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Hard Drive Failure – What NOT to Do

Michael Stankard — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:19:34 +0000

By now everybody has had a bad experience with a hard drive. When most people run into problems with their computer, the last thing they think of is the hard drive! If you are a gambler like me, you play the probabilities. The most likely problem you will face if you are running a Windows operating system is bad files, but what causes those hall.dll errors or blue screens of death? In most cases they are OS related, but there are surely enough evidence to suggest that the hard drive can be at fault.

Check out the video below to see “what not to do when your hard drive is acting up” for a humorous look at hard drive failures.

When you save a file to your desktop or to “My Documents”, it is stored on your hard drive, just like every other piece of your digital life! Unless you are a total paranoid and back up everything twice, you are more likely like me, a person that doesn’t have the time or inclanation to spend valuable minutes of a busy day to copy important files to various devices insuring digital security.

What To Do When Your Computer Acts Funky

The first thing to check is the hard drive. So you ask “how much is that gonna cost me ?” Hard drive data recovery is an expensive proposition for most people, but the fact is that we work with users every day, and will do the best we can to fit hard drive recovery into their budgets to the best of our abilities that makes business sense. So what do you do? The first step is to isolate the problem as quickly and easily as humanly possible. Download and try our Freeware Windows Surface Scanner. It will tell you how bad your drive is. Get Windows Surface Scanner here.

OK, so what are the things that you don’t want to do when you know for sure that the hard drive is the issue? Let’s start with the basics:

Don’t put it in the freezer – if you are capable enough to remove the hard drive from your computer or laptop then you are knowledgeable enough to know you can’t mess around with the drive and expect good results. In the past you could swap PCB boards when the hard drive had electronic problems (read below) or deal with heat by cooling the drive down. The problem with the freezer effect is it is a one time shot. I always preffered poker to roulette, and adding a temperature variable to the mix is asking for trouble. The only time cooling a hard drive down is when the drive has frozen (forgive the pun : ) due to excessive heat. Other than that, the freezer won’t help.
Don’t open the drive yourself! There is nothing in there that can be fixed without proper tools and experience.
Call us: 727-345-9665 – we can help and we don’t charge anything unless we recover your data!

Computer Acting Up? Check Your Hard Drive For Free With Windows Surface Scanner New Version

Michael Stankard — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:37:06 +0000

DTI Data is happy to announce the release of an updated version of our most popular freeware: Windows Surface Scanner!

The new version now allows for reports to be printed as to where the bad sectors are, but more impressive is the relationship section, which can tell you what file system components have been damaged. This is a full version data recovery Freeware tool that required no registration.

Often times when a computer is running slow, or having problems accessing files, the hard drive has bad sectors. Windows Surface Scanner is a free tool that will scan the hard drive, report on bad sectors and tell you what’s on the bad sectors and might have problems.

The following file system components are scanned:

Master Boot Record – If there are any problems within the master boot records, this is where they will be.
OS Boot Record – This will tell you if there are problems with the Operating System boot-up files.
Master File Table – The Master File Table is the area of the drive that holds all information about the file system. It has a record for every file stored on the partition. A Master File Table Record stores file information, such as, creation, modification, and last access dates, on disk size and real size, security permissions etc. The most important information the Master File Table stores is the cluster map in the form of runlists. The cluster map stores all the information as to where the file data is actually stored and if corrupted or unreadable as in the case of a bad sector, the file becomes inaccessible. Windows Surface Scanner will alert you to the fact that the MFT is corrupt and may cause problems when accessing certain files.
File Allocation Table – The File Allocation Table, or FAT, is the FAT32, and FAT16 file systems answer to a runlist. Although not embedded in the File Entry record data, the File Entry Record points to the first cluster in a data run which is reflected in the FAT. The FAT then uses an old school technology called single linked list using a terminator to cap off the end of the run. If the FAT has a corrupt sector then many files may be affected since a single sector in a FAT may hold several linked cluster runs for multiple files. Windows Surface Scanner will indicate that the FAT has a corrupt sector and may be affecting access to some sectors.

You can download the Windows Surface Scanner Here.

The Quick Start Guide can be found here for the Windows Surface Scanner

If your hard drive has a bunch of bad sectors, you will need hard drive data recovery. Call 727-251-2058 for more information or support on Windows Surface Scanner.

DTI Data Recovery Rescues ZION and Humanity!

Michael Stankard — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:54:54 +0000

The other day we received a great testimonial from Harry Lennix the Matrix’s Commander Lock. He was very pleased with the hard drive recovery we performed for him! We treat all of our clients like they were stars, and everyone’s data is important to us. It is always nice to have a testimonial from a celebrity though.

Why People Choose DTI Data’s Hard Drive Recovery Services

DTI Data is celebrating 10 solid years as a data recovery company. For all those years we have a Better Business Bureau rating of A+. We are only one of 8 companies in the US listed as an authorized Western Digital Data Recovery partner.

Our goal is to provide our customers with fast and professional services. We don’t charge any money unless we recover the data and give you back your files in a working manner. Call 727-345-9665 or visit hard drive recovery for more info.

