Tag: Hard Drive

What To Do When You Run Out Of Space
It’s a common problem that as we generate more data each year we start running out of space to put it. This is now even more of an issue in the smartphone market, where built-in cameras are generating increasingly large photos and videos, without providing much in the way of additional storage. The most common iPhones are still 16 & 32GB but the photos they now produce can be megabytes in size, with videos easily reaching 1GB.

What To Do When You Run Out Of Space

It’s tempting to take that data and put it somewhere else, so either a laptop or external hard drive. Then once you’ve copied it all you delete it from the phone and gain back all that space. Problem solved.

Not So Fast…
If that copy on your laptop is now the only copy, then you could be one spilt coffee from disaster. If the laptop goes up in smoke, gets stolen, dropped or any of the myriad other ways of failing then it’s bye bye data.

The Fix

The key to making backups is redundancy. The key to making backups is redundancy. The key to making backups is redundancy.

You need to make extra copies of your data to different types of storage. This could be an external hard drive, NAS, USB Pen, SD card, anything. But don’t just pick one of those. Make a few backups. Put one in a locked safe somewhere. Send photos off to the cloud. Store a copy of your music at your nan’s house. If any of those copies gets lost or broken you can just replace it with another copy.

So let’s run through an example. All those photos on your iPhone have filled it up. Here’s what I would do:
1. Copy the photos to my computer. Check them.
2. Backup the computer as usual. (You’re already doing that, right?)
3. Make another backup, or copy the photos to an online storage service like Dropbox.
4. Now it is safe to delete the photos from the iPhone and revel in all that fresh space.
Note: Deleted photo recovery is virtually impossible for all modern iPhone versions due to encryption.

Here’s another example for when your computer runs out of space instead:
1. Is it possible to upgrade the internal storage? If it is then you should do that.
2. If this is not possible, or too expensive then you will have to get creative. It will be more fiddly but copy all data to two external hard drives.
3. You always want to avoid just leaving your data in one place. All electronic devices can (and will) fail, and they have a terrible habit of doing so at the worst possible moment.
So, just remember that no single copy of your files are safe. Making extra copies is cheaper and easier than waiting until something fails.

Thanks to Alexander Armstrong for inspiring this post.
9th October, 2013
Maxtor DiamondMax Clockwise Discs

You have heard of the myth about water behaving differently from the northern hemisphere compared to the southern hemisphere. Especially when draining water out of a sink or bath. Well apparently this is a myth and not fact.

So what has this got to do with hard drives? Well the same was said about some of the old Maxtor hard drives and why they were built with clockwise disc rotation. Where they built for the southern hemisphere market and do they work as well in the northern hemisphere. Built in mid 2000 the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drives were designed to spin in the opposite direction to the conventional mechanical hard drives.

I could not find any information as to why they were built this way and whether this design did improve performance depending on location in the world. Maybe this question will never be answered.

See pictures below of a the internal working of a conventional hard drive compared to the Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drives.

Conventional WD Hard Drive

Conventional Anti Clockwise Disc

Maxtor DiamondMax Hard Drive

Maxtor DiamondMax Clockwise Discs

27th September, 2013
Time Machine Must Create A New Backup For You

Time Machine must create new backup for you

The other day I got an error message from Time Machine that it wanted to start from scratch with the backups on my Time Capsule. As I only use the Time Capsule as one part of my backup routine that was no big deal. I made sure my other non Time Capsule backups were up to date and then clicked Start New Backup. But what if the Time Capsule had been my only backup? I’d have been running without a backup for as long as Time Machine takes to backup my machine from scratch. Somehow I’ve trimmed my work laptop down to 78GB but it still estimated 6-14 hours until completion. (Yes, over wireless. No, I can’t relocate my office for the day.) What if my laptop died in that time? I’d have a dead laptop, a deleted Time Machine backup and an unfinished Time Machine Backup. In other words I’d be stuffed!

Now don’t get me wrong, I think that Time Machine has been brilliant in getting people making regular backups and I applaud the ease of use. The problem I have is that the language they use in their warnings is not strong enough. People should be more scared of losing their precious family photos or business files. There’s no need to sugar coat it. Also instead of deleting the old backup first, Time Machine should start a new backup and then delete the old one after the new one is verified. As long as there is enough free space of course. In my case there was plenty of free space.

I have included the original warning text below, along with my own version. I’ve not gone totally overboard, and sure it could use some work, but little details like this could really costs somebody some important data. It’s worth spending some time on.

Original Message Text

Transcript: Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on “Time Capsule”. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.

Click Start New Backup to create a new backup. This will remove your existing backup history. This could take several hours.

Click Back Up Later to be reminded tomorrow. Time Machine won’t perform backups during this time.

My Version

Time Machine must create new backup for you. Fixed

Transcript: Time Machine has found a problem with your backups on “Time Capsule”. First backup any important files, then click Start New Backup. This will create a new backup and then delete the old one. This could take several hours and you will be at risk of data loss until it completes.

Click Back Up Later to be reminded tomorrow. Time Machine won’t perform backups during this time.

