Data Recovery Blog

Three tips for selecting a remote backup software

Do you want a do-it-yourself remote backup service instead of finding a backup provider which offers solutions? Please read on below and following these tips:

Is this software able to backup not only data files but also your Mysql / SQL / Exchange or other mail servers? Is it possible to run on your used server operating systems?
How will the remote location work? You prefer to store it on a NAS and in a smart way so that not every backup will be fully stored. You should look for software which can store it on NAS and keeps track of keypoint to files or even file blocks in its own database.
Which transfer types does this software uses? You don’t want to use the old FTP protocol. You want a different way, and at least it should be 100% secure. So look for way of transferring files with SFTP or with a SSL certificate.

Three tips to select a remote backup service provider

Search on your favorite search engine(Google is recommended) for tons of remote backup services. There are so many, first selection you should make is their website. Does it look professional enough? Is there a lot informations to be found on it? The first impression when you see the website of a backup provider could be the most important key for selecting the right remote backup service.
Where is the remote service located? I would suggest you look for a company located in your state or country. Reason: when something goes wrong or when you want to meet them for any reason possible, you don’t want to travel a lot. You should also find out in which country the backup data will be stored, because it is remote backup, it can be stored everywhere from Russian to England to the US. Important is that they store in a location which is not to far away from the location of the original data. Reason is that when you need to do a full data recovery you do want a possibility to pick up the data with an external hard drive or other medias instead of download many Tera bytes of data over you internet connection.
Ask for an real life meeting, contact by email or phone is not enough. Your backup is important and so will be the remote backup services you are going to select. Make an appointment, let them make a good impression to you.

I was working for over 10 years as an ICT engineer in several large firms. I was responsible for setting up a remote backup services for in-house usage. If you want more tips and how-to’s have a look at my website about remote backup services.

Hard Disk Repair

How To Backup Data For All Series Of Western Digital Hard Drives?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago4 years ago07 mins

Keep a backup of your important data at all times! Backing up your data protects you in case of a computer virus, data corruption, hardware issues, or electrical problems.

Western digital is one of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. This article will give some tips on how to backup data on all series of these hard drives.

1. My Book 3.0, My Book AV DVR Expander, and My Passport AV:
These drives do not come with any backup software. You can manually copy and paste your data to the drive, use Windows Backup or Apple Time Machine if applicable, or you can use a third party backup software of your choice.

2. My Book Live, My Book Elite, My Book For Mac, My Book Studio, My Book Studio LX, My Book Essential, My Passport Elite, My Passport Essential SE, My Passport Essential, My Passport Studio, My Passport Essential SE, My Passport For Mac and My Passport SE For Mac:
These drives can use the WD SmartWare backup software that comes on the drive to backup your data from your internal hard drive. Please see the link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

3. My Book Essential Edition 2.0, My Passport Essential Edition, My Passport Essential Edition SE and My Book Essential (Green Ring):
These drives do not come with any backup software. You can manually copy and paste your data to the drive, use Windows Backup or Apple Time Machine if applicable, or you can use a third party backup software of your choice.

4. My Book Mirror Edition, My Book Home Edition, My Book Studio Edition, My Book Studio Edition II, My Book Office Edition, My Book World Edition (White Light), My Book World Edition II (White Light), My Passport Studio Edition, My Passport Elite Edition, My Book World Edition (Blue Rings), My Book World Edition II (Blue Rings), and WD ShareSpace, drives:
These drives can use the WD Anywhere Backup software that come with them to backup your data from your internal hard drive. Please see link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

5. My Book Premium Edition:
This drive came with WD Backup, which you can use to backup your pictures, videos, and other documents. Please see link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

6. WD Elements Play , WD Elements Desktop , WD Elements Portable , WD Elements SE Portable, Elements Portable and Elements Desktop:
This drive does not come with any backup software. You can manually copy and paste your data to the drive, use Windows Backup or Apple Time Machine if applicable, or you can use a third party backup software of your choice.

