Data Recovery Blog

Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery software recovers lost and deleted data from HFS+, HFSX file systems on Mac OS X 10.4 and above, which includes LEOPARD.

Recover Lost Data When:

A volume has been formatted or reformatted
Volume is inaccessible after re-partitioning or any sort of corruption causing inaccessibility to the volume
Volume is not getting mounted
Files and folders are accidentally deleted, Apple partition map is corrupted
Apple catalog file is corrupted
Drive has been initialized
Disk verify and repair fails
Any sort of corruption causing inability to boot your operating system

Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery Software Features:

Simple and intuitive user interface
Supports recovery of deleted files from “Journalized Volume” only
Powerful volume search that helps to locate lost or missing volumes from drives
Two methods of disk volume processing to yield best data recovery results
Extremely fast, disk recovery and scanning algorithms
Presents recovered hierarchical data tree and find option similar to Mac OSX “Finder”
Selective find and save option
Save Scan Information feature helps to avoid rescanning a drive, this features comes in handy
when evaluating demo version. The save scan information can be used with full version to recover data without rescanning the drive
Preview features helps in evaluating the files before recovery of files
Preserves the date, name and other attributes of recovered files after recovery
Universal application compatible with both Intel and PowerPC
Supports raw recovery of files using signature search in case of severe corruption to the volume

System Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.4 and above (including Leopard)
Intel or Power PC based Apple Macintosh
256MB RAM
Enough storage to save your recovered data, and application after installation
Live connection to internet

Useful Links:

More Details:
Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery Software Demo Download
Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery Software FAQS
Disk Doctors Mac Data Recovery Software Screenshots

Data Recovery

Data Recovery Glossary (Letter M)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago12 years ago04 mins

MB (Megabyte)
One megabyte as 1,000,000 (one million) bytes.

MFM (Multiple Frequency Modulation)
A method of encoding analog signals into magnetic pulses or bits.

MR Heads (Magneto-resistive Heads)
MR heads were developed to increase area density and improve drive performance. MR heads use separate read and write elements, as opposed to traditional inductive thin-film read-write heads. MR heads use an inductive element for writing data, and a separate magneto-resistive element for reading information. The read element has a magnetically sensitive material that detects data recorded on the magnetic disk surface. MR head construction results in a stronger signal than that produced by inductive thin-film read-write heads, which permits it to read higher area density data. Since the magneto-resistive element can only read data, a conventional thin-film inductive element writes data to the disk.

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure)
A measure of reliability. The MTBF is the number of failures divided by the number of hours the component has operated. The longer the time span between failures, the more reliable the device.

MTTR (Mean Time to Repair)
The average time it takes to repair a drive in the field. In the field, only major subassemblies are changed (the PCB, sealed housing, etc.), excluding component level repairs as these are not performed in the field.

Magnetic Flux
The pattern of magnetic pole directions of the bits written on the disk.

Manufacturing Yield
The portion of unit production of a manufacturing process that is usable, saleable product; usually expressed as a percent of total output of that product.

Master
The first drive in a dual drive combination. A master drive by itself (with no slave) is called a single drive.

Media
In hard drives, the disks and their magnetic coatings; sometimes refers to the coating material alone.

Mechanical Latencies
Include both seek time and rotational latency. Mechanical latencies are the main hindrance to higher performance in hard drives. The time delays of mechanical latencies are one hundred times higher than electronic (non-mechanical) latencies associated with the transferring of data. See also Seek Time, Rotational Latency.

Memory
A device or storage system capable of storing and retrieving data.

Millisecond (ms)
1/1,000 (one-thousandth) of a second. Hard disks are rated in milliseconds. Higher numbers mean slower performance.

Multi-media
A simultaneous presentation of data in more than one form, such as by means of both visual and audio.

Multi-user
In information technology, a system that enables more than one user to access data at the same time.