Hard Drive Data Recovery Clicking Disk

Michael Stankard — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:03:53 +0000

By far the most common problem we hear about are clicking hard drives. Most data recovery companies automatically assume that a clicking hard drive means physical hard drive data recovery. While in most cases the clicking sound is indicative of a head crash and will require clean room work, there are other problems that can cause “the click of death” Below are 3 different types of clicking disks that we performed hard drive data recovery on:
Clicking Hard Drive

Why Hard Drives Click

The most common reason a hard drive will start clicking is because of a head failure. The heads can no longer find the first sector on the disk and go into a seek pattern. Things like heat can actually warp the platter and make the drive inaccessible. When looking at high capacity hard drives that are over 500GB, this problem is intensified because the sectors are placed perpendicularly on the platter, making it even harder to read. While this is great for mass storage, it doesn’t take much to cause a problem.

Below is a close up of hard drive heads:

Hard Drive Heads Up Close

When Clicking Disks Do Not Need Physical Hard Drive Data Recovery

Newer high capacity hard drives use a language called micro-code to communicate internally. Any chip on the PCB board that hiouses firmware uses micro-code to get it’s instruction set. As you can imagine, if there is a breakdown in firmware the drive can go haywire.

This type of hard drive data recoveryis considered a logical recovery, not a physical recovery and is often thousands of dollars less expensive. The first thing DTI Data does when it triage’s a clicking hard drive, is to determine if it is a logical problem or a physical problem. That way we can give our customers the best pricing! DTI only charges if it recovers the data. Call Toll Free: 1-866-438-6932 to ask about hard drive data recovery.

Knocked External Hard Drive Off Desk – Fell To The Floor

Michael Stankard — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:40:19 +0000

One of the most common calls we get is when someone has knocked their external hard drive off of their desk or counter. I have heard cats knocking the hard drives off, kids and users tripping over external hard drive cables. If an external hard drive falls 3 to 5 feet there is a good chance it might become damaged. This is for sure if it was running at the time.

When a hard drive has a physical shock, the heads can impact upon the platters and cause damage to the data. Sometimes the damage can be with the USB enclosure and not the hard drive. It is always a good idea to take your hard drive out of the case and slave it onto another machine to see if the BIOS can recognize it.

Call 727-345-9665 if you need help with your external hard drive. We also have software and tips for external hard drive repair here.

DTI Data 10th Anniversary Celebration

Michael Stankard — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:57:00 +0000

We are very happy to announce that 2010 marks the 10th anniversary of DTI Data’s hard drive recovery service. Even though we had been selling software since 1994, it was in 2000 that we opened our main hard drive recovery facility. This has been a great decade for DTI and its customers and we are not going to stop now!

DTI 10th Anniversary Special!

To honor 10 years of business we are offering a special package of premium software for only $149.99

Save Over $50.00 On Data Recovery Software!

Recover It All – The industry standard in advanced data recovery software
DART XP – A fast and powerful data recovery software
DART UNDELETE – Super fast undelete tool with a powerful scanning engine
Digital Picture Recovery – Powerful digital photo recovery tool
Speed Clone Suite – hard drive imaging tools that work in both Windows as well as a self loading operating system that can access hard drives without running Windows. 3 distinct drive imaging tools included in the suite!

Western Digital WD5000AAJS Hard Drive Recovery

Michael Stankard — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:31:46 +0000

Western Digital WD5000AAJS hard drive recovery usually entails repairing the heads. Like many drives the WD5000 has a parking mechanism that is meant to protect the platters so the heads don’t impact upon them. This doesn’t help if the heads fail during normal usage.

Read Write Heads Caught in Orange Keeper or Park Area

The park area is allocated for the read write heads of a hard drive to remain stationary in transit, in the off or sleep position so the heads do not make physical contact with the platter or media surface

In many cases due to slight warping of the platters rotation, the armatures read write heads flying height above the platters surface will slightly increase or decreases in size… resulting in an incorrect alignment when being brought back to the park position.

The Result

FIG 1: The read write heads have bent after being forced off the platters with the wrong alignment

FIG 2: Upon restarting the bent read write heads now scrape the surface of the platter causing data loss

FIG 3: You can see now see how badly the heads have been damaged when removed

FIG 4: This shows the worn condition of the orange keeper from when the read write heads jammed

Hard Drive Data Recovery Challenges

Michael Stankard — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:30:49 +0000

When performing hard drive data recovery, it is often a physical problem that requires the disk to be opened. We open hard drives in our clean room to prevent dust and static charges to interfere with the media. Our most commonly faced problem is head failure. The heads float on a tiny cusion of air that is generated by the spinning platters. A brown out or drop in electricity or excessive heat can make the heads impact on the platters. In external hard drives, being dropped or suddenly losing power can also cause an impact.

Every now and then the heads will impact on the platters and cause scratching. This is as bad as it gets as the scratches are eliminating ones and zeros. In the photo below, the scoring of the platters is on the very edge of the media. This cuses severe damage to the heads which have to travel over the edge of the platter at every read and write. Even if we replace the heads, the new ones will soon become damaged as well.

Hard Drive data Recovery Options

To learn more about your options when facing a clicking or grinding hard drive. Call us at 727-354-9665 or visit our hard drive data recovery page.

DTI Data Recovery Now On Twitter

Michael Stankard — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:21:46 +0000

For all of you tweeters out there, DTI has started updating our visitors with new software upgrades, new products and new articles pertaining to data recovery, backup and storage. Stay up to date on all things happening with the team at DTI by following us on Twitter.

This won’t be an online advertisement for us, but a way for users who need our products and services to stay on top of the updates and feature changes to our line of data recovery software and freeware.

