If you experience a hard drive crash, it doesn’t take much to make a bad situation even worse. In the event of a hard drive crash, in most instances, the data is completely recoverable at first. However, as part of human nature, we often try to avoid the high costs associated with hard drive data recovery in order to find some sort of “quick fix” to a very serious problem. In this report we will go over some of the symptoms of a hard drive crash and the things you can try in the event of a suspected hard drive crash, along with things you should avoid.

What Noise Is The Drive Making?

The first thing to take into account is whether or not the hard drive is making any unusual noises. Often times when there is a problem with the read/write head within the drive or a firmware issue in the logic board a “clicking” sound will be heard. If this is the case, then you should immediately power down the system and refrain from reapplying power. Same thing goes for any unusual sound, whether it’s grinding, squealing, our sounds like a “laser gun”. If any of these occur you should immediately power the system down, just pull the plug from the wall.

Unfortunately in the situations listed above, there is little that you can do to recover the data yourself. Actually, unless you have a clean room, fully equipped with the right tools and a trained technician there is nothing that can be done. Even hard drive manufacturers avoid this line of work, and many who do offer data recovery services are only sub-contracting the work out to an established data recovery firm.

Never Ever Open Your Hard Drive

If the data on a hard drive has even the most minimal value to you, then it is imperative that you do not open the drive. We often get calls or e-mails from people who felt they had the right equipment and know-how to perform something as serious as a head replacement. Once they’ve removed the hard drive’s protective case, we often times ask them not to send the drive in, because more often than not, the damage is irreparable.

Working with the internal components of a hard drive requires at least a Class-100 clean room. A clean room does not mean a room that you just vacuumed and dusted (believe it or not people say that to us all the time). A clean room is a special work area in which air quality is heavily controlled and it is vital to hard drives during the manufacturing or assembly process. The air in the room is regulated in term of air particles, temperature and humidity. A Class-100 clean room means there exists no more than 100 particles that are larger than 0.5 microns in one cubic foot of air.

Opening a hard drive in air meeting anything less than the standard listed above will mean certain death for your hard drive and any data contained therein.

The Freezer Method

There has been a long running wive’s tale about putting your hard drive in the freezer when it crashes in order to revive it just long enough to pull your data off of it. We’ve run this test for fun on many occasions in different scenarios with junk test drives that we have in our lab. So far we have yet to see this actually produce any positive results. In fact, in one instance we actually began to see the formation of tiny microscopic ice crystals on the platter themselves, which is a definite crash waiting to happen.

See the problem with this theory is, drives are not completely sealed. Regardless of what you’ve heard or read, all hard drives have a tiny breather hole (usually marked with a label that says DO NOT COVER). This hole not only aids in cooling but it also helps to equalize air pressure in the drive when the platters are spinning. On the other side of this hole is a filter, which keeps dirt and debris from getting inside the drive. However, this filter does not stop heavy amounts of moisture (especially in flood situations) or moisture vapor (such as found in a freezer). This moisture vapor has been known to settle on the platters and when a system is powered up, the read/write head would resemble an airplane flying into a mountain.

In closing, If you’ve experienced a hard drive crash, it is imperative that you consider the value of the data, before you consider the money you might save by doing it yourself. Data recovery is a specialty, and it requires a number of specialized tools, skills and software to complete successfully. Many times you run the risk of taking data that may be perfectly recoverable and destroying it permanently. If you have any questions, it is best to consult with a recovery firm first. Most reputable data recovery companies will perform a free diagnostic and evaluation on most standard IDE hard drives. Many will even include a list of the recoverable files with that evaluation before you proceed. In some cases, we even work with our customers on a payment plan to help ease the burden of the recovery costs. Of course the best way to avoid all of this is to simply backup anything and everything of value.

Greg Duffield is the founder of ACS Data Recovery, a premier provider of hard drive data recovery services. You can reach them toll free at 1-877-646-0546 or on the web at http://www.acsdata.com

Perhaps it is karma, but the more successful you become, the more data you will have to deal with. Effectively managing massive amounts of data often comes down to the issue of data storage.

Data Overload

Mass data means large volumes of data or bulk data. Both in a standalone PC as well as in a network environment, we generally face the problem of managing data. The data grows day-by-day thereby creating problems of data handling. No doubt there are various techniques and devices that are capable of storing large amount of data like hard drives, optical disks, tapes etc. Hard drives are now available in almost all new computers. Data on a hard drive is stored on it through magnetic material. CD-ROM stores data on compact disks and it can store data up to about 600MB. Another relatively new device in competition to CD-ROM is DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) that has a capacity of 4.7 GB to 17GB and rate of data access from 600 Kbps to 1.3 Mbps. All of these devices manage and store in different ways. If you are working in network environment then these techniques are not going to help you as much as others.

