Hard Drive Data Recovery

If you use a HDD with a decent amount of time, there is a good chance someone has told you that data stored on the HDD is not exactly safe. It is definitely true.

The fact that unlike tapes or CDs or other methods of storage, hard drives are mechanical, active devices and are thus subject to comparatively rapid breakdown.

The real threats to hard drives are the people who use them. Working as a computer tech during the glory days of Windows XP, you get rather used to using FDISK and other hard drive utilities to prepare and repair customer’s drives, which leads to certain over confidence.

Picture this if you will; there are two or three sentences and a screen shot away from finishing a 5000+ word article on computer upgrades. All we should do was fire up FDISK on a dual boot Windows PC system and grab a few screen shots. Write a little blurb on how to partition a drive, making sure to tell the readers not to mess with FDISK if they were not sure what they were doing…

Anyway, wanted to get some more screen shots of the actual partitioning screen, but you did not have a blank hard drive handy. You can use my NTFS formatted XP drive (which FDISK perceived as a blank drive) to start the “process,” grab the screen shots and then cancel the partitioning.

Except for one little thing
FDISK, in the process of checking the disk before it prompts you for the size of the partition, writes information to certain areas of the hard drive. This data writes over whatever might have been there before. Meanwhile, there I was, watching the ‘%complete’ counter and wondering why a little red warning flag kept going off in brain? Restarted WinXP and waited for it to boot, and waited… and waited…

The hard drive that suffered the data loss was a 1TB Hitachi drive with two 5Gb XP NTFS partitions (Home and Professional) and 6Gb of unused space. Both XP partition were unbootable after the incident.

After transferring the drive to a Windows 2000 computer, then use disk manager, (to load disk manager on XP or 2000, right click ‘my computer’ select ‘manage’ then ‘disk manager’) this is what I saw.

The Primary partition where my 5000+ word article was saved, is seen as unformatted and cannot be read by the OS. The second XP partition could not be booted, but was seen as formatted and I could transfer files easily from it using explorer.

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Hard Drive Data Recovery after Physical Damage

Hard Drive Data Recovery after Physical DamageA wide variety of failures can cause physical damage to hard drives.  HDD can suffer any of several mechanical failures, such as head crashes and failed motors. Most physical damage cannot be repaired by end users. For example, opening a hard disk drive in a normal environment can allow airborne dust to settle on the platter and become caught between the platter and the read/write head, causing new head crashes that further damage the platter and thus compromise the recovery process. Furthermore, end users generally do not have the hardware or technical expertise required to make these repairs. Consequently, costly data recovery companies are often employed to salvage important data.

A hard drive can fail in many ways, caused by various reasons.

  • Logic board (controller) failures.
  • Moving parts failures.
  • Firmware corruption

How to determine a physical hard drive failed?
The hard drive is most likely physically damaged, and may be beyond the software repair capabilities, if any of the following symptoms is evident

  • There is a problem apparent on the exterior of the drive, like visible damage to the chips and/or connectors.
  • The drive is not listed in Widows Disk Management, Windows Device Manager, and in the system BIOS.
  • The drive remains silent (no spin-up sound, no movement/vibration felt) when powered up.
  • The drive emits loud clicking noise when accessed. Typical pattern would be repetition of click-pause-click-pause-click, followed by the sound of the drive stopping and then spinning up again. Windows typically locks up or feels “sluggish” for the entire duration of the sequence.

Physical Damage Recovery techniques
Recovering data from physically damaged hardware can involve multiple techniques. Some damage can be repaired by replacing parts in the hard disk. This alone may make the disk usable, but there may still be logical damage. A specialized disk-imaging procedure is used to recover every readable bit from the surface. Once this image is acquired and saved on a reliable medium, the image can be safely analysed for logical damage and will possibly allow for much of the original file system to be reconstructed.

