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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The Worlds Worst Backup Solution; LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ 2TB
Anyone that has ever looked inside one of these “drives” will realise that they are only suitable for temporary storage capacity. There is nothing magical inside the enclosures, just a couple of standard hard drives and a small RAID 0 controller. What people (ie. general users) tend to do with a drive of this capacity is copy over all of the big data (pictures, movies and music) from their desktop or laptop computer and then delete it from the original location to save space. Not only is this not a backup but the chances of this drive failing are more…
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Seagate Momentus Drive Failures [Updated]
Just recently we have had an influx of unrecoverable Seagate Momentus 2.5″ hard drives. These drives are used in most of the Apple portables from the Macbooks to Macbook Pros and also in laptops from other manufacturers. Ranging from 60-120GB they seem to suffer from some sort of media defect. Most of the problems we see with these drives are head crashes, where the read/write mechanism contacts the disc surface, removing some of the magnetic coating. This damage is not always visible on the top surface of the disc so can be difficult to confirm. If we do see damage…
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Magnetic Wobbles Main Cause of Unstable Disks
ITPro.co.uk reported yesterday that a new study has revealed some interesting information about why some hard drives fail. The main cause of drive failures is apparently a magnetic effect which causes the areas on the disc platters to change their polarity. This was previously thought to be the case but the new study goes into much more detail, even suggesting that the material used by manufacturers may have its part to play. This change in polarity then jumps to neighbouring tracks causing widespread data corruption. Known as magnetic avalanche, the process could be better described as magnetic wildfire or magnetic…
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How to Fix a 5G iPod When it Starts Skipping Tracks
We recently received a white 5G iPod for repair. The problem with this iPod seemed fairly simple. After loading tracks from a windows version of iTunes, the songs would appear in the list as usual, but after playing one or two songs the iPod would stop playing and appear to skip through the rest of the songs. We have seen this sort of issue before, when songs have gone into the iTunes Library but never copy correctly over to the iPod. We confirmed that this was not the case as we were using a fresh iTunes install with only one…
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Samsung Start Manufacture of 64GB 1.8" SSDs
Samsung has today started production of it’s 64GB solid state drive. (How long until we see that in an iPod hack?…) These 1.8″ flash hard drives would be a welcome addition to any portable device, provided you keep regular backups. At least if the drives do fail you won’t have to put up with the heart wrenching click of death. (but good luck trying to desolder and then resolder all those chips in an ill-fated and expensive data recovery attempt.) Read More On Engadget
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Samsung & Seagate Announce Terabyte Drives
Playing a game of catch up, Samsung and Seagate have gone head to head with Hitachi’s big boy by each announcing their version of a terabyte drive. Both drives feature the SATA 3Gps interface. The Samsung offering has only 3 platters opposed to Hitachi’s 5 and Seagate’s 4 which would suggest that it is not only more reliable but may be the forerunner of a future 1.5TB drive (with all that extra space for platters!). Read more on Engadget
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Seagate Squeezes 250GB On One Platter
Seagate have announced “industry’s first 250GB-per-disc, 3.5-inch disc drive.” They call this the second-generation of perpendicular magnetic recording technology. The new Barracuda 7200.10 which apparently has 180GB of storage capacity per square inch, also sports the speedy SATA 3Gb/s interface to get all that storage into your life extra fast. Read More Read The Press Release (Dead Link Removed)
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ST96812AS Head Crash
Yet another attempted data recovery was thwarted today by the dreaded head crash. We have seen possible head problems with these drives and were not surprised when the drive didn’t come ready and identify. This particular drive, an ST96812AS from a MacBook Pro was giving off some interesting sound effects to say the least. Expecting the usual failed read/write head we took it into the cleanroom and removed the cover. This drive had clearly had a head crash. Not only was a large area of magnetic media forcefully gouged off by a stray head but there was also a faint…
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Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 Drive Hits 250GB
News of the Hitachi 5K250 drive was today posted to Engadget. This 5,400rpm drive now boasts capacity up to 250GB and has started shipping in volume. Coming in both SATA 3Gbps & 1.5Gbps interfaces. The drive also features Hitachi’s Bulk Data Encryption for protection if you were to lose you laptop (Or have it stolen!) Read
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PNY unveils SSDs for laptops, iPods and more
Engadget today posted news of the new solid state disks from PNY. In 1.8″ and 2.5″ flavours they feature 66MB/s read and 55MB/s write speeds with standard ZIF, Micro SATA, 44-pin IDE and SATA interfaces. These drives will be simple replacements for laptops and will eventually (by the end of the year) be shipping 1.8″ and 2.5″ drives up to 128GB capacity. Finally my whole music collection can follow me to the gym without fear of trashing the 1.8″ drive and it’s glass platters! It is now more important than ever that people start to put a decent backup routine…