Most businesses need to store data in order to make it accessible whenever required. NAS (network attached storage) is a fairly new mechanism of managing data, which use special devices that are connected directly to network equipments. These devices are accessible to clients through a server; each client has its own IP address. NAS is centralized storage technology. If you want to store more data or want to expand the storage then just add another device. Another technology that is quite popular nowadays is SAN (Storage Area Network), which is a network of storage devices. These storage devices are connected to each other and to a server with the help of some special switches. SAN takes the backup of data from your network without affecting the standard network infrastructure.

For connecting SAN storage devices, you can use fiber channel, a latest and most significant technology that interconnects storage devices and allows them to communicate at very high speeds and at greater distances than previously possible. It can cover up to 6 miles.

Two techniques that are quite popular these days for data storage are RAID and SCSI. Both are high speed and reliable techniques in data storage. These techniques can be implemented in most storage mechanisms like DAS, NAS and SAN. RAID is a series of standards that improves performance and fault tolerance by using a redundant array of inexpensive disks (hence the acronym). This type of protection is required in all data storages.

Three major factors that need consideration in any data management technique or data storage device are capacity, speed and security. Capacity means amount of data that can be stored. Speed means rate at which data can be retrieved. Some common interfaces for data storage are fiber channel, IEEE 1394, IDE, SCSI controllers and USB.

Some advanced techniques for managing data on your computer are DFS (Distributed File System) and EFS (Encrypting File System). DFS helps in locating and managing data on network. DFS bonds files on different computers and make them appear as single “namespace”. EFS are used to store encrypted files on NTFS volumes. EFS prevent unauthorized user access.

According to your needs you can choose any of the techniques for data management and data storage.

Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm - http://www.marketingtitan.com - a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company offering automated web site systems - http://www.businesscreatorpro.com - create web databases, e-commerce sites, business lead management systems and more.

If I asked you the question: which part of your computer is the most fragile, what would you say? What if I asked: which part is most important to you?

Often, the answer to both of these questions is your Hard Drive.

Your hard drive is likely one the most important things you own. It contains work data, school data, emails, photos, music, movies, tax information, etc… Incidentally, the hard drive is also one of only two moving components in your computer (the other being your optical drive). The following is a list of important maintenance and monitoring techniques you can use to maximize the life of your hard drive and prevent data loss.

Hard drives are physically fragile – handle with care
Statistics show that 25% of lost data is due to a failure of a portable drive. (Source: 2001 Cost of Downtime Survey Results) Contrary to its seemingly rugged appearance, your hard disk is a very delicate device that writes and reads data using microscopic magnetic particles. Any vibration, shock, and other careless operation may damage your drive and cause or contribute to the possibility of a failure. This is especially relevant for notebook users, as they are most at risk of drive failure due to physical damage, theft, and other causes beyond their control. That’s why we recommend regular backup of notebook hard drives, as often as possible. Possible solutions include external USB or Firewire drives (although these are prone to the same risks), desktop synchronization, or backup at a data center through the web.

Hard drives write data in a non-linear way forcing it to become fragmented.
When files accumulate on your hard drive, they do not just get written in a linear fashion. A hard drive writes files in small pieces and scatters them over the surface. The fuller your hard drive becomes and the more files you save and delete the worse file fragmentation can be. Hard drive access times increase with fragmentation since your drive must work harder to find all the pieces of the files. The more fragmented your data is, the harder the actuator arm has to work to find each piece of a file.

A case in point:
Disk fragmentation is a common problem for users of Outlook Express and database software. Each time outlook saves new mail, it does so in a different physical location from the previous time. This results in extreme fragmentation, causing longer hard drive access times and forcing more strain on the heads. This strain can eventually lead to a head crash, and often that means a virtually unrecoverable drive.Finally, in the event of a total crash, a fragmented drive is much more difficult to recover then a healthy defragged drive.

Luckily, Windows makes it remarkably easy to defrag your hard drive, simply launch the Disk Defragmenter utility (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools), choose which disk or partition you’d like to defragment and set it to work overnight or while you are not actively using your computer. Defragmentation will speed up your computer and ensure a longer life for your hard drive.