Notes

There are a few interesting things to point out here. As you are starting from scratch with the backup, you lose any old versions of files that Time Capsule had stored. It’s bad practice but some people will happily delete files from their computer, safe in the knowledge that Time Capsule has a copy. In that scenario, deleting the backup would be a disaster!

I still don’t know exactly what caused the problem with my Time Capsule backup, but since starting again I haven’t seen that message.

26th September, 2013
Data Survival Guide Mac

Many hard drives we see have been more damaged by a failed recovery than they were in the first place. We have released the Data Survival Guide to help people avoid some of the common mistakes. This first version is for Mac users but we have more on the way.

Why not print this out and keep it in your laptop bag in case of emergency!

Data Survival Guide Mac

3rd July, 2013
Troubleshoot Buffalo External Hard Drive
Like most external hard drives, Buffalo external drives are simply a wrapper around a regular hard drive. Aside from the protective shell they also have some electronic parts to convert between the internal hard drive and the external USB, Firewire, eSATA or Thunderbolt connections.

If you have problems with an external drive, you can perform a relatively simple test to check where the fault lies. Be aware that opening the external drive case will probably void your warranty, and if there is crucial data on the drive you should seek professional data recovery. That’s the obligatory warning out the way, so lets have a look at some troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting tips.
- First check all cables are plugged in securely, and not damaged or frayed near the ends.. If you have an identical drive with spare cables try them, but make sure you don’t plug in a power supply with different voltage! Hard drives don’t handle extra voltage well so you’ll end up in a worse position than you started.
- If you know how, you could remove the hard drive from the external case and attach it directly to a PC to see if that allows access to the data. If it does, you should copy the data off straight away. The drive could still be faulty & fail again soon.
- Whatever you do, don’t dismantle the actual hard drive. Hard drives are built in controlled clean-air environments and even the smallest spec of dust can cause permanent damage to the drive.
- Since the introduction of unique ROM chips on the hard drives, it is often no longer possible to exchange circuit boards with another hard drive to access the data. In our experience circuit board problems are far less common than they used to be.
If you are looking for a data recovery service for your external hard drive then have a look at our external drive recovery services.
11th June, 2013
HTS5450 Second Generation

Now in a new 7mm slimline form factor, and Advanced Format specification, the HTS5450 hard drive is proving a popular choice for vendors with limited space. The drives are especially popular in Ultra thin laptops and slim portable external cases. Now being manufactured by Western Digital under the brand name of HGST, the 500GB boasts just a single media platter to store all that data. Part of the redesign also brings Advanced Format to these drives. Certain older operating systems such as Windows XP require the use of the HGST Align Tool provided by Western Digital. Users of the latest OS X systems and Windows 7+ do not require the use of this Tool.

Advanced Format has been introduced to cram more data on a single platter. To do this the manufacturer has increased the standard 512 byte sector size to a 4096 byte sector. This format design also incorporates better data integrity, hopefully giving the customer all round better performance and reliability.

If you’ve lost data from a HTS5450 drive, try our Hitachi Data Recovery Services to get your data back.

Remember, electronic devices can malfunction at any time, so make sure you always backup your precious data.

7th June, 2013
Which RAID Settings Should I Use For My NAS?

RAID 1 (Mirror)

A NAS (Network Attached Storage) puts storage onto your network, where it can be accessed by many computers. They often have more than one hard drive which can allow you to have automated copies of your data, which is known as RAID. A common type of RAID found on NAS devices is RAID 1, which will make two hard drives into a mirror copy of one another. Some manufacturers call RAID 1 Safe mode. If you have a NAS with two 1TB hard drives and set them to RAID 1 mirroring, instead of 2TB of storage (1TB x2) you only get 1TB. Everything you store to the NAS gets saved to both drives automatically. The theory is that if one of the drives fail, you can access all of the data from the other one. In practice that is not always the case. More on that later.

RAID 1 Mirror Animation

RAID 0 (Stripe)

Another common NAS option is RAID 0. The “R” in RAID stands for redundant, however there is no redundancy in RAID 0, so it’s not a real RAID type. If you setup the same two 1TB disks as RAID 0, you will get a 2TB volume to store your data on. The problem is that every single file you write to the NAS will be split into tiny pieces and distributed across both drives. If one drive fails, you not only lose the data from that failed drive, but also from the non-failed drive as it only contains half the pieces of each file. RAID 0 should never be used for long term storage, but can be fast so is often used for video editing.

RAID 0 Stripe

So that’s the hardware taken care of. What other things should you look out for when choosing a NAS?

Another problem with most NAS devices is the non-standard filesystems they use to store the data on the disks. If the NAS itself fails, you cannot usually read the disks by attaching them to a standard PC. So even in RAID 1 mirror mode, you could end up with no usable copies of your data. Most NAS drives run a simplified version of Linux, but only some of them use standard Linux filesystems like ext2/3/4.

Backup my backup?

Some NAS drives have a USB port to allow you to backup the data to an external hard drive. This is great, as long as you can access the backup data on a regular PC, and it doesn’t need to go through the NAS. You can imagine why that would be a problem.