Hardware repair
Media that has suffered a catastrophic electronic failure requires data recovery in order to salvage its contents. Examples of physical recovery procedures are: removing a damaged PCB (printed circuit board) and replacing it with a matching PCB from a healthy drive, performing a live PCB swap (in which the System Area of the HDD is damaged on the target drive which is then instead read from the donor drive, the PCB then disconnected while still under power and transferred to the target drive), read/write head assembly with matching parts from a healthy drive, removing the hard disk platters from the original damaged drive and installing them into a healthy drive, and often a combination of all of these procedures. Some data recovery companies have procedures that are highly technical in nature and are not recommended for an untrained individual. Many of these procedures will void the manufacturer’s warranty.

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Hard Drive Data Recovery in Dallas,TX

Hard Drive Data Recovery in Dallas,TXLooking for a professional data recovery service in Dallas area? In Dallas area there are many recovery companies and here is a list just for your referance:

1. Secure Data Recovery Services – Dallas TX
2911 Turtle Creek Blvd. Suite 300, Dallas, TX 75219
(214) 530-5992
www.securedatarecovery.com

Services‎: 24/7 Emergency Data Recovery Emergency Data Recovery Service Diagnostics includes: Raid Servers, Mac Laptops, SQL Database repair, Raid Repair and Hard Drive Recovery Services – 24 Hours 7 Days a week

All my data fully recovered. I found Hard Drive and RAID Data Recovery Services – Dallas after searching for local companies in the area, basically somewhere I can bring in my hard drive to see if the data on it is recoverable. I liked the fact this Hard Drive and RAID Data Recovery Services – Dallas provides a free diagnostics, that way I can decide if I want to have the recovery performed or not. It didn’t take long for them to get back to me with the results at which point I authorized the recovery to begin. I admit I had my doubts, I was nervous, in fact I went to bed each night with my fingers crossed under my pillow. The customer service was good, they kept me up to date on the recovery process. Once everything was finished it was such a relief. I verified the recovered information and as they said they would, Hard Drive and RAID Data Recovery Services Dallas recovered everything on my damaged disk!

2. Dallas Data Recovery
4514 Cole Ave., Suite 600, Dallas, TX
469.328.9898
www.harddriverecoverydallas.com

Services: Dallas data recovery: Hard drive, laptop, desktop, USB, external hard drive recovery and RAID data recovery Services. Data Recovery Dallas recovers data from all RAID configurations, hard drives, servers, laptops, external hard drives and USB flash drives. Local service in TX Call 469.328.9898

3. SalvageData Recovery Services
Data Recovery Dallas, TX
5430 LBJ Freeway, Ste 1200 Dallas, TX 75240
Phone: (972) 996-2552
www.salvagedata.com

Services: Hard drive recovery, hard disk data recovery, data recovery services, data retrieval, RAID data recovery, hard drive repair, hard drive crash, data recovery software, hard drive data recovery, computer data recovery, Dataleach.

My hard drive was crashed and I lost some important data of my company. I really need my lost data. I think I am lucky in my life, when some told me, this is possible, u can get back your data in short time, thanks salvage data.

If you are living in Dallas area maybe you have heard about one or some all of them, they are all top-customer-reviews recovery companies that can help you so much. If you also know other companies can provide professional recovery services please feel free to contact me, I can list them here in time. Thank you!

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Hard Drive Data Recovery in Denver Area

Hard Drive Data Recovery in Denver AreaLooking for a professional data recovery service in Denver area? Here is a collection of recovery companies for your referance:

Note: Before you decide to take our disc drives to these companies for a recovery service, you can do something ourself to have a general hard drive diagnoses to reduce the expensive recovery cost. Please refer to this post: Data Recovery User Guide – Through Data Recovery Software

Hard Drive Data Recovery Denver:

DataTech Labs
www.datatechlab.com
8000 E. Quincy Ave., Suite 300, Denver
(303) 770-3282

Sector Logics Data Recovery
www.sectorlogics.com
600 17th St, Ste 2800, Denver
1-866-804-1914

Data Recovery Link
www.datarecoverylink.com
1780 South Bellaire Street #355, Denver
(303) 649-1181

ADR Data Recovery
www.adrdatarecovery.com
999 18th Street #2700, Denver
(303) 895-3844

Digital Medix
www.digitalmedix.com
8000 E. Quincy Ave #300, Denver
(303) 730-0555

If you are living in Denver area maybe you have heard about one or some all of them, they are all top-customer-reviews recovery companies that can help you so much. If you also know other companies can provide professional recovery services please feel free to contact me, I can list them here in time. Thank you!