A very small power surge can fry a hard drive – use a UPS and turn off your computer when you can
Another little-known fact about the fragility of your hard drive is its susceptibility to electrical failure. An electrical failure can be caused by a power surge, lightening strikes, power brown-outs, incorrect wiring, a faulty or old power supply, and many other factors. If a power surge enters your computer, it may do an unpredictable amount of damage, including destroying your hard drive’s electronics or crashing the heads and possibly resulting in total data loss.

The best way to protect your computer from such dangers is to use a highly rated protected power bar or an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). Although these devices won’t eliminate the chances of a crash, they will serve as effective protection in most cases. Also, you can minimize the danger of an electrical problem and reduce wear of your hard drive by turning off your computer or using power-save modes whenever possible. It’s a known fact that 100% of drives fail, the question is when will it happen and will you be prepared? Make sure to check out the knowledgebase section of our website for more detailed information on how electrical power affects your computer.

Be SMART, monitor the health of your drive to prevent unexpected crashes
All modern hard drives have a self-monitoring technology called SMART (Self Monitoring Analysis & Reporting Technology). What most people don’t realize is that the majority of hard drive failures do not have to be unexpected. Most failures occur as a result of long-term problems which can be predicted. By regularly monitoring disk health and performance, you can know about potential hard drive problems before you lose any of your data.
Several excellent utilities are available, including DiskView and Stellar SMART for standard IDE and SATA desktop drives. Also available are tools that monitor the health of SCSI drives and full RAID Array systems. Ariolic Software offers a great utility called ActiveSMART.

The only fool-proof way to prevent data loss is… Backup!
If you only take one of the suggestions here to heart, let it be this one: always back up your important data. After all the monitoring and all the prevention measures are in place, one fact still remains: all hard drives fail. Backing up regularly will ensure that you’re never caught without your critical data. For individuals, the simplest solutions include external portable hard drives, dvd’s, and online storage. For businesses, we recommend renting space at a secure data centre and implementing a disaster recovery plan, regardless of the size of your business.
I hope that the above techniques give you some idea of the importance of hard drive maintenance and provide some insights in how you can protect yourself from data loss.

Alex Bezborodov is the technical writer for Accurate Data Recovery, specializing in data recovery for end users, academia and small businesses. Check out the ADR Resource Center for more useful information.
Let ADR bring your data back to life!

Yesterday I had to change my hard drive and had a few issues that I was able to fix.

The problems started in the morning when my wife called me and told me that the computer would not boot. We have been having trouble with our hard drive for a while now and I was able to fix each time by just reseting the PC. This time though the computer was not seeing the hard drive. Using tools and knowledge that I had I had to do the following:

Install new hard drive
First of all I had to install the new hard drive. I was able to do this by disconnecting my CDR and leaving myDVD drive, two old hard drives in the machine, plus a new 80 gig drive with a 16 meg cache. I was unsuccessful at loading Windows though as I kept getting an error as the Windows setup was starting, after loading the drivers I would get an error that it could not load the setup. I switched to my CDR from the DVD drive and had no problems.

Setup Windows
I successfully did a quick format of the new drive (thanks for that new feature Windows XP) and successfully loaded Windows XP although now I have my operating system on the E drive.

Rebuild hard drive partition table
After I booted to Windows I saw that my old drive was not showing up as a drive or a partition. If I reight clicked on the partition in disk Management it knew that the drive existed but could no longer find a partition on it. Windows Disk Management said that the drive was healthy, My first attempt was to create a partition but not to format the partition as I did not want to lose the data for good. I fought with this for a couple of hours as I did not back up lately and the wife would kill me if I lost all of her data. In the end I was able to use Test Disk from the Filesystem tools of the Dos Ultimate Boot Disk. It ends up that the partition table had a start but not an end and the program was able to fix this….whew I would have been in trouble….

Migrate Windows and Office data
After I had the old drive back I went into the BIOS and chose to boot from that drive. I was able to boot to the old Windows XP installation easily enough and did not want to keep any of the data there but thought it would be a good idea to transfer my Windows settings using the file and settings transfer wizard in Windows. I saved the settings using the wizard and chose this as the old computer and in the destination I chose a folder I created on the new hard drive called “transfer files”. I then decided to transfer only my settings as I knew that I was going to have to reload my software and would be manually copying over the file structure from the old drive to the new drive.