Hard Drive Recovery Of Magnetic Media Explained

Michael Stankard — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:10:44 +0000

By now you all know that DTI data is a hard drive data recovery company that not only repairs damaged disks, but also provides data recovery software. We offer full version freeware, RAID diagnostics and file system viewers for our customers. We get a lot of questions about hard drives themselves, how they work and what are the steps that are taken to repair them. Since there is so much information on the Internet, we are going to do a series on what hard drives are and how they work.

Hard Drives Are Magnetic Media

OK, so what does “magnetic media” mean? If you look at the graphic below it shows the different parts of a hard drive. The platters actually hold your data. They also hold a magnetic charge. The heads float over the platters on a buffer of air created by the spinning on the platters. The heads should never contact the platters since that will damage both the heads themselves as well as the data on the platters. Like the Earth, hard drive platters have a north and south pole. The relationship of where bits are stored according to the poles, determines if the bit contains a negative or positive charge. Each charge plus or minus reflects either a 1 or a 0, which can be translated into data.

Hard Drive Parts Laid Out

The motor spins up the drives to a certain RPM such as 7200, which is the most common rotaion per minute on modern hard drives. Once the platters are spinning at enough velocity to create the proper buffer of air, the heads will unlock and start to access the information on the hard drive. Information like the size of the drive can be sent to the BIOS and the computer can boot up.

Here is an up close look at the heads and actuator arm:

: Up Close look at hard drive parts

In most hard drive data recovery cases, the problems we encounter are considered “logical”. A logical hard drive data recovery involves repairing system files, partitions, boot files and system restore recoveries. This article is geared towards physical hard drive recovery which entails either repairing an electronic problem such as from a power outage or surge as well as head problems. If you have ever had a clicking hard drive, then you have had a head problem. In our class 100 clean room, we can replace heads and allow a damaged hard drive to be read.

Even though hard drive data recovery starts with the mechanical or electronic repair of the disk, that is not as easy as some of the videos you might have seen on YouTube portray. Every hard drive has its own firmware as well as its own language called micro-code that allows the drive to communicate with your computer. In cases where large capacity hard drives are clicking, the same exact heads are essential to recover data in a successful manner.

There Is Likely Only One Attempt At Hard Drive Data Recovery

If you run into a situation where your hard drive is acting flaky, slow, losing files or is showing you files but only allows you to see them not copy them, you have a serious problem. If your hard drive is clicking, whining, not spinning up or making a metal on metal grinding noise, you have a crises on your hands. It is essential that you stop trying to boot a hard drive that is showing signs of failure. In a lot of cases a professional hard drive data recovery company like DTI Data can recover the data without total parts replacement. If the hard drive gets to the point where the BIOS cannot see it, then hard drive data recovery is the last resort.

24 Hour Hard Drive Recovery & Server/RAID Recovery Hotline:
Toll Free 1-866-438-6932 or direct 1-727-345-9665.

Online Hard Drive Data Recovery Quote

Western Digital My Book Problem Question and Answer

Jacqui Best — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:53:29 +0000

Below are some more fun Q&A about hard drive recovery. I have given what I think is the best solution to these problems. As always please leave a comment if you have a question or contact me directly at 727-345-9665 ext 236.

Question:

I have a 1TB Western Digital My book Hard drive. When I plug it in to either the USB or FireWire ports the computer detects and the instillation wizard pops up.
I follow the wizard steps and it says “successfully installed” but I cannot find my hard drive.
-My USB drives all work and I have other hard drives on the computer
-It says “you may safely remove hardware” in the task bar
-I’ve tried it on a different computer and had the same result

Answer:

So this gets a little tricky because just because “My Computer” isn’t seeing the drive it does not mean the computer is not seeing the drive. You would need to go to disk management and then see if it is reporting as a mass storage device in the machine. If it is then it is likely that the drives problem is a MBR (master boot record/partition record) problem that can easily be fixed with something like a remote recovery. The other option is to run data recovery software on it and you should be able to tree the hard drive, move the files off, repartition/reformat, and move the data back. If it is not being seen in disk management then it is likely a communication problem with the USB enclosure (box holding the hard drive) and the computer. Usually popping the enclosure open and then slaving it or putting it in a new enclosure fixes that problem.

Question:

I bought a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 1TB External Hard Drive in July ’09. I moved ALL my music, photos and personal files onto this hard drive. My CD-ROM drives quit working right before I got this….so I had not gotten around to “backing them up” on discs. STUPID-I KNOW!!!!
2 weeks ago it just quit working. I used it in the morning and in the afternoon, it wouldn’t work. It appears that it isn’t getting any (sufficient) power. It does not show up as an available drive when it’s plugged in.
Is there ANY POSSIBLE way for me to get my files off of this thing? I plan on sending it in to get it warranted-but I want to recover my files first.

Answer:

Ok, so like the above user he eludes to the face that it just isn’t showing up. it really could be all of the above fixes. My guess would be that if he wanted to get permission from Western Digital to pop open the enclosure he would be able to rule out the insufficient power problem. My guess would again be that the chassis has gone bad since this a very common problem. I always say that a My Book is a good product but only if you are going to plug it in just to back up and then leave it off most times. If you want an external device you can run all the time the best course of action would be to buy a high end USB enclosure and a hard drive in the size you want and build your own. This will give you the option to install fans in it as well as be sure it has good power to the hard drive. Heat is one of the major causes of hard drive recovery.

Online Data Recovery Training

Michael Stankard — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:26:43 +0000

DTI Data Recovery is happy to announce its new online data recovery training course. Exclusive to our resellers, this course has trained hundreds of companies to make money with data recovery services.