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Hard Drive Data Recovery On a Desktop or Laptop Computer

Laptop Data Recovery When a laptop hard drive becomes “unbootable“, and you are unable to repair it, you can often save the data on the hard drive by using a “slave drive” recovery method on a desktop computer. As long as the laptop hard drive has not been mechanically broken and the disk is still “readable“, you should be successful in accessing and preserving the valuable data on the drive.

I know the frustration when you delete something you shouldn’t have, or your hard drive is corrupted. I will show you how to do a data recovery and hard drive recovery from a desktop computer or on a laptop computer. There is some software you can use to undelete software, or even recover corrupted sectors, this is not always going to work, but worth a try when you need your data back. The ultimate recovery, unfortunately, would be to send your disk to a professional data recovery or hard drive recovery place.

  1. If you have deleted something by accident, you can try to recover that file from the recycle bin in Windows. If you have emptied the recycle bin, you may be thinking it is lost forever, but you can try to do data recovery using software that is free. Data recovery is not always going to work, if the hard drive has written over that sector with data from another program, it might be unattainable using home based software.
  2. You can try however to do data recovery using this simple program “Undelete-All“, I have posted it in resources.
  3. If your hard drive crashed and the sectors were corrupted, again a professional hard drive recovery place would be the best, but if you don’t have thousands to spend, you can try a few things that are free.
  4. First you will want to restart and make sure the hard drive is being detected by BIOS, when it restarts press f2, or esc, or del to enter BIOS, every computer is different on how to get in, usually it will say at the bottom of the screen.
  5. Once in BIOS you will see a summary screen, if your hard drive is detected, great! Proceed on to the next steps, if, however, your hard is not showing, I am afraid to say but more then likely it has died, and it would definitely take a professional place to recover, what they do is take the hard drive platter out, and mount it onto a professional machine to recover the data, again this can costs thousands (I’ve checked into it before). There could though be other reasons a hard drive is not showing, such as, loose cables, BIOS not updated, etc. But if it was working, and nothing has changed, and you haven’t rattled the computer around like laptop computers, this you would want to check for loose wires, otherwise it is probably dead.
  6. What you can do to try to get data recovery if it is still detected, and this works for desktop computers or laptop computers, would be to set up the old corrupted drive as a slave disk to the new disk.
  7. What you would need to do is buy a new disk, install the new OS, be it Windows Vista, XP, etc, and then attach the old drive to the 2nd cable in the computer. There will be jumpers if your drives are IDE, every drive is different, and you will have to look that up, it might be on the drive itself. You will want the new drive as master, the old drive as slave. If your drives are SATA, no matter, it will do this automatically.
  8. If you have a laptop computer, this will be a different procedure, you would need either an external enclosure for your old drive to attach it to your laptop via USB, or a desktop computer that you can hook it to.
  9. Since laptop computers can have either IDE or SATA, this might pose a difficulty if your desktop only takes SATA and your laptop is IDE, you would need an enclosure for this to hook it up via USB. If your laptop computer is SATA, you can hook this up to any desktop that has SATA, same with IDE.
  10.   Once the drive is hooked up, and shows in Windows, you can begin the process of getting your files back. The main files on your desktop will be located in a USER file in Windows Vista c:\(user name)\desktop, in XP c:\documents and settings\(user)\desktop.
  11. . I hope this article sheds some light on data recovery, hard drive recovery, and deleted files in laptop computers, and desktop computers. I hope if this has happened to you, that you will be able to get your data back! I always, always suggest that you backup your data using an external hard drive connected via USB, better to be safe then sorry! 🙂
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Hard Drive Data Recovery Services

Hard Drive Data Recovery Services

Identify a hard drive data recovery service provider that suits your needs!