I also moved all of my settings for MS Office using the Save my settings wizard from the MS Office 2003 tools section. I was able to copy the settings, which come across as an OPS file to the same place as my Windows Transfer Files and Settings.

After I had moved the settings and files over I rebooted and went back into the BIOS and changed my first boot to the new hard drive and it’s windows XP installation. I was very happy to see that after running the wizrds for transfering the settings and after reloading MS Office 2003 I was able to move over my mail folder and saw all of my email, contacts, and best of all my email addresses (Still had to fill in the passwords for email but that’s OK). After a relogon I also had all of my desktop settings back includig the background picture of my daughter and the animated Pingu cursors.

Copy data from bad drive
Next I just did a blanket move of all of the files from the old hard drive to new into a new folder that I created in the root of the drive. I did this simply to save time as I am not sure about the stability of the old hard drive and fear that I will lose it again.

Reload software
I have started reloading software but as usual I am going to be slow about the move this time. I will install some of my favorite freewares and will install Streets and Trips, Adobe Acrobat, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop Elements and that’s it.

I have roughly followed about half of my Reloading Windows tutorial but since I have both drives functioning at the moment I have tried to cut some corners and make this work well as well as getting my wife up and running quickly for her work stuff this morning.

Bill Nadraszky is a Systems Analyst and runs several websites. For more Computer information you can visit Computer News. To start a computer support business you can visit XP Tech Support

Hard drive data recovery is the method of recovering data from hard drives when it cannot be accessed in the normal manner. This failure to access the hard drive could be caused by logical damage to the file system or any physical damage that had occurred to the storage device, thereby preventing it from being mounted by the host operating system.

The physical damage to a hard drive could occur due to several mechanical failures such as failed motors or head crashes. The physical damage of a hard drive can always lead to some data loss and in many cases this can also results in damage to the logical structures of the file system. In fact, logical damages to a file system are more common than physical damage. This includes damage caused by power outages, which prevents file system structures from being completely written to the hard drive, system crashes, and problems with hardware (particularly RAID controllers).

Most physical damage to hard drives cannot be repaired by end users. For instance, opening a hard drive in a normal environment can cause dust to settle on the surface, resulting in further damage to the platters. Mind you, normal computer users may not have enough technical experience to make these types of repairs. This is where hard drive data recovery companies play a major role in helping the end user to recover their valuable data from a damaged hard drive. Almost all these hard drive data recovery firms use Class 100 clean room facilities to protect your hard drive while repairing, and use the latest tools such as magnetometers to retrieve the lost bits from the magnetic media. The extracted raw bits retrieved from the damaged disk are used to rebuild a disk image, which can then be mounted to have its logical damage repaired.

Nowadays, there are several companies which offer hard drive data recovery software programs which help the end users to recover all their important files or folders lost after an accidental format, partition loss, software malfunction, file or directory deletion, or virus crash. Whether your computer crashes or you accidentally delete the files, hard drive data recovery software helps you to locate, recover and restore lost information from your disk.

Some of the main contexts where hard drive data recovery software could save one from the blues include a formatted drive, deleted file or directory, missing file or directory, drive not booting, inaccessible drive, copying of system locked files like registry hives, damaged or corrupted partition table, recovery of deleted files and folders on FAT and NTFS hard drive or partitions, retrieve compressed files from NTFS partitions, data recovery on damaged FAT and NTFS partitions, and formatted hard drives.

Most of the hard drive data recovery software programs available in the market are easy to install and use and are virtually self maintaining. It is highly recommended to use any of the popular hard drive data recovery software in your computer along with other programs. The program frequently creates backup copies of all your files so that you need not have to worry of any potential unexpected data loss.

Mac McClellan is the webmaster for Hard Drive USA http://harddriveusa.com, a useful site for information and resources on hard drives.

No matter what we do with our computer, storage is an important part of our system. Nowadays, we have been holding more and more information on our PC. Most computer users no longer keep their documents, letters, music, photos, pictures, etc. in hard copies, but store them on different data storage devices, preferentially the most popular one – the hard drive, counting on it’s reliability.

There are many reasons for the hard drive failures. Of course, when you lose your data, you think less about the causes of its loss, but more about the data, itself. However, if you were to learn about the cost of the hard drive data recovery, you would rather prevent it, especially, from the most common reason of hard drive damage – overheating.