7. My Book Premium ES:
This drive came with Retrospect HD 2.0 software that can backup your data from the internal hard drive. This software also supports a full system backup. Please see the link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

8. WD Dual-Option Combo , WD Dual-Option USB, and WD Dual-Option Media Center :
If you have a WD Media Center, Dual-option Combo, or Dual-option USB external hard drive, you can use the Retrospect Express 6.5 software that comes with the drive to create a backup that will backup your data from the internal drive. This software also supports a full system backup.

9. WD TV Live Hub Media Center:
If you have a WD TV Live Hub Media Center, this drive includes a Network Hard Drive (NAS). WD does not recommend using this drive for backup purposes, and does not provide backup software with this unit.

10. Other External hard drives (that did not come with backup software):
If you want to backup only your data onto a second hard drive, please see links below for how you can use your operating system to store your data on an external drive for both Mac and PC.

Note:: Always remember that “backup” means that you have your data stored in at least two (2) locations. Moving data from your system drive to an external hard drive is not a backup, unless there is already a duplicate of the file on a different drive.

Hard Disk Repair

Two Main Reasons Cause the Data Loss?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago12 years ago06 mins

1. Logical Damage
Logical damage is primarily caused by power outages that prevent file system structures from being completely written to the storage medium, but problems with hardware (especially RAID controllers) and drivers, as well as system crashes, can have the same effect. The result is that the file system is left in an inconsistent state. This can cause a variety of problems, such as strange behavior (e.g., infinitely recursion directories, drives reporting negative amounts of free space), system crashes, or an actual loss of data. Various programs exist to correct these inconsistencies, and most operating systems come with at least a rudimentary repair tool for their native file systems. Third-party utilities are also available, and some can produce superior results by recovering data even when the disk can’t be recognized by the operating system’s repair utility.

Two main techniques are used by these repair programs.
The first, consistency checking, involves scanning the logical structure of the disk and checking to make sure that it is consistent with its specification. For instance, in most file systems, a directory must have at least two entries: a dot (.) entry that points to itself, and a dot-dot (..) entry that points to its parent. A file system repair program can read each directory and make sure that these entries exist and point to the correct directories. If they do not, an error message can be printed and the problem corrected. If the file system is sufficiently damaged, the consistency check can fail completely. In this case, the repair program may crash trying to deal with the mangled input, or it may not recognize the drive as having a valid file system at all.

The second technique for file system repair is to assume very little about the state of the file system to be analyzed and to, using any hints that any undamaged file system structures might provide, rebuild the file system from scratch. This strategy involves scanning the entire drive and making note of all file system structures and possible file boundaries, then trying to match what was located to the specifications of a working file system. However, recover data even when the logical structures are almost completely destroyed. This technique generally does not repair the underlying file system, but merely allows for data to be extracted from it to another storage device.

2. Physical Damage
A wide variety of failures can cause physical damage to storage media. Hard disks may suffer any of several mechanical failures, such as head crashes and failed motors. Physical damage always causes at least some data loss, and in many cases the logical structures of the file system are damaged as well. This causes logical damage that must be dealt with before any files can be recovered.

Most physical damage cannot be repaired by end users. For example, opening a hard disk in a normal environment can cause dust to settle on the surface, causing further damage to the platters. Furthermore, end users generally do not have the hardware or technical expertise required to make these sorts of repairs; therefore, data recovery companies are consulted. These firms use Class 100 clean room facilities to protect the media while repairs are made, and tools such as magnetometers to manually read the bits off failed magnetic media. The extracted raw bits can be used to reconstruct a disk image, which can then be mounted to have its logical damage repaired. Once that is complete, the files can be extracted from the image.