For 1 month only, DTI Data Recovery is opening this course up to the public. We are offering only 4 online data recovery courses in 2009. Each course will include our full version data recovery software we sell, but also tools that only our engineers use. You will be able to recover everything from lost emails to deleted pictures, data lost from partition corruption and viruses as well as the following:

Calculating and fixing a partition record for single and multipe partitions
Restoring a deleted file by hand in FAT32
Restoring a deleted file by hand in NTFS
Determining the drive order of a RAID 5
Restoring a file system using the backup OS Boot Records (NTFS and FAT32)
Rebuilding a EXTFS2/3 file system using the super block
Mounting the XFS file system from a NAS device in Linux
Recovering JPEG files using a file harvesting technique
Recovering MP3 files using a file harvesting technique
Recovering a PST file using file harvesting, unused cluster map and scanpst
Restoring the MFT from the backup
Reading the block map for an EXTFS2/3 file system.
Determining Block size of a RAID 5
Determining RAID data set for a Simpletech NAS device
Novell NWFS file system
Microsoft Access Database file format and recovery
How to configure a Knoppix disk
How to configure a Bart PE disk
Recovering data from a DBX file
Swapping USB Enclosures

The course is discounted from its original price of $2500.00 to $995.00 and will not be held again this year.

Reserve your class now, before it is too late, only 10 members per class!
Call 866-418-3843 or fill out Online Data Recovery Training Sign Up Form

Learn more about online data recovery training here.

Chkdsk is Not Designed For Data Recovery

Dick Correa — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:13:04 +0000

In the previous two articles we have discussed how the RAID and some of the decisions the client made in trying to recover the RAID affected the PST file. In addition I discussed that there may have been a stale drive in the array and which probably caused the client to do something that normally destroys data to the point of where it can never be recovered. The client ran ‘chkdsk’, not a good idea for PST data recovery.

Chkdsk. Say it loud and say it proud. Chkdsk. Kind of rolls off the tongue when you say it doesn’t it? One more time. Chkdsk. So there is no misunderstanding, chkdsk works EXACTLY AS ADVERTISED. Chkdsk is not designed to do DATA RECOVERY! Chkdsk is designed to align a file system so that the Windows operating system can read it. However, in doing so an end user can lose their entire file system.

Chkdsk will run when a volume is considered dirty. Dirty can be defined as file size not matching the cluster map. Cross linked files. An INDX record not having a matching MFT record. Any file not having a parent folder (Orphaned). The cluster map for the entire volume not matching what is actually allocated. Bad sectors within a cluster. With that being said seeing this message “The file or directory filename is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility.” means that you probably have at least one of the situations I have mentioned.

As an aside, there are other methods for checking the file system to see if it is dirty before chkdsk is run. FSUTIL and CHKNTFS are two other command line utilities that can manage the file system without the use of chkdsk. Some of the command line parameters for FSUTIL and CHKNTFS will be discussed in other articles.

With all this being said it was pre-ordained that the RAID with a stale drive would be flagged as dirty and therefore a chkdsk would be scheduled. Since chkdsk is defaulted to run automatically it ran on this RAID and caused a great deal of damage. Although many of the files were recovered, the PST file had been reset in such a way as the file system handler would not read the file.

Next time I will discuss what chkdsk did, how it affected the PST file, and in doing so saved the data.

Until next time…

Hard Drive Recovery FAQs

Michael Stankard — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:34:55 +0000

We have been getting a lot of questions about the different types of hard drive recovery and what users can do when they have a data loss situation. There are two main types of hard drive or data loss problems users run into:

Software Failure – this can be caused by viruses or file corruption even user error. We consider it a logical problem, in other words there is not a physical problem with the hard drive. Boot files not working, partitions not showing up, or Windows asking to format a drive are all symptoms of a logical hard drive problem. The rule of thumb here is if your BIOS or your operating system can see the drive, but you can’t access the data, then you have a logical or software problem.
Physical Failure – the worst case scenario when it comes to hard drive recovery is a physically damaged disk. Common symptoms include noises like clicking or scraping slowness for reading or writing and then absolute failure. In the good old days there were sometimes easy fixes to physically damaged hard drives, but that isn’t the case with these large capacity hard drives. Some of the major problems we run into are due to excessive heat causing platters to swell and contract as the hard drive heats up and cools down when not in use. If your hard drive is not seen by the BIOS then you need hard drive recovery.

Hard Drive Recovery Solutions

Understanding what type of problem you have with your harddisk is the first step in hard drive recovery. In most cases logical or software problems can be resolved either remotely, or with data recovery software. DTI Data Recovery has quite a bit of programs that can help home users and professionals alike. We have full version freeware data recovery software as well as a score of programs for more advanced problems. Our data recovery software page lists all the software and what it does. Feel free to call us at anytime 727-345-9665 or toll free 866-418-3843 if you have questions about which type of software you need. That is also the number to call if you want our fast remote data recovery services Recover It Now.

For all other data loss scenarios the best thing to do is to speak with one of qualified data recovery technicians about hard drive recovery. Feel free to call us at anytime 727-345-9665 or toll free 866-418-3843 with questions about our hard drive recovery services.