  • DriveSavers Data Recovery
    Recovers lost data for individuals, corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies.
    www.drivesavers.com
  • SalvageData Recovery Service Lab
    Offers data recovery business solutions and consultancy to recover data from hard drives lost due to RAID failure, fire and water damage, software failure, power outage, and human error.
    www.salvagedata.com
  • Ontrack Data Recovery
    Specializing in retrieving lost data from tapes and hard disk drives. Offers software and emergency, on-site, and remote data recovery services.
    www.ontrackdatarecovery.com
  • IntelliRecovery
    Global data recovery services company specializing in hard disk and hard drive recovery from lost data, drive crashes, and more.
    www.intellirecovery.com
  • CBL Data Recovery Technologies
    Offers a wide range of data recovery services. Services centers are located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
    www.cbltech.com
  • Disk Doctors Labs, Inc.
    Provides data recovery services for crashed hard drives, raid and tape drives. Specializes in physical in logical data recovery cases.
    www.diskdoctors.com
  • Flashback Data
    Offers expert data recovery and computer forensic services for hard disks, tapes, and other media.
    www.flashbackdata.com
  • DTI Data Recovery Software and Services
    Provides physical hard drive data recovery and software based data recovery.
    www.dtidata.com
  • Seagate Recovery Services
    Emergency data recovery facility for hard drives, tape, optical, and removable media.
    www.actionfront.com
  • Data Recovery Services, Inc.
    Recovering magnetic data no matter what media, condition, or location.
    www.datarecovery.net
  • Eco Data Recovery
    Offers restoration of failed hard drives, servers, and RAIDs in addition to the recovery of data from virus and formatting problems.
    www.ecodatarecovery.com
  • Data Recovery Group
    Repair services for failed hard drives & data loss caused by computer crash. Related Novell services offered.
    www.datarecoverygroup.com
  • Data Doctors
    Offers data recovery services for hard drives, floppy disks, and removable drives.
    www.datadoctors.com
  • Peak 10 Data Center Solutions
    Provides colocation, disaster recovery, managed services, connectivity, and web hosting with locations in Charlotte, Jacksonville, Louisville, Raleigh, and Tampa.
    www.peak10.com
  • Disklabs
    Provides computer forensics, RAID data recovery, data recovery services, mobile phone data recovery, and forensics.
    www.disklabs.com
  • Vantage Technologies, Inc.
    Professional data recovery and restoration for all types of storage media in every operating environment.
    www.vantagetech.com
  • DataTech Labs
    Provides data recovery services for crashed hard drives, computers, RAIDs, flash drives, and other digital media storage devices.
    www.datatechlab.com
  • Hard Drive Recovery Group
    Hard drive repair and data recovery services, including MS Exchange servers and RAID arrays. Demos of data recovery software available.
    www.harddriverecovery.org
  • Ibas (3)
    dir.yahoo.com/…/Data_Recovery/Ibas
  • eProvided
    Provides digital image recovery, data recovery services, and advanced circuit repairs for USB storage or any storage medium file recovery.
    www.eprovided.com
  • Cherry Systems Data Recovery
    Offers a hard drive disk data recovery service to retrieve lost data and files from failed hard drives, with custom software tools to restore computer data.
    www.cherrysystems.com
  • Renew Data Corp.
    Specializes in data recovery and computer forensics, as well as conversions.
    www.renewdata.com
  • ITS Data Recovery
    Independent Technology Service recovers data from all types of media including hard drives, RAIDS, CD/DVDs, digital cameras, and more.
    www.datarecoveryspecialist.com
  • Convar Systeme Europe
    www.convar.com
  • Data Rebound
    Secure online data backup services provider that offers a pay-per-restore fee structure. Provides customers complete disaster recovery services as well.
    www.datarebound.com
  • ACS Data Recovery
    Provides nationwide hard drive data recovery services for government agencies, business corporations, defense contractors, universities, and law firms.