Data Recovery

Incident Response and Computer Forensics (Second Edition)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago03 mins

Incident Response and Computer Forensics, Second Edition by Chris Prosise, Kevin Mandia, Matt Pepe.

Paperback: 507 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Osborne; 2 edition (July 17, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 007222696X
ISBN-13: 978-0072226966
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
Popular:

Description:

A strong system of defenses will save your systems from falling victim to published and otherwise uninventive attacks, but even the most heavily defended system can be cracked under the right conditions. Incident Response aims to teach you how to determine when an attack has occurred or is underway–they’re often hard to spot–and show you what to do about it. Authors Kevin Mandia and Chris Prosise favor a tools- and procedures-centric approach to the subject, thereby distinguishing this book from others that catalog particular attacks and methods for dealing with each one. The approach is more generic, and therefore better suited to dealing with newly emerging attack techniques.

Anti-attack procedures are presented with the goal of identifying, apprehending, and successfully prosecuting attackers. The advice on carefully preserving volatile information, such as the list of processes active at the time of an attack, is easy to follow. The book is quick to endorse tools, the functionalities of which are described so as to inspire creative applications. Information on bad-guy behavior is top quality as well, giving readers knowledge of how to interpret logs and other observed phenomena. Mandia and Prosise don’t–and can’t–offer a foolproof guide to catching crackers in the act, but they do offer a great “best practices” guide to active surveillance. –David Wall

Topics covered: Monitoring computer systems for evidence of malicious activity, and reacting to such activity when it’s detected. With coverage of Windows and Unix systems as well as non-platform-specific resources like Web services and routers, the book covers the fundamentals of incident response, processes for gathering evidence of an attack, and tools for making forensic work easier. –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Price:

List Price: $52.99 Price: $33.38 You Save: $19.61

Data Recovery

Data Recovery Glossary (Letter L)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago12 years ago05 mins

Landing Zone
The heads move to this location on the inner portion of the disk when commanded, or when the power has been turned off. User data is not stored in this area of the disk.

Laser Textured Media
Laser textured disks minimize the wear and friction on a hard drive. The precision and consistency of the laser zone texturing process is a major contributor to the robustness of newer model hard drives.

Latency
The period of time that the read/write heads wait for the disk to rotate to the correct position to access the desired data. For a disk rotating at 5200 RPM, the average latency is 5.8 milliseconds; or, the average time delay between the head arriving on track and the data rotating to the head. (Calculated as one-half the revolution period.)

Local Area Network (LAN)
A system in which computer users in the same company or organization are linked to each other and often to centrally-stored collections of data in LAN servers.

Logical Address
A storage location address that may not describe the physical location; instead, it used as a means to request information from a controller. The controller converts the request from a logical to a physical address that is able to retrieve the data from an actual physical location on the storage device.

LBA (Logical Block Addressing)
A method of addressing the sectors on a drive. Addresses the sectors on the drive as a single group of logical block numbers instead of cylinder, head and sector addresses. It allows for accessing larger drives than is normally possible with CHS addressing.

Logical Drive
A logical drive is a section of the hard disk that appears to be a separate drive in a directory structure. You create logical drives on the extended partition of a hard disk. While 26 letters exist for logical drives, the first three are reserved. A and B are reserved for floppy disk drives, and C is reserved for the first primary DOS partition. Therefore, you can create up to 23 logical drives on your extended partition. Logical drives are usually used to group directories and files.

Logistics Model
The systems by which a company organizes the physical distribution of its products. A hard drive manufacturer’s model might include portions to OEM customers, to distributors, to retail chains or to all of these.

Low-level formatting
The process of creating sectors on the disk surface; this permits the operating system to use the regions needed to create the file structure. Also called initialization. Low-level formatting is often performed at manufacturing facilities or in highend technciacl data facilities. There is no need (in most scenarios) for a typical consumer to low-level format a hard drive.