View It Now NTFS File System Viewer

Dick Correa — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:12:49 +0000

I have worked with Microsoft file systems since DOS 3.3. From FAT12, to the current NTFS 5.0 Microsoft has always strived to make their file systems fast and reliable. However, there has always been one major drawback. Their file systems have always been too centralized. What I mean by that is when storing the file system on the hard drive it is always in one place. The FAT resides right after the OS Boot Record, The Master File Table in almost all cases resides at cluster 786432, or cluster 4. The OS Boot Record always seems to reside at sector 63. The MBR is always at sector 0 although this is an industry standard and not a Microsoft standard per-se.

With all this being said this kind of design can easily lead to the file system being corrupted. In other words if a sector goes bad, or gets overwritten, or the data becomes corrupt, the entire file system may become unusable. As an example, the FAT file system uses a centrally located File Allocation Table which maps every cluster on the hard drive to its appropriate file. With NTFS there is a Master File Table that is also centrally located that is even more susceptible to corruption and destruction.

In addition there are file system components such as an OS boot record that if corrupted or destroyed will give you the message “File System Not Found. Do you wish to format?” The Master Boot Record, INDX Records, File Entry Records etc. etc. These components when destroyed or corrupted will cripple your file system and ultimately make hard drive recovery impossible.

With that in mind there are two options that I have added to the NTFS flavor of the View It Now series of software to help view the file system even when some of the components are corrupt or missing completely. They are as follows.

Under the heading Volume Tools the option NTFS FS Functions is viewed under the drop down menu. Mousing over that function the following is revealed.

Build Virtual Volume

Clicking on the above function will display a dialog box that reveals three values for you to enter.

1. Sectors Per Cluster: Valid values for this field are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128.

2. Total Sectors: Valid value is from 1 to the total size of the river.

3. Volume Offset: Valid Value is from 0 to total sectors of the river.

Once you have entered the appropriate values for your partition just click on mount and the Volume will be displayed in the lower left hand list box of the main dialog box. This volume is now usuable for the following function.

Last Resort File System Build

This particular function does not depend on much of the file system being intact in order to tree the river. This fucntion takes a defined volume and scans it searching for valid MFT records. Once an MFT record has passed my filtering process it is added to a list of other records found. When the scan has finished or been interrupted by the end user a tree is formed and displayed just like any other river. This will then give you the chance to view the file names and see if in fact your file is there.

In addition, after the scan is completed and the records treed you can Export File List To Text File. That file can then be imported into a spread sheet to do searches and sorts on all the fields.

Download View It Now NTFS File System Viewer

If the hard drive is clicking or not seen by the BIOS, you will need hard drive recovery.

My Book is Not Being Seen by Windows

Jacqui Best — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:24:45 +0000

Ok so the most popular external drives on the market have to be the My Book and The Passport. I get a ton of calls every week about them, and I don’t believe it is because it is not a good product but more because they are being SO widely used. So lets start with the main problem I get called about which is that Windows is not seeing the drive at all when it is plugged in. The customer does not even receive the BONG noise that a USB drive has been hooked up. Now in most cases the device seems to still be getting power.

In the case of the MY BOOK I recommend that the customer open up the chassis that is holding the hard drive and pull the drive out of it. Now I am going to preface this with saying it is highly likely this will void your warranty with WD, but it can allow you to gain access to your data. Once you open the chassis you and have the hard drive out you can then either put it in another chassis or slave it directly into the machine. Either option will give you the answer you are looking for, which is , is the drive bad or was it just the chassis. In A LOT of cases it is just the chassis. When we buy one of these devices we are paying for the hard drive and not a lot of extra cash goes into the making of the chassis.

Now in the case of the Passport, these are laptop drives inside of little chassis so you will either need special cables to convert down the size of everything in your desktop machine or to buy a chassis that supports laptop drives. These chassis can be picked up for very reasonable pricing at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, CompUSA, Etc. Again opening the Passport will leave you not having a warranty on the device any longer. If your Western Digital external disk is making noises you my need hard drive recovery.

Hard Drive Recovery Myths Debunked

Michael Stankard — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:36:21 +0000

If you have had a hard drive problem then sure enough you have done some searching on the Internet and seen some startling revelations about hard drive recovery. My personal favorite is :it is safe to put your hard drive in the freezer over night”! Better yet, there are sites that actually recommend putting your hard drive in the freezer. As anyone with a 5th grade education knows, changing temperatures dramatically will cause materials to either contract or expand depending upon whether heat or cold is applied.

Expanding or compressing platters is not a good idea since the heads are programmed to search for the first sector of a hard drive in a particular place. The larger the capacity of the hard drive, the smaller that sector is physically. While it is true that older drives that were prone to get locked up due to heat, could benefit by being cooled down, that is just not the case with hard drives that have been manufactured in the last 5 to 6 years.

Speaking of older hard drives, that brings us to the second most popular myth about hard drive recovery which states that you can easily swap a damaged circuit board from 1 hard drive of the same model to another of the same model. Again that might have been true of Quantum hard drives 10 years ago, but don’t try it now! A good example of why that doesn’t work is just about any popular Western Digital hard drive. You can take any mass produced model number and search for revisions. You will find that the average WD hard drive model has at least 6 or 7 revisions. Each revision speaks a different language! OK maybe language is too strong a word, but dialect isn’t. They just don’t understand each other when you put a board that has one version of firmware on it and have that try to communicate with a head assembly that has another firmware imprinted on its chip sets. Companies that perform hard drive recovery these days must be able to heat boards and work on chips if they are going to have any hope of repairing electronic problems.