Hard Disk Repair

How does HDD store data?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago4 years ago02 mins

Hard disk drives store data on one or more metal oxide platters. These platters spin at a rate of 3600-10,000 revolutions/minute, hold magnetic charges. A read-write head attached to an actuator arm actually floats on a cushion of air, 1-2 micro-inches (one millionth of an inch) above the surface of the platters. Data flows to and from these heads via electrical connections. Any force alters this process may cause data loss.

Ten years ago hard drives stored 40 Megabytes (MB) of data. Today’s hard drives store data up to 2000 gigabytes (GB) on a smaller surface. Increasing storage capacities amplify the impact of data loss. As more and more data is stored in smaller and denser areas, mechanical precision becomes crucial.

As a part of this advancing technology, the drive tolerance (distance between the read/write head and the platter where data is stored) is steadily decreasing. A slight nudge, an unstable power surge or a dust introduced into the drive may cause the head to touch the platter, resulting in a head crash, PCB burnt, bad sectors, etc. In some situations, the data residing in the area touched by the head may be permanently destroyed.

The current tolerance drives is 1-2 micro-inches (millionths of an inch). Comparatively, a speck of dust is 4-8 micro-inches and human hair 10 micro-inches. These sizes contaminants can cause serious data damage.

Data Recovery

Data Loss

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago12 years ago03 mins

Data loss is one of Information Technology industry’s most misunderstood concepts. Very little information has been made public about data loss, and the information that does exist is inconsistent. Due to the mixed messages they receive, users find it difficult to properly evaluate their data loss situations and make educated decisions to recover from them.

Most lost data is not lost at all; it has simply become inaccessible to the user. Hundreds of thousands of gigabytes (GB) of data have been lost simply because users were not aware of their options and gave up hope of recovery.

How does a hard disk drive store data?

Hard disk drives store data on one or more metal oxide platters. These platters, which spin at a rate of 3600-10,000 revolutions per minute, hold magnetic charges. A read-write head attached to an actuator arm actually floats on a cushion of air, 1-2 micro-inches (one millionth of an inch) above the surface of the platters. Data flows to and from these heads via electrical connections. Any force that alters this process may cause data loss to occur.

More data is being stored in smaller spaces. Ten years ago hard drives stored 40 Megabytes (MB) of data. Today’s hard drives store up to 80 gigabytes (GB) on a smaller surface than the drives of a decade ago. Increasing storage capacities amplify the impact of data loss. As more and more data is stored in smaller and denser areas, mechanical precision becomes crucial.

As a part of this advancing technology, the drive tolerance (distance between the read-write head and the platter where data is stored) is steadily decreasing. A slight nudge, a power surge or a contaminant introduced into the drive may cause the head to touch the platter, resulting in a head crash. In some situations, the data residing in the area touched by the head may be permanently destroyed.

The current tolerance drives is 1-2 micro-inches (millionths of an inch). Comparatively, a speck of dust is 4-8 micro-inches and human hair 10 micro-inches. Contaminants of this size can cause serious data damage.

Data Recovery

Flash Data Recovery Softwares

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago4 years ago07 mins

Flash cards are the main storage devices used in digital cameras. In some situations, you may find that the photos that were stored on your memory cards have been lost. During these situations, you need photo recovery software to get your lost photos back. Now we introduce some free Flash Data Recovery Software for you:

Fast Flash Recovery 3.2

Risk free file restore tool for flash cards and other media. Fast Flash Recovery is an user friendly image recovery software developed to recover files deleted by mistake from hard disks and memory cards. Deleted files, documents, archives, images, video, music and other erased important information can be easily recovered and saved without any special skills. Now you can recover your lost or deleted data with fast, accurate and easy to use.

MjM Free Photo Recovery Software

MjM Free Photo Recovery Software will recover images that have been deleted from a memory card, or from memory cards that have been formatted. The easy-to-use interface will automatically detect the media card in the card reader and scan it, while displaying thumbnail images of the photos that are found during the scan. You can view each photos in full-size and recover them all or only save selected images. During our review, we first deleted all images from the card the via Windows – the program found and recovered all of them. We then formatted the card in the camera and restarted the search – and again it found them all (recovery results after formatting may vary depending on the formatting method used by the camera). Works with Compact Flash, SmartMedia, Memory Sticks and other media storage cards, does not work with local hard drives. Deep scanning is very slow and can take hours depending on the size of your media card.

