Data Recovery - Firms and Software

Background

Unfortunately the physical devices we use for date storage data are not perfect. Hard disks are problematic for a variety of reasons; electronic memory chips in usb flash drives can also go bad. When errors appear, we may well lose access to our valuable data.

Hard Disks

Hard disk drives consist of platters where the data are stored, heads to read those platters, the motors for various operations of the platters and heads, and finally an electronic board for controls and interfaces with the rest of the computer.

A failure in some areas are not too bad but will take a trained technician.  Perhaps the electronic board can be replaced.  Repairs might cost anywhere from $35 to several hundred dollars.  However head crashes definitely reduce the chances of successfully getting data off the drive successful.  The platters themselves can go bad, either bad in individual sectors, or perhaps due to a servo control strip on the platter which helps the heads locate the sectors.  It can be a mess.

Soft Crashes

For small or soft crashes, the drive is functonally alright but the data is misplaced or some bad data has been written over sensitive parts of your file system. These comments apply as well to flash memory.

For this kind of situation, some user runnable data recovery programs can possibly help. Some of the finest available are from Ontrack Systems. These programs can locate the data on a working drive which has had the partition table destroyed or other important directory areas.