international partnership to take care of the more difficult drives. At some point, maybe around the time Know How replaced The Tech Guys for their support, things seem to have changed. Users are now left wondering where to go, and who to trust to recover their precious data. This could be a blessing in disguise for users, as they can now choose any data recovery service, potentially saving some money. Some tips for choosing…
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Bang Goes The Theory Data Recovery
Bang Goes The Theory – Series 6 Episode 3 – March 26th I love Bang Goes The Theory. I loved the alcohol powered motorbikes last week and find it a good doorway into ideas, which are presented in a fun and interesting way. I was extra excited when I started watching episode 3, and relised they would be featuring data recovery. A perfect opportunity to dispel some common myths, and dish out a bit of advice in the process. Deletion The data recovery guy Rob, made a good analogy when he described deleting data as ripping out a page from…
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Maxtor N40P Hard Drives Still Around
These old slim Maxtor IDE 20 & 40GB hard drives are prone to start up problems. When they fail, it sounds like a mechanical problem as the heads cannot settle and make a clicking noise. They also do not show up correctly in a computer bios. This generation of Maxtor disks are known for firmware corruption, which is usually the fault. We have just received one in for data recovery with the usual failure. With our past experience we have been able to overcome the problem without having to open up the drive in our cleanroom. Maxtor has been sold to Seagate so if you need…
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Hitachi Model HTS5450 Notebook Hard Drives
If you have a failed Hitachi hard drive, you may be interested in our Hitachi Data Recovery Services. We have been receiving Hitachi HTS5450 hard drives for data recovery since 2010. The majority of them appear to show a similar failing symptom, resulting in access to the data becoming more and more difficult. After experience recovering several of these hard drives we have discovered that the problem appears to be trouble reading from the disc media. This may initially have been caused by the internal read and write heads writing bad data or the disc media itself suffering some mis-alignment…
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Bigger Hard Drives of the Future
The Register has today posted two articles about the ongoing battle to expand hard drive capacities. First is an actual device for sale, a 2TB Western Digital portable drive. This drive has a fancy new case and USB3 connection. It contains backup software and also the option to encrypt the data with a password. I wonder if it encrypts the data by default like some of their previous portables. (A bad thing!) Second is a futuristic announcement from Seagate about their new HAMR technology. This new tech uses a laser to heat part of the disk before magnetising it. This apparently…
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Seagate Full Disk Encryption FDE
Seagate FDE hard drives encrypt the data automatically as it is read and written to the drive. As you save data to the drive it is encrypted immediately and can only be accessed when you input your user name and password. The drive will then be temporarily unlocked and allow the operating system to boot. Once the drive is powered off, it will be automatically locked again. We have received several of these drives from customers who cannot access their data due to a hard drive failure. You may still be asked for the password, but the laptop will then…
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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…
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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. 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. Don’t put the drive in the freezer.…
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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. 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…