    www.acsdata.com
  • eMag Solutions
    Specializes in data conversion, recovery, migration, and storage services.
    www.emaglink.com
  • Southwest Stars
    Specializing in hard drive data recovery, RAID, MS SQL, and more.
    www.swstars.com
  • EverythingAccess.com
    Specializes in Microsoft Access database repair. Also provides unique Access database-related software such as an MDE Unlocker and password recovery tools.
    www.everythingaccess.com
  • ADR Data Recovery
    Recovers lost data and deleted files from failed hard drives, laptops, servers, and RAID arrays with remote or on-site services available.
    www.adrdatarecovery.com
  • Decryptum
    Provides instant online recovery services for password protected MS Word and Excel files.
    www.decryptum.com
  • Doctor Byte Data Recovery
    Provides data recovery services for defective HDs, RAID systems, Zip, and floppy drives as well as the recovery of deleted or corrupted files.
    www.doctorbyte.com.br
  • Excalibur Data Recovery
    Specializes in commercial RAID, network drive, laptop, and tape data recovery on over 20 different operating systems.
    www.excaliburdatarecovery.com
  • Acodisc CD Data Recovery
    Offers specialized data recovery from inaccessible, corrupt, or damaged CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD-RW media.
    www.acodisc.com
  • Iomega Data Recovery Services
    Provides data recovery services for a number of hardware devices.
    www.iomegadatarecovery.com
  • SafeData
    SafeData offers a subscription-based suite of solutions to meet specific business data recovery objectives.
    www.safedata.net
  • WeRecoverData.com Data Recovery
    Data recovery services for the computer and the electronics storage industry covering crashed hard drives, digital media like memory cards, CDs, server RAID systems, and tapes.
    www.werecoverdata.com
  • Data Recovery Link, Inc.
    Recovers lost data from failed hard drives and other damaged media.
    www.datarecoverylink.com
  • Accurate Data Recovery Services
    Recovers data lost from a hard drive crash, virus, software corruption, electrical surge, and more.
    www.a-data.com
  • CD Data Guys
    Provides data recovery from a hard drive disc, CD-R, or CD-RW.
    www.cddataguys.com
  • DataRecoveryLabs.com
    Offering data recovery services for all operating systems and storage media.
    www.datarecoverylabs.com
  • Datex Europe
    Offers hard disk and other peripheral repairs, as well as data recovery services in Class 100 cleanrooms.
    www.datexeurope.com
  • Data Recovery Clinic
    Offers consulting services for preventative data loss and recovery of data from damaged magnetic media, hard drives, floppies, and more.
    www.datarecoveryclinic.com
  • 1stDataRecovery.com
    Recovers data files from dead, deleted, damaged, and downed computer and electronics storage devices.
    www.1stdatarecovery.com
  • PC Wiz
    Offering diagnostic and data recovery software, a worldwide directory of computer resellers, and more.
    www.datadepo.com
  • SQL Server Database Recovery
    Discusses SQL server database recovery, related problems, and backup tips.
    www.sql-recovery.com
  • Adaptive Research & Design Co.
    Data recovery from crashes, viruses, electrical surges, and sabotage, on hard and floppy drives under any operating system.
    www.data-recovery-people.com
  • IT Data Recovery
    Certified RAID data recovery services and hard disk data recovery.
    www.certifieddatarecovery.com
  • Data Recovery Experts
    Data Recovery Experts specializes in hard drive and RAID data recovery services. Also includes flash memory and tape device recovery.
    www.recovery-experts.com
  • Doctor Recovery
    Specializing in data recovery of damaged or corrupted Microsoft Office files.
    www.doctorrecovery.com
  • California Data Recovery Services
    Data recovery service provider for all media types. Hard drive data recovery and repair services in Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley.
    www.CaliforniaDataServices.com
  • RenovoData
    Provides online backup and disaster recovery solutions to protect businesses data.
    www.renovodata.com
  • Data Discovery Computer Forensics