Low profile (LP)
Standard 3.5-inch hard drives are available in heights of 1.0-inch and 1.6-inches. Low-profile hard drives measure 1.0-inches in height.

Hard Disk Repair

How to Upgrade Hard Drive Firmware?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago04 mins

Firmware is a type of software stored directly inside hardware components, such as hard disk drives or motherboards, that tells the hardware how to interact with your computer’s operating system. You would typically only need to upgrade your hard drive’s firmware if you installed a new motherboard or upgraded to a new operating system that the drive was not originally intended to interact with. Firmware upgrades are meant to be administered through a floppy disk, but with some extra work you can also apply them with a standard CD as well.

Note: Save a backup copy of each of your important files to an external source before attempting to update the firmware of your hard drive. If you stop the upgrade process before its finished or accidentally install the wrong version of the firmware, your hard drive may stop functioning properly and you could lose all of your data.

Open your web browser and navigate to the website for the manufacturer of your hard drive (see “Resources” below). Access the support or downloads section and search for the model number of your computer or the hard drive itself.
Click on the download link to download the firmware upgrade. Insert a 3.5 inch floppy disk into your computer’s floppy disk drive if it has one or instead insert a rewritable CD into the computer’s CD drive. Transfer the firmware upgrade file to the floppy disk.
Return to your web browser if you are using a rewritable CD instead of a floppy disk. Navigate to a website that offers ISO software such as “MagicISO” or “PowerISO” (see “Resources” below). Access the downloads section of the website and download the program’s installation file.
Double-click on the file you downloaded and follow the instructions on the screen to install the ISO program. Open the program once it’s installed and follow its ISO burning procedures to burn a copy of the firmware upgrade to the rewritable CD.
Leave the CD or floppy disk in the appropriate disk drive and re-start the computer. Wait for a new menu screen to appear and scroll down through the options using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Highlight the hard disk drive you need to update and hit the “Enter” key.
Wait for the operating system to finish loading and then open the “My Computer” icon on the desktop. Navigate to the floppy disk drive or CD-RW drive. Double-click the executable file saved on the disk and then follow the instructions that will appear on the screen to upgrade the hard disk drive’s firmware.

Useful Links:

IBM Hard Drive Firmware Downloads
HP Hard Drive Firmware Downloads
Download MagicISO
Western Digital Firmware Downloads
Download PowerISO

Data Recovery

Data Recovery Glossary (Letter I)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago12 years ago03 mins

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics)
A type of drive where the interface controller electronics are incorporated into the design of the hard drive rather than as a separate controller.

Index Pulse Signal
A digital pulse signal indicating the beginning of a disk revolution. An embedded servo pattern or other prerecorded information is present on the disk following index.

Initiator
A device in control of the SCSI bus that sends commands to a target. Most SCSI devices have a fixed role as an initiator or a target; however, some devices can assume both roles.

Initialization
See low-level formatting.

Input
The incoming data that the computer processes, such as commands issued by the user.

Input/output (I/O)
An operation or device that allows input and output.

Interface
A hardware or software protocol that handles the exchange of data between the device and the computer; the most common ones are AT (also known as IDE) and SCSI. (See AT and SCSI.)

Interface controller
The chip or circuit that translates computer data and commands into a form suitable for use by the hard drive and controls the transfer of data between the buffer and the host. (See disk controller and disk drive controller.)

Interleave
The arrangement of sectors on a track.

Interrupt
A signal sent by a subsystem to the CPU that signifies a process has either completed or could not be completed.

ISA
Industry Standard Architecture. The standard 16-bit AT bus designed by IBM for the PC/AT system. ISA was the only industry standard bus for PCs until the recent release of MCA (MicroChannel Architecture), EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture), and PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect).

Hard Disk Repair

Swap Hard Drive PCB Board

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago7 years ago05 mins

If you’ve ever installed a hard drive, you have noticed the green board on the bottom of the drive. The green board is known as the hard disk drive’s PCB (Printed Circuit Board).

