What Is a Clean Room?
A clean room environment (it need not be an entire room, just a portion, sometimes called a “clean bench,”) is a place where the presence of airborn particles is reduced through highly filtered air and best practices, which reduce the generation of new particles. In an ISO Class 5, or Class 100 clean room environment, there are fewer than 100 particles larger than 0.5 microns in each cubic foot of air space. A clean room environment should also be temperature and humidity controlled to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 50% humidity.
A clean room is a highly restricted area, donning clean room gowns and shoe coverings that contain no outside, unfiltered particles, are required. it’s imperative to open and close doors quickly when entering a leaving a clean room environment to avoid contamination. All employees who enter the clean room should receive proper training in clean room best practices.
What is Clean Room Data Recovery?
At times, data recovery engineers have to open hard drives, inspect for the physical damage, and repair very delicate components before they can recover data. But the working components inside hard drives are prone to damage when exposed to dust particles and other contaminants. This is the main reason why it’s recommended that you hire a data recovery specialist who can perform clean room hard drive recovery.
Why Is a Clean Room Important for Data Recovery?
On average, your hard drive platter rotate several thousand times every minute. That stirs up a lot of dust particles that can cause server crashes or damage to your data. When you open a hard drive case, it exposes the delicate platters to dust and other particles in the air. Particles such as dead skin can immediately stick to the platters, resulting in further corrupt files which can damage the drive even further. When sectors are damaged on a hard drive, it makes data recovery even more time consuming. Clean room hard drive recovery prevents the accumulation of tiny airborne particles on the open hard disk drive platters.
Through federal standards, cleanroom data recovery companies regulate the cleanness levels to have a higher chance of recovery. ISO 5 has become the tested and proven standard of the successful companies in the data recovery services industry.
DIY Your Own Clean Room?
You may find tips and articles on the Internet to create your own clean room environment within a shoe box for do-it-yourself data recovery. Other D-I-Yers claim you can create a clean room environment by running the shower in your bathroom for 20 minutes to disperse and dissipate all dust and particles. Another blogger suggested creating a clean room environment in a plastic food storage container.
It is true that the steam can pick the air particles and cause them to stick to the bathroom surfaces like mirrors and walls. But small particles can’t be picked by water vapor and remains suspended in the air. Professional clean rooms are designed to remove even the tiniest particles, and the steam from the hot water can’t just replace them.
We recommend against these practices. Clean rooms require sophisticated HVAC and filtering systems, something most people can’t replicate at home.
Clean room data recovery myth
The “clean room data recovery myth” revolves around “clean rooms” and “Level-3” repairs. It’s based on the false belief that you need an expensive “Level-3” repair in a dust-free clean room environment to safely and successfully recover data from all bad hard drives.
While most clean room data recovery companies have the experience and tools to diagnose a bad hard drive properly, a data recovery company’s diagnosis cannot always be trusted. Companies with high prices will tell you that your hard drive needs level-3 repair (the “most expensive” scenario), regardless of the problem (often even before they properly diagnose the drive).
In our experience, about 70% of all bad hard drives can be successfully recovered without the need for level-3 (“expensive”) repair in a clean room. If the drive wasn’t dropped, this number jumps to around 85%.