The final myth we are going to look at today I like to call hammer logic. One time long ago I was an electrical contractor and my answer to a lot of problems involved a hammer or using my Kliens as a hammer. Older hard drives used to get locked up and have issues with their bearings. A light tap with a baltine hammer could in some cases unlock the bearings and possible get the motor to spin properly and at the right speed. A hard drive’s motor is intrinsic to the system that makes a magnetic media device like a hard drive work at all.

Hard drives spin at a specific RPM which insures that the heads float just barely above the platters so that they can read the sectors according to the predefined sector map and either read or write your data. Either way, the motor must spin at the right RPM or very bad things will happen. We have been able to resolve quite a few issues when it comes to hard drive recovery involving bad bearings, and one of them involve a hammer. In modern hard drives, any deviation of a micro-millimeter can cause the sectors to move and then be unreadable by the heads. This is even more true in large capacity hard drives that employ perpendicular recording, a sector mapping system that upends the sector at a 90 degree angle making the readable surface of a sector microscopic in size. Hitting these sensitive devices with a hammer is a bad idea.

If your hard drive is making clicking noises, whining or has just plain died, the best thing to do is contact a real hard drive recovery company like us!

Recover It Now – Fast Data Recovery – Remote Services

Michael Stankard — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:31:49 +0000

Need fast data recovery? Recover It Now is DTI Data’s new remote and fast data recovery service that brings the hard drive repair lab to you! Recover It Now remote data recovery service is a no fix no fee service. That means you only pay us if we recover your data. Most recoveries are under $100.00 and can be done in a matter of minutes not days! Depending on the situation, our Recover It Now trained and certified technicians can access your computer remotely and repair partitions, remove viruses, repair boot sectors and partition tables. For a detailed list of problems Recover It Now can solve, visit our remote fast data recovery page.

To schedule a remote data recovery using Recover It Now call Toll Free 1-866-438-6932 ext. 236 or direct 1-727-345-9665 ext. 236.

Data Recovery For Corporations Computer Repair Stores and Network Maintenance Companies

DTI Data has an aggressive partner program that just about any company large or small can take advantage of. We are extending our partner program discounts to Recover It Now services. Call 866-418-3843 to find out how you can add data recovery services to your company’s line item or add a trained data recovery engineer to your IT staff instantly!

Seagate Barracuda 7200-11 Hard Drive Recovery

Michael Stankard — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:11:27 +0000

By now most of you have heard about the problems that a firmware upgrade has caused with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive line. Both 500 GB and 1 TB hard drives have just stopped working without notice. After the drive up and dies and you re-boot your computer, it goes into a fail safe mode and is not recognized by your BIOS anymore. This article will help you identify if you need hard drive recovery on your Seagate Barracuda 7200.11.

Model numbers of Seagate Barracuda hard drives that have firmware problems (note the bolded 3):

1000 GB
ST31000340AS hard drive recovery

750 GB
ST3750330AS hard drive recovery

500 GB
ST3500320AS hard drive recovery

Challenges Hard Drive Manufacturers Face

Seagate is just the latest victim in the war going on between storage companies. Between lower prices than ever for storage and consumers growing needs for capacity, these hard drive companies are finding it harder than ever to put out a stable product for a reasonable price.

These emerging technologies are still happening now with the advent of high capacity solid state storage, digital data storage without moving parts is the future of backup, the question is: when will the price per MB of flash media and solid state storage change to price per GB? As far as traditional storage with moving parts i.e. hard disk drives, there has been an explosion of emerging technologies there as well. The release of perpendicular recording was just the first step in the process that has led us to affordable high capacity drives like Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11.

What To Do If Your Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Needs Hard Drive Recovery

If you own a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500 GB or 1 TB hard drive, what should you do? The first thing is to get a comparable capacity external hard drive and transfer all your data to it ASAP. By using a FireWire or USB external hard drive, you can add storage without restarting your computer. If you are not sure what type of hard drive or what model hard drive you have, there are ways for you to check that out without restarting your computer or looking inside of it.

Step 1 – Right Click On My Computer and choose MANAGE

Step 2 – Choose DEVICE MANAGER in the left window

Step 3 – Expand DISK DRIVES in right window

You should see the hard drive model number in this screen, if you don’t, highlight each drive individually and choose properties to see details on your hard drives.

Step 4 – Choose hard drive in question, right click, and choose properties (if necessary)

If your Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 has failed and you need Seagate harddrive data recovery call us at 727-345-9665 or visit our page: Hard Drive Recovery.

Hard Drive Recovery Breakdown – Heads Platters and Clicking

Michael Stankard — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:24:51 +0000

Hard drive recovery is the repair of physically damaged hard drives including heads, platters and a clicking sound. Even though clicking is by far the most common noise that a hard drive will make when failing, there are a few other noises such as whining and phaser noises that indicate electronic problems or worse case, motor issues and failing bearings. This is a common hard drive recovery scenario especially on laptop hard drives.