Smart Flash Recovery 3.6

Smart Flash Recovery is a data recovery tool for the Windows operating system that supports the FAT 16/32 file system. The software easily recovers data from any type of storage media: flash drives, USB drives, digital cameras, memory sticks, PC cards, multimedia cards, secure digital cards and more. Smart Flash Recovery can recover any deleted files, including MS Office files, photos, mp3 and zip files, even if the partition table is lost! Requirements: Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 What’s New: Recovery possibility option.

Smart Flash Recovery is a completely free software. You can free download and use it as long as you like.

My Flash Recovery 2.0

Data recovery tool for flash drives and other type of USB devices from all major manufacturers under FAT 16/32 file system – find, preview and restore accidenatlly deleted data even flash drive was formatted. Deleted files, documents, archives, images, video, music and other erased important information can be effectively recovered and saved without any special skills. My Flash Recovery use two mode: quick (less then one min.) and deep scan, designed to recover data from formated flash drives. Preview of any file is possible even with the free trial version. After the program is purchased, you can restore single file as far as entire folder. My Flash Recovery will work under Windows NT,2000,XP,2003,Vista operating systems.

My Flash Recovery is a free to try software. You can free download and try it for an evaluation period.

Easy Flash Recovery 3.4

Risk free file recovery tool for flash cards and other media.

Easy Flash Recovery is an easy-to-use data recovery software designed to restore files accidentally deleted from hard disks and memory cards. Deleted files, documents, archives, images, video, music and other erased important information can be effectively recovered and saved without any special skills. Now you can recover your lost or deleted data with fast, accurate and easy to use technique. With Easy Flash Recovery you can restore digital photo files (jpg, png, psd, gif, etc), professional photo raw files (crw, nef, raf, orf, etc), audio and video files (like avi, mov, wmv, mp3, mpg, etc) and other document files (zip, xls, doc, rar, etc).

Hard Disk Repair

PC-3000 for SCSI

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago7 years ago02 mins

PC-3000 for SCSI is a first-to-market professional hardware-software solution for testing, diagnosing the failures and recovering data from Hard Disk Drives with SCSI and SAS interfaces in tandem with Data Extractor SCSI.

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) are supported.
SCSI-2, Ultra SCSI, Ultra2 SCSI, Ultra 160 SCSI, Ultra 320 SCSI is supported.
Original user-friendly interface similar to that one of PC-3000 for Windows.
PC-3000 for SCSI can work with 1 up to 15 Hard Disk Drives simultaneously; make tests and service operations for each of them and independently from all the other drives.
New PC-KEY2 (Power supplier) card can control power supply of one HDD.
Three external power sources of ATX standard, you can connect several HDDs to each of them. DBMS for resource storage – one of the most safe database of all existing ones.
PC-3000 for SCSI hardware-software product can function under these Operating systems: Microsoft Windows 98/ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP. Requirements to your PC hardware are determined by the requirements to the OS. SCSI adapter must be installed.
Know-how manuals with different methodologies of data recovery, recommendations on interchangeability of PCBs, succession of making hot-swap.

More about PC-3000 please refer to this post: Hard Drive Repair Tool PC3000 System

Hard Disk Repair

How to Install a SCSI Hard Drive?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago4 years ago04 mins

Setting the Jumpers (see drive label for locations)

1. SCSI ID – 0 thru 15 for Wide devices. Each device must have a unique SCSI ID.
2. SE I/O – No jumper so the device can multimode (default).
3. Motor Start – Disable motor start (default).
4. Delay Motor Start – Disable Delay motor start (default).
5. Write Protect – Write Protect Off (default).
6. Parity Check – Enable Parity check (default).
7. Terminator Power – Host adapter or other device provides term power (default).