In old drives, the rotating speed was low, so the overheating problem did not exist. However, most recent hard disks, with a speed of 7200-10000 RPM, heat up during their work, and the temperature inside rises up to 70 C and above. Of course, hard drives are now manufactured with internal temperature sensors, computers have fans, coolers, and other gadgets to prevent overheating, and software utilities indicate the temperature of your hard drive. Contemporary hard drive models are able to operate at 50-55 C, but we should point out that the hard drives are more sensitive to high temperatures than any other computer parts. The fact that the hard drives carry your precious data is indeed important, as well as its ultimate loss would be a disaster to you. There are data loss situations when even the most advanced data recovery companies can’t guarantee that you will receive you data back.

Why is overheating critical for a hard drive? The best way to understand how a hard disk works is to take a look inside the drive to see the internal work of each part in relation to overheating.

The Platters (magnetic physical media).

The platters (disks) carry the data. They are made from light aluminum or optical glass and ceramic, and are coated with a magnetic layer. When the drive heats up, the platters expand, changing their size and geometry. This destroys the magnetic layer on the surface where the data is stored, and creates defects and micro cracks. Physical damage of the surface leads to the appearance of “bad” or unreadable sectors.

The Read/Write Heads.

The read/write heads of the hard disk are the interface between the platters on which the data is stored and the electronic components that make up the rest of the hard disk. The heads read from and write data on the platters. The read/write heads do not make contact with the media. This distinguishes hard disk drives from floppy disks, VCRs and tapes. Drive heads float over the surface of the disk without ever physically touching the platters. When the air inside heats up, the distance from the platters to the heads gets smaller, which increases the possibility of a head crash.

The Head Actuator.

The head actuator is a device attached to the heads, and is responsible for their moving around the platters. All modern drives have a voice coil actuator, which controls the position of the head over the correct cylinder. Since overheating is a cause of damage of any parts of the drive, the actuator is not an exception. Therefore, the head actuator failure directly affects the hard drive performance.

Controller Chip.

The circuit board(s) attached to the outside of the HDA (Head Drive Assembly) provides control of the movement of internal parts. Modern models have SM and VCM (Spindle Motor and Voice Coil Motor) controller chip soldered into the board. It is obvious that even a small temperature jump, for example, in the summer time, can lead to the burning of SM and VCM controller chip. Taking into account the importance of your data, you can imagine how unpleasant would be the consequences of such.

We explored the problems that can occur from an overheating hard drive. What is the optimum temperature that will prolong the drive life (and that of your data!) and how to maintain this temperature? Most used 7200 RPM hard drives generate more heat than 5400 RPM drives. Ideally, a hard drive should run under 40 C. If it runs under 50 C it is probably still acceptable. If it keeps working at 60C you will have a problem and if it still keeps working at 70 C you will have a REAL PROBLEM. As we can see, the excessive heat is not tolerated by a hard drive.

What can we do to maximize the hard drive’s life?

It is essential that the drive must be properly cooled and ventilated. Even if your system has embedded coolers and fans, additional coolers installed in a way of cooling the hard drive directly, will improve the drive’s reliability. Just invest a small amount ($5-$35) in a cooling solution for your hard drive, and you will prevent the computer data recovery issue. There is a bunch of coolers that you can find at the computer stores.

By keeping your drive cool, you do not only increase the hard drive’s stability, but also eliminate drive’s crashes.

Vital Data Recovery - Montreal, Quebec, Canada (http://www.vitaldata.ca). Vital Data is data recovery company, which specializes in recovering data from hard disk drives and other media. Vital Data Recovery offers the most technologically advanced hard drive data recovery available.

If you have ever wanted to know how data recovery works, I will provide you with an overview. Opposite to what you may think, when you erase a single file, it does not undergo the digital equivalent of shredding. Instead, all that happens is the reference to the written document is removed from the operating system index. So the single file still exists but the operating system does not know where to look for it because it has been removed and as such just can’t be detected. Even so, data recovery specialists can rebuild the file index that the operating system needs to locate your computers file. When that is executed you can get 100% data recovery. Once you have removed a file, the room on the hard drive can be re-used & the original file will be overwritten.

Do not take the chance of having to telephone a data recovery expert. Back up all your significant files and ensure you retain the set up disks for important applications. It may be a noteworthy idea to get a 2nd computer, network it to your main pc and backup files between the 2 daily. Another good alternative is secure encoded online backup of your data because the data that’s stored is off site and will not be impacted by a flooding, fire or natural disaster (or otherwise) in the location of your primary site.

Article by Steven Harney of http://www.hard-disk-information.com (The hard disk information centre)