A clicking hard drive is making that noise for one of two reasons:

Damaged Heads and/or Platters – if the heads get damaged then they can no longer read the platters and will go into a seek pattern. This will cause a clicking noise as the arms go back and forth. This can also happen when the hard drive has been exposed to excessive heat. If the platters swell then the heads can no longer find sector 0 and again go into a seek pattern. If this is the case, the only recourse is to open the disk and replace the heads. This is hard drive recovery.
Loss of communication between electronics and internal ROM chip – there are a lot of electronics and chips on both the outside PCB board as well as internally. These electronics communicate with each other in a language called microcode. Each hard drive manufacturer has their own encrypted version of microcode. Hard drive recovery companies like DTI Data, need to not only be able to repair hard drives, but repair chipsets and unlock encrypted microcode. We have databases full of different hard drive microcode and service area byte maps. When any of the chips fail to properly communicate to the heads, they send the armature into a seek mode, similar to what happens when heads fail. This is the most common misconception in the hard drive recovery industry. 6 out of 10 hard drives that come in for recovery that have been opened by other companies, need never have been taken apart at all. they hear clicking noises and automatically open the drive and change the heads. There is no way that a cheap data recovery company can afford the research and development costs incurred in the hardware and software needed to perform hard drive recovery on high capacity (over 250 GB) disks that entail microcode problems. Beware of where you send your hard drive, make sure they have a clean room and have had success on large capacity hard disk drives. Western Digital is the only hard drive company that authorizes data recovery companies. Type in “western digital data recovery partners” into Google and their page will come up. You will note that DTI Data is on that list. We are a real data recovery company authorized to open disks and do hard drive recovery on Western Digital drives!

Breaking Down Hard Drive Recovery – A Look at Platters, Heads and Internal Parts

The first graphic below is the internal parts of a hard drive laid out and identified by their common industry names. Just about all hard drive repair involves the parts below as well as some specialty software that can write to a service area and replace bad sectors and access the data on a damaged hard drive.

The Parts Of A Hard Drive

The next image is a close up of the heads and the platters:

Hard Drive Recovery Parts

Hard drive recovery is a serious business be sure that you research the company that you send your damaged hard disk to. Feel free to call DTI at 866-418-3843 or visit our hard drive recovery page. There is also information on hard drive repair clicking.

Blue Screen Of Death How To Restore Windows Config Missing Corrupt

Michael Stankard — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:56:21 +0000

Blue Screen of Death C:\windows\system32\config\system missing or corrupt.

Windows Blue Screen of Death

If you have turned your PC on and received this message the problem can be solved with the following steps. However, before beginning, it is very important to note that the cause of the problem may be the hard drive itself. As with any type of do it yourself recovery this could cause permanent unrecoverable damage to the hard drive and or the data that exist on the hard drive. Like most hard drive recovery processes, physical disk repair isn’t necessary if the hard drive is seen by the BIOS. If your hard drive is recognized by the BIOS, but you get the blue screen of death these steps will help you restore Windows. Be careful and backup if you can! That said, lets continue.

If you have your hard drive manufacturers diagnostic tools, please read the documentation carefully and test the drive to make sure it is functioning properly. If you do not have the manufacturers diagnostic tools you can go to their respective websites to download them. It is important to read the documentation as these tools may perform data destructive tests and procedures to your hard drive. It is also a good idea to try and recover some of the data by making your boot drive a slave drive under another Windows system for hard drive recovery. Please see our previous post “How to slave a hard drive“. Ok, lets proceed with the restoration and hard drive recovery.

Windows Command Prompt

Time for the XP Recovery Console.

You are going to need to get your XP Installation Disk.

You will also need to make sure you can boot from your XP installation Disk. Insert you installation disk in your cd/dvd drive and make sure you see the option press any key to boot from cd: If so, do so and you’re good to go. If you do not see that option you will need to enter your system setup (BIOS) and change the boot order. When your computer boots you should see press delete, F10 or some key function to enter your systems setup. You will usually find the boot order under advanced settings once you are in the setup console. Simply select boot order and choose CD as your first boot device. You may change the boot order back to the original settings after this exercise in hard drive recovery.

When you boot to your Install CD it will take a minute to load all the drivers, then it will provide two options-Setup or Recovery Console; “press r” for the recovery console. It will than ask you which Windows install you want to repair, most users will only have one so just input 1 and press enter. You should now have entered the recovery console of your Windows XP CD.

What you are about to do is basically a minor System Restore via the Recovery Console. We are going to use an older version of the currently curr The text in red will be what you should type and the black text will what the system outputs. READY, SET, GO.

C:\Windows>CD C:\system~1\_resto~1

C:\system~1\_resto~1\>dir

After you enter the DIR command and hit enter you will get a list of folders like rp1, rp2, rp3, rp4, etc.. The “rp” part of the folder name indicates it’s a Restore Point.

What we want to do is use the 2nd or 3^rdhighest numbered folder in that list. For example, if it listed rp1 through rp53 you’ll want the rp52 folder. We will use rp52 to outline the rest of the procedure.

Now, we will use the following commands..

C:\system~1\_resto~1>cd rp52

C:\system~1\_resto~1\rp52>cd snapshot

C:\system~1\_resto~1\rp52\snapshot>copy _registry_machine_system c:\windows\system32\config\system

Overwrite system [y,n]: y

1 file copied

C:\system~1\_resto~1\rp23\snapshot>exit

Remove the installation disk .

Those are the steps to restore Windows after getting The Blue Screen Of Death. If you need help give us a call at 866-418-3843 or visit hard drive recovery.

Hard Drive Recovery Freeware Software

Michael Stankard — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:22:53 +0000

DTI Data is one of the few data recovery companies that not only operate a clean room, is a certified partner of the only hard drive manufacturer that lists authorized data recovery companies and creates and supports their own hard drive recovery software! We make all of our products, both hard drive recovery software AND Freeware data recovery tools right in our own labs.

