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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Hard Drive Encryption Data Recovery
Encrypted hard drives come in many forms. They can be created by the hard drive manufacturer as part of the hard drives firmware or as a third party software add on such as Symantec PGP or Microsofts Bitlocker. Hard drive Encryption is becoming much more common especially in many large enterprise companies. Some hard drive encryption is more sophisticated than others, but in many data recovery cases we receive, a common flaw is the inability of the encryption software to overcome bad sectors on a hard drive. In most cases it results in partial or no access to the decrypted…
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Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM & ST1000DM Problems
This year we have seen a fair number of these particular model hard drives with internal media damage caused by a head crash. These are 3.5″ hard drives from external cases such as Seagate Freeagent Go-Flex and Seagate Expansion Desktop. They are also used as internal hard drives in PCs running Windows 7 & 8 also used in Apple iMac’s running OSX. It has been difficult to confirm whether the media damage seen has been caused by an impact such as a dropped drive or from general electronic failure. What we do know is that as soon as you hear one…
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Seagate ST1000LM024 Samsung HN-M101MBB
These notebook size drives must be popular at the moment as we have started to see a fair few of them come into us. Last month we saw three of them alone with no spin failures. When opened in our clean room we have found that the internal mechanical heads have prevented the motor and discs from spinning as a result of the heads sitting on the disc media. In normal operation the heads should never touch the discs but fly above them carrying out the reading and writing. When the drive is not in use or idle the heads will locate…
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Windows 10 Upgrade Problems
If you’ve had a disaster during the Windows 10 Upgrade, don’t panic. Chances are your data is fine, but whatever you do next could change that! If You Have a Backup If you made a backup of the data before the upgrade then check the backup files on another computer. If the backup is good, the safest way forward is to restore the backup onto a fresh drive. Then if you find a problem with the data later, or if the restore fails, you still have the original “broken” drive to send to us for recovery. A common mistake is…
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The Problem With Disk Imaging
When you hear of data recovery companies using disk imaging as part of their process, this is done to create a Bit by Bit copy of the customers hard drive. This then allows work to be carried out on a copy instead of the original. It can also be used to take the data off the customers hard drive in a controlled manner, especially when the hard drive shows signs of being unstable. In those situations this process usually works well and has a very good success rate, but what if the customers hard drive is part of a criminal…
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Data Recovery in Birkenhead
Being born and bred in Birkenhead, I wanted to let you local Birkonian’s know of our data recovery services. Although now based in Costa del Portsmouth we cover all towns and cities in the UK. We may not be local, but with the low cost in transport and courier services, it makes using a company you can trust the sensible thing to do. I already know the lingo so hopefully already halfway there. So Cum ‘ed den try using our services, I would be chuffed if you did.
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Bitlocker Data Recovery
For the last few years, newer editions of Windows have the ability to encrypt the whole disk with bitlocker. This means far more users are experimenting with encryption. We have seen an increase in recoveries from drives secured with bitlocker. Is Data Recoverable From Bitlocker Drives? In many cases the data is recoverable. It is important that we get the recovery key or password, as bitlocker security has not been compromised. Common Issues The most common problems we see with bitlocker encrypted drives are when the disk starts to fail, or when Windows becomes corrupt. This can prevent the built-in decryption…
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What To Do With A Dropped Hard Drive
If there is data on the drive that you cannot afford to lose, then do not try to fix the drive yourself. I would also suggest that you do not even try to power it back on after it has been dropped, as this is what usually causes the most damage. Whether your drive is an external desktop drive or a small portable one, they all work in the same way. Broadly speaking the inside of a hard drive is a bit like a record player with a mechanical moving needle reading the vinyl record. I can remember the times…
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Data Recovery For Old CNC Machines
You may be surprised by some of the old computer hardware that’s still used by some companies today. Especially where they are used as the control interface for manufacturing purposes. We recently received a Quantum 40MB SCSI II hard drive from an old Macintosh IICX that was controlling a piece of 7 Ton Fabricating equipment. The software communicated to the CNC equipment through an internal Nubus card with SCSI interface. For the customer it was not just a case of getting the user data off the drive, but to get an exact image so they had a bootable drive with all the relevant software and…
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When Will My Hard Drive Crash?
Ever wondered how long until your hard drive crashes? With our handy new tool, you can find out. Click the image below to launch the free tool.