To summarise, NAS drives can be a great way to upgrade your home or small office storage. They can allow collaboration and sharing of files between users, and should simplify your backup process. Just remember that a NAS is a small server that needs to be backed up as a matter of urgency. As long as you have that covered then a NAS can be a smart addition to your network.

24th May, 2013
Format Your Drive For A Mac

Plenty of shops will sell you a “Mac Hard Drive” but there is no reason why you cannot use a windows format drive on a Mac. You just need to format it first. There was once a time when a drive was specially formatted by Apple to use on their Macs, but these days Apple use the same hard drives as everyone else. To use with the latest versions of OS X I would recommend following the steps below.

NOTE: Formatting your drive will destroy all the data. Make sure there’s nothing on there you need.

1. First attach the drive to your Mac. The Mac will notify you with a small finder window to initialise the drive. See below.

Initialize Your Drive For A Mac

2. Once you have clicked initialize you will see the Disk Utility Application window. See below.

Mac Disk Utility

3. You need to select the drive you want to format in the left hand window of the utility as highlighted in blue. Internal drives show as grey and external drives show as yellow. At this point make sure you choose the correct drive, the utility will not allow you to format the internal boot drive. See below.

Drive selected

4. Now choose the Partition Tab. See below.

Partition Tab

5. Now click on the Partition Layout drop down bar and choose the first option “1 Partition”. Also to the right under Partition Information give your drive a name and below that choose the partition type you want which will be Mac OS Extended ( journaled ). We are nearly there. You now need to click on the options tab in the bottom left of the utility window and choose GUID Partition Table and click okay. As you will read in the text information, this allows the drive to be used with all current OS X Macs. See Below.

Options Tab

7. Now all you need to do is click the apply button as shown in red below.

Apply

8. Another window will appear asking for confirmation to partition the drive. Click partition. See below.

Partition Drive

9. A formatting window with a progress bar will now appear and then disappear when done. You will now see your named drive in the left window, which means that your drive is now formatted. Close the disk utility and the hard drive is ready to use. See below.

Hard Drive Formatted

4th April, 2013
SSD Data Recovery
SSD Data Recovery

SSDs (Solid State Drives) may one day become the standard form of storage in computers. Apple laptops are already heading that way. There are certainly many advantages when comparing SSDs to HDDs (Hard Disk Drives), however they do bring their own problems, which are often not well reported. We don’t care how good SSDs can be. We care about how they fail. It’s common to hear things like: “I’m replacing my hard drive with an SSD so I won’t have to worry about it crashing again.” While this is technically true – there are no moving parts to crash – there are plenty of other ways an SSD can fail. Whether it’s technically crashed or not doesn’t matter at all when you can’t access your files. It’s a shame but an SSD does not get you out of the boring task of running regular backups.

There are some pros and cons which specifically affect data recovery from SSDs. I haven’t listed things like battery life or read / write speed as they are not relevant when it comes to recovering data from them.

SSD Data Recovery Pros:
- Shock resistance. No moving parts to crash.
- Just as susceptible to filesystem issues, deletion, reformatting, bad sectors etc which can be recovered using existing equipment.
SSD Cons:
- False sense of security. The word reliable comes up a lot in SSD marketing with phrases like “More reliable, faster, and more durable than traditional magnetic hard drives.” Maybe research exists that shows SSDs are less prone to failure but it doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment. Anything that holds your valuable data runs the risk of getting drenched, getting stolen, getting lost, and that’s before we even take general failures into account.
- Susceptible to electronic failure, Maybe more so than a hard drive as the storage and electronics are combined in SSDs. Some of the most common hard drive failures are caused by errors in the firmware which controls the performance of the drive. SSDs have very complex firmware, which opens the possibility of firmware corruption. In most cases firmware corruption will block access to your data.
- Encryption. Most modern SSDs encrypt the data at a hardware level, which makes it impossible to remove data chips and extract data from them externally (you can do it, but the data is encrypted). The keys to the encryption are often stored within the controller chip, so if that fails, you could be locked out of your data for good. Modern encryption works well. You can’t get round it.
- Wear-levelling algorithms. Which move the data around the SSDs to improve performance, can make recovery difficult as these algorithms would need to be taken into account when accessing a failed SSD. They don’t store data in logical order like hard drives do.
13th March, 2013
Our Apple Mac Data Migration Service

We have been offering Apple Mac Data Migration as a service for many years now. Here’s a quick reminder about this service which we call Mac Setup. You are bound to be over the moon when you are told that we have recovered your lost data, but in many cases this is only half the battle.

We wrote a detailed blog on the subject back in November 2011, but it still appears to trouble many customers.

We still often get the questions: “What do I do with the recovered data once I receive it?” and “How do I get the data back into it’s original places on my Mac?” For out-of-warranty Macs, this is where our Mac Setup comes into play. For a fixed cost we will provide you with a new installed hard drive, with all your recovered data migrated into it’s original locations, so that when you receive your Macintosh computer back, hey presto! it’s as if your Mac had never failed in the first place, everything up and running as it was.

26th February, 2013