    Forensic computer examination, electronic discovery, and data recovery for the legal community, corporations, small business, and law enforcement.
    www.edatadiscovery.com
  • LWG Data Recovery
    Specializing in the recovery of lost data from most media formats and operating systems.
    www.lwgdatarecovery.com
  • AAA Data Recovery
    Professional data recovery services for commercial and private clients with offices throughout the country.
    www.aaa-datarecovery.com
  • Amnet Data Solutions
    Provides data recovery services on hard drives, RAIDs, servers, and other media storage in New York. Supports MAC, Windows, Linux, and UNIX.
    www.amnetdatasolutions.com
  • SOS HD Data Recovery Services
    Offers data recovery services for hard drives, RAID arrays, tape drives, and others. In Spanish.
    www.xn--soshdrecuperaodedados-v1b5g.com.br
  • RAID Recovery Labs
    Offers RAID data recovering engineering services. Services available 24 hours a day.
    www.raidrecoverylabs.com
  • Data Recover Directory
    Provides a directory of data recovery companies operating in Germany, France, U.K., USA, Japan, and Canada.
    www.data-recovery-directory.com
  • Net-Defender Data Security Services
    Provides computer security and forensic data recovery services. Experts in the recovery of forensic evidence in civil and criminal cases.
    www.net-defender.net
  • Allworld Data Solutions
    Provides recovery services for multiple media types and operating systems.
    www.aw-datarecovery.com
  • Data Recovery Lab
    Provider of data recovery services due to mechanical drive failure, file corruption, and damaged media.
    www.datarecoverylab.com
  • Data Recovery Center
    Services include lost password recovery and hardware dongle lock replacement.
    www.datarecoverycenter.com
  • Authentec International
    Specializes in data recovery of damaged, failed or harmed media and disks, tape, and raid.
    www.disk-tape-data-recovery.com
  • Vogon International USA
    Data recovery including disk and tape, virus damage, corrupted files, data conversion, computer forensics, and computer evidence services throughout the U.S.
    www.vogon-international.us
  • CBL Data Recovery Technologies India
    CBL provides hard drive recovery services for all media systems and operating systems. All services come with a free data recovery service evaluation and written quote.
    www.cbltech.co.in
  • International Data Recovery
    Provides data recovery for failed hard drives in desktop computers, laptops, external hard drives, data servers, RAID arrays, and all other data storage media. Recommended by major manufacturers.
    www.idrdata.com
  • HardDriveRX
    Providing nationwide hard drive crash and data recovery services.
    www.harddriverx.com
  • RAID Recovery Online
    Offers online RAID-array recovery services.
    www.raid-recovery-online.com
  • MVI Data Recovery
    Specializes in all forms of data recovery from logical problems to physical hard drive repair. Certified specialists in all forms of RAID.
    www.mediavision-data-recovery.com
  • Sentry Data Team
    Provides reasonably priced data recovery for all computer media including hard drives, floppy disks, photo cards, backup tapes, and thumb drives.
    www.sentrydatateam.com
  • Data Recovery
    Specializing in recovering information from hard drives, tapes, optical, and related media.
    datarecovery.harddriveservice.com
  • ESS Data Recovery
    Offers computer data recovery services and specialists for notebooks, hard disks, Macs, and other sources.
    www.essdatarecovery.com
  • Data Recovery Labs
    Providing data recovery services from labs throughout the U.S.
    www.data-recovery-labs.com
  • Data Recovery Guide
    This primer explains prevention and symptoms of data loss, as well as how to find the data recovery services and software.
    www.data-recovery-guide.com
  • Colorado Data Recovery
    Recovers data from damaged media and deleted files from any operating system and any storage device.
    www.coloradodatarecovery.com
  • Pronto Data Recovery
    Offers data and file recovery software and services.
    www.prontodatarecovery.com

To add your data recovery link here, please feel free to contact us!

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