Set the SCSI ID
Each SCSI device must have a unique SCSI ID. Most SCSI drives come with no jumpers on SCSI ID (SCSI ID = 0). The SCSI host adapter usually uses SCSI ID = 7. If you are installing a drive model ending in LC (uses 80-pin SCA connector), the host normally sets the ID over the I/O interface.

Configure Termination
Only the devices at each physical end of a SCSI bus need to be terminated. The SCSI host adapter normally will provide termination for the controller end, therefore only terminate the last drive on the end of the cable. LVD drives do not have any provision for onboard termination; therefore, termination for LVD drives must come from another device or from an external terminator. Use only active SE or LVD terminators.

Configure Terminator Power
Active terminators must receive power from some source. The default configuration results in the drive not supplying termination power to the bus. Usually, the host adapter provides term power. Check the user’s manual for your host adapter. Drive models ending in LC cannot be configured to provide termination power to the bus.

1. Attach one end of the interface cable to the connector on the host adapter.
2. Attach the interface connector and a power connector to the drive.
3. Secure the drive using four 6-32 UNC mounting screws. DO NOT over-tighten the screws.

Troubleshooting
1. If the drive does not spin up, check that the power connector and the interface cable are securely attached.
2. If the drive spins, but there is no LED on/off activity, check the SCSI ID setting. Set the ID so that each device on the SCSI chain has a unique ID.
3. If the computer does not seem to recognize the drive, verify the drive is enabled by the SCSI host adapter setup utility.
4. If FDISK does not detect the drive, run the FDISK program with FDISK /STATUS to verify the drive is present

Hard Disk Repair

SCSI Hard Drive Failures

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago4 years ago03 mins

SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. It is the second-most popular hard disk interface used in PCs today. Many companies use SCSI hard drives because the interface allows for much faster data transfer speeds. One of the main differences with a SCSI hard drive and an ATA hard drive is a SCSI disk must have an independent controller for it to communicate with the operating system.

Although SCSI controller has many benefits, it still adds another layer, another chance for failure and data loss. Unlike the IDE counterparts, SCSI disks operate through their own SCSI BIOS. When the computer is powered up, the SCSI BIOS sends a “Start Unit Request” command to the SCSI devices under its control. If the drive fails to start correctly, the SCSI drive will (often) power down and the error “Start Unit Request Failed” is displayed.

Which caused the SCSI drive failure?
Power down / power up: SCSI drives are often found in machines that “never” switch off. When eventually these machines are powered down, getting the SCSI drives to restart can often be difficult

Electronic Failure: Failure of the electronic circuitry on the hard disk will prevent the drive from starting, fortunately drives with this type of failure are often recoverable

Mechanical Failure: Often characterized by a clucking sound or high pitched whine, SCSI hard disk mechanical failures are often the worst type of failure these drives can suffer. The noises, though not always apparent, are indicative of an internal mechanical failure or head crash.

All the usual failures that can be found on hard disk drives e.g. bad sectors, logical corruption etc.

Hard Disk Repair

Symptoms of HDD PCB Failure & HDD Firmware Corrupted

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM14 years ago7 years ago01 mins

Most people can’t distinguish the HDD problems cause by HDD PCB failure and HDD firmware corrupted. Now we offer some advice as below, please refer:

HDD PCB Failure Symptoms:

When a hard drive fails due to PCB failure, the drive usually cannot boot up or there may be an inaccurate display in the BIOS of the hard drive’s information. Also power may not get to the hard drive and as a result it will not spin up.

HDD Firmware Corrupted Symptoms:

The drive will power up normally (no ticking noises, errors etc) but will not be recognized by the computer.
The drive will power up normally and be recognized correctly but will report a size of 0 bytes
The drive will power up but report SMART errors on boot

Article by Hard Drive PCB Sales: HDDZone.com