I am pointing all this out because when I searched Google for hard drive recovery, I found over 800,000 results and started looking at the companies listed as well as those buying ads. The fact is out of all those results and the 30 ads, only about 20 of them are real data recovery companies, and only 8 are listed on Western Digital’s data recovery partner page.

So why is this a big deal? It doesn’t matter much when looking at data recovery software since all of them, like ours, have demos. Our software will show you that it will recover the data before you buy it. Physical hard drive recovery is a completely different ballgame. If your hard drive is no longer recognized by the BIOS or is making noises like clicking or whining or scraping, then you need hard drive repair services to get your data back. That is why it is important to know who you are sending your drive to.

Freeware Data Recovery Hard Drive Software

DTI also has FREE data recovery software that we fully support. Our free software for hard drive recovery can undelete files, diagnose RAID Parity problems and repair NTFS partitions. You can see all of our FREE data recovery software here. You can also learn more about Freeware data recovery here.

There are some problems that need a powerful hard drive recovery tool. While our FREE NTFS Partition Repair tool can sort out a lot of issues, it can’t resolve problems that involve bad sectors on a damaged hard drive. We do have a solution for recovering data from bad sectors called Recover It All. Not only can it work around bad sectors on NTFS partitions, it will also fully recover FAT 32 partitions! We have gotten a lot of questions about why recovering FAT 32 is so important even though Microsoft doesn’t use it for their operating systems anymore. The answer is just about ALL external hard drives use FAT 32 as their file system because it can be seen by Windows, MAC and Linux. While we do have FREE FAT 32 Undelete tools, they won’t work on damaged FAT 32 Partitions. You need a powerful scanning engine for that and Recover It All has one of the best.

You can get the demo version of Recover It All Here or Buy Recover It All Now. The button below will take you to a secure site to purchase the software. You will receive the full version within seconds. Recover It All is on sale for $49.99, a savings of $50!

The bottom line is that if your hard drive is not recognized in the BIOS, is making noise or is not spinning up, you will need hard drive recovery. If the hard drive is seen by the BIOS, but not by Windows or Windows is asking you to format the hard drive, you need data recovery software. Feel free to ask any question about hard drive recovery in the comments below.

Recovering Folder Relationships Using DOS Clustering Design

Dick Correa — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:35:41 +0000

In my last installment I described what a file entry record would look like if it were in fact a cluster holding file entry data. I went over the fact that the first two entries of the folder cluster would be a period followed by ten spaces, and the next entry would be two periods followed by 9 spaces. This data may seem innocuous, however they do have meaning and can help us in determining how the folders are related to each other.

The file entry record has several components that are used to extract the related stored data. One of these components is the starting cluster number of where the data might be found. Logic is then used to with the File Allocation Table (FAT) map to chain the clusters together. Lets say for instance that the starting storage cluster for file “foobar” is 1000h. Lets also say that the size of a cluster is 64k. Finally, lets assume, for illustration purposes that the file is 640k. With these facts in hand we can say that foobar will occupy ten clusters. If the file had been saved only once and not edited we can make a pretty educated guess that the file is not fragmented. So the following statement may be true “Foobar is stored in clusters 1000h – 1009h”.
The FAT would look like this

1000

1001

1002

1003

1004

1005

1006

1007

1008

1009

1001

1002

1003

1004

1005

1006

1007

1008

1009

0FFF

The top table shows the actual cluster number 1000h -1009h. The bottom table shows the value in each one of the FAT cells. The value in the FAT cell points to the next cluster, which in turn points to the next cluster so on and so forth. Finally the final FAT cell has the value 0FFFh which indicates the end of the cluster chain. This method is called a “one way linked list” as it links the clusters forward only, and not reverse.
Now, this is a FAT representation of a file that is not fragmented. The following set of tables for the same file, but this time the file is fragmented.

1000

1001

1002

1003

1004

1005

1006

1007

1008

1009

100A

100B

100C

100D

100E

100F

1001

1002

1003

1004

100B

0000

100C

100D

100E

100F

0FFF

    Now, as you can see from the above table the cluster chain looks basically the same until we get to cell 1004h. Instead of the cell containing the value 1005 which would of course point to the next cell, it has the value 100B. This means to look at cell 100B to see if we are at the end of our chain, or if we in fact continue the chain. In our example we see that the chain does continue until it reaches the end of the linked-list in cell number 100F. This is an example of a fragmented file as it is divided into two fragments. The first fragment is from cell 1000 to 1004, and the second fragment is from cell 100B to cell 100F.
    With all of this being said one can see how important it is to keep the FAT cluster map intact. When a drive is formatted for FAT the entire FAT table is destroyed and zeroed out. In the above fragmented file we can see that with the FAT destroyed there is no way to easily recover the data. The simple logic of a FAT recovery is to get the starting cluster from the File Entry record as well as the file size and then read each cluster contiguously until the file size is satisfied. In other words to recover foobarwe would read cluster 1000h since that is the starting cluster and continue for ten clusters since the size of each cluster is 64k and the file size is 640k. Doing this will lead us to cluster 1009h. Looking at our two examples we can see that in the unfragmented file we would get all of the data, however, in the fragmented file we would only get the first five clusters and the rest would be zeroes or garbage.
    I have made several references to the starting cluster number which is found in the File Entry record and then used with the FAT to get all the data for a particular file. In my next installment I will explain the mechanincs of getting the starting cluster from the File Entry record. Until next time…

Using FAT32 File Entry Record For Recovering Folders Using Software Logic

Dick Correa