What A Hard Drive PCB Does?

The PCB is more than a simple way for a hard drive to contain power; it often contains part of the firmware of a drive, which lets the hard drive know how to operate properly and how to read data from the platters. For instance, part of its function is to store information about how many heads are contained within the drive, unique adaptive, and how to access continued microcode for successful drive start-up.

This information is put onto each PCB at the factory, and is programmed to be very specific to the particular hard drive for which it’s designed. While this may sound inefficient, it’s actually the culmination of dozens of years of hard drive technology; it allows larger and larger drives to be built that are both accurate and dependable.

PCB is one of the most complex and intriguing parts of a hard drive. When hard drives fail, occasionally it’s due to a malfunction of the PCB board. Power surges can cause this type of a failure, as well as dust contamination and many other common computer problems.

Hard Drive PCB Failure Symptoms

Hard drive PCB failures usually render a drive unable to boot up. Depending on the brand and model of the drive, some PCB problems cause a hard drive’s information to display inaccurately in the BIOS.

Swapping Out a Hard Drive’s PCB

Because of this customized firmware, however, it’s not possible to switch out a PCB board in many cases; of course, this varies depending on the manufacturer of a drive. For instance, some older drives have the same basic information on two PCB boards of the same model, provided that both drives were made at about the same time, before more unique adaptive were programmed into the next line of drives. If one of the PCBs fails, there is some chance of making a recovery by simply swapping the boards of the two drives. However, hard drives have contained “customized” firmware on at least an occasional basis since they’ve become a consumer product, so the chances of a straight “board swap” working are very low. In most cases, when you swap the PCB, you should also exchange the BIOS which includes the unique information.

Recommended PCB Boards Provider:

HDDzone.com can offer all kinds of HDD PCB boards which you want. You just need to contact them and issue your detailed requirements. They will send your requires with best price in short time.

Data Recovery

Data Recovery Glossary (Letter H)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago12 years ago05 mins

Half-Duplex
A communications protocol that permits transmission in both directions but in only one direction at a time.

Half-height Drives
Standard 3.5-inch hard drives are available in heights of 1.0-inch and 1.6-inches. Half-height drives measure 1.6-inches in height.

Hard Disk
A mass storage device that transfers data between the computer’s memory and the disk storage media. Hard disks are rotating, rigid, magnetic storage disks.

Hard Drive
An electromechanical device used for information storage and retrieval, incorporating one or more rotating disks on which data is recorded, stored and read magnetically.

Hard Drive Industry
The combined manufacturers of hard drives. In the United States, the industry is led by IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum and Western Digital.

Hard Error
An error that is repeatable every time the same area on a disk is accessed.

Hard Sectored
A technique that uses a digital signal to indicate the beginning of a sector on a track.

Head
The minute electromagnetic coil and metal pole which write and read back magnetic patterns on the disk. Also known as a read/write head. A drive with several disk surfaces or platters will have a separate head for each data surface. See also MR Head.

Head Actuator
A motor that moves the head stack assembly in a hard drive to align read/write heads with magnetic tracks on the disks.

Head Crash
Refers to the damage incurred to a read/write head when the head comes into contact with the disk surface. A head crash might be caused by severe shock, dust, fingerprints, or smoke, and can cause damage to the surface of the disk and/or the head.

Head Disk Assembly (HDA)
The mechanical components of a hard drive, including the disks, heads, spindle motor and actuator.

Head Loading Zone
An area on the disk specifically reserved for the heads to use when taking off or landing when power to the drive is turned on or off. No data storage occurs in the head loading zone.

Head Stack Assembly
The electromechanical mechanism containing read/write heads and their supporting devices.

Headerless Format
The lack of a header or ID fields (track format). This enables greater format efficiency and increased user capacity.

High-end Market
The enterprise market.

