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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Another Successful Dropped Hard Drive Recovery
Last week I was working on another dropped hard drive recovery sent into us by one of our Data Recovery Partners. I immediately took the hard drive into our clean room and removed the top cover for internal inspection. Although the hard drive had been dropped there were no visible signs of physical media damage. I replaced the damaged internal heads, rebuilt the hard drive and successfully recovered the data for the customer and Partner. Thankfully the partner had advised the customer to stop trying to access the hard drive as described in our blog. When they received the hard drive…
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Free Data Recovery
Despite offering world-class data recovery from our workshop here in Portsmouth, we understand that sometimes, the data just doesn’t justify the cost of getting it recovered. If you’re going to go it alone and attempt a DIY recovery, we’ve got some handy tips to avoid making things worse. It might be a good idea to print this page to use as a reference. Also feel free to comment at the end of the post if you’d like any questions answered. Stop Using Your Hard Drive If you want to recover data, you can’t do it from the disk you want…
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Mac Support in Portsmouth & Southsea
If you’re a Mac user in Portsmouth & Southsea you might be interested in our Mac Services. We’ve been helping Mac users sort out common and not-so common issues for years. We offer low hourly rates for on-site assistance, No callout fees, and fixed price repairs if you bring the machine to our workshop. Also, as a specialist Mac data recovery company you can be sure we’ll never do anything that could harm your data. If you are in Portsmouth or Southsea and having Mac trouble, give us a call on 02392 671 330
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Easter Backup Tips
The long weekend is only hours away, so if you’ve got a few spare minutes over Easter, why not get your data in order & sort out some backups. Save yourself the dread of losing all your documents or photos, and then sit back and eat some chocolate eggs! Simple Start First, when people talk about backups, they actually mean just make copies of your files. It sounds obvious, but this is often misunderstood. If you have a few really important files, you can make a backup of them by copying them somewhere else. That could be a memory stick,…
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When Backups Go Bad ~ Revisited
I was recently going through some old posts on here, and found the one with the clickbaity headline When Backups Go Bad. Despite the title, I thought it was worth looking again at some of the common ways backups can go wrong. A bad backup can be as useless as no backup at all. There is an old phrase that applies perfectly to backups. “One is None. Two is One.” RAID Instead of Backups Using RAID instead of backups. Most RAID failures are not simple single disk failures so RAID won’t help. #WhenBackupsGoBad — Dataquest Int Ltd (@dataq_recovery) March 22, 2016 This…
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Macbook Pro Trackpad Not Clicking
We recently received a Macbook Pro for data recovery. When we removed the broken hard drive and installed a new one for the customer, we noticed that the trackpad was not working correctly and would not click when pressed. We dismantled the Mac again and removed the battery which was underneath the trackpad. When the battery was removed we found that the underside of battery had blown and was pushing against the trackpad. We installed a new battery, recovered the customers data and now the mac is working fine. If you have lost data on your Mac, try our Mac Data…
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This drive has a hardware problem that can’t be repaired
This drive has a hardware problem that can’t be repaired. Back up as much of the data as possible and replace the disk. See an authorised Apple dealer for more information.S.M.A.R.T. Status : Failing If you see the message above, your hard disk or SSD has started to fail and has reported faults to the Mac. If caught early enough, these disks can usually be recovered. You can try to copy important data to another disk but if the copy process gets stuck for a while, it’s safer to stop. If you leave a failing disk in that state it can deteriorate until the disk is ruined. If…
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Successful 8 Disk RAID Recovery
This was a RAID recovery with a challenge. The customer could only find seven of the eight disks from the RAID and two of them were not accessible. To make the challenge even more difficult, the customer did not the RAID level or any of the configuration. All we knew was the disks were from an old Dell Server. The RAID Recovery We first managed to overcome the failed disks and imaged all disks to our server. Once complete we analysed all of the images to determine the RAID settings and configuration. We found two different RAID’s with completely separate configurations. We used…
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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2015
Just a quick post today to wish everyone a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2015. We will be setting up some new equipment over the Christmas break to keep up with the latest hard drive failures. We will also be enjoying some much-deserved time off. If you have an urgent data recovery problem then please get in touch – we will still be taking calls & e-mails over the break. For anything less urgent, enjoy Christmas & New Year and we look forward to hearing from you in 2016!
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Flood and Water Damaged Hard Drives
With the recent floods in the United Kingdom, it is important to know that time can be a critical factor when trying to recover data from mechanical hard drives that have been submerged or damaged by water. Most mechanical hard drives have breather holes that may allow water to enter the hard drive enclosure if submerged. If this is the case then the longer the hard drive is left in this condition the worse the internal damage. Even if the hard drive is left to dry out, internally the damage has already been done. Our advice is not to try this…