High-Level Format
A high-level format must be performed (with EZ-Drive or the Format command) on a new hard drive (in most cases) before you can use it. Formatting erases all the information on a hard drive and it sets up the file system needed for storing and retrieving files.

Host
The computer that other computers and peripherals connect to. See also initiator.

Host Adapter
A plug-in board that acts as the interface between a computer system bus and the disk drive.

Host Interface
The point at which the host and the drive are connected to each other.

Host Transfer Rate
Speed at which the host computer can transfer data across the SCSI interface; or, the speed at which the host computer can transfer data across the EIDE interface. Processor Input/Output (PIO) modes and Direct Memory Access (DMA) modes are defined in the ATA-4 industry specifications for the EIDE interface.

Data Recovery

Computer Forensics: Incident Response Essentials

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago04 mins

Computer Forensics: Incident Response Essentials by Warren G. Kruse, Jay G. Heiser

Details:

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (October 6, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0201707195
ISBN-13: 978-0201707199
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
Popular:

Description:

Computer security is a crucial aspect of modern information management, and one of the latest buzzwords is incident response–detecting and reacting to security breaches. Computer Forensics offers information professionals a disciplined approach to implementing a comprehensive incident-response plan, with a focus on being able to detect intruders, discover what damage they did, and hopefully find out who they are.

There is little doubt that the authors are serious about cyberinvestigation. They advise companies to “treat every case like it will end up in court,” and although this sounds extreme, it is good advice. Upon detecting a malicious attack on a system, many system administrators react instinctively. This often involves fixing the problem with minimal downtime, then providing the necessary incremental security to protect against an identical attack. The authors warn that this approach often contaminates evidence and makes it difficult to track the perpetrator. This book describes how to maximize system uptime while protecting the integrity of the “crime scene.”

The bulk of Computer Forensics details the technical skills required to become an effective electronic sleuth, with an emphasis on providing a well-documented basis for a criminal investigation. The key to success is becoming a “white hat” hacker in order to combat the criminal “black hat” hackers. The message is clear: if you’re not smart enough to break into someone else’s system, you’re probably not smart enough to catch someone breaking into your system. In this vein, the authors use a number of technical examples and encourage the readers to develop expertise in Unix/Linux and Windows NT fundamentals. They also provide an overview of a number of third-party tools, many of which can be used for both tracking hackers and to probe your own systems.

The authors explain their investigative techniques via a number of real-world anecdotes. It is striking that many of the same hacks detailed in Cliff Stoll’s classic The Cuckoo’s Egg are still in use over 10 years later–both on the criminal and investigative fronts. It is up to individual companies whether or not to pursue each attempted security violation as a potential criminal case, but Computer Forensics provides a strong argument to consider doing so. –Pete Ostenson

Price:

List Price: $54.99 Price: $34.64 You Save: $20.35

Data Recovery

Computer Forensics JumpStart (Jumpstart (Sybex))

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago02 mins

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Wiley (December 10, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 078214375X
ISBN-13: 978-0782143751
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.5 x 0.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
Popular:

Description:

At the heart of modern corporate crime and counter-terrorism investigations, computer forensics is now the fastest growing segment of IT and law enforcement. For everyone curious about this hot field, here is an in-depth introduction to the technological, social, and political issues at hand. Sybex’s JumpStart approach is ideal for those interested in computer forensics but not yet sure what it’s all about. It offers a complete overview of the basic skills and available certifications that can help to launch a new career.

Launch Your Career in Computer Forensics—Quickly and Effectively Written by a team of computer forensics experts, Computer Forensics JumpStart provides all the core information you need to launch your career in this fast-growing field:

Conducting a computer forensics investigation
Examining the layout of a network
Finding hidden data
Capturing images
Identifying, collecting, and preserving computer evidence
Understanding encryption and examining encrypted files
Documenting your case
Evaluating common computer forensic tools
Presenting computer evidence in court as an expert witness

Price:

List Price: $29.99 Price: $19.79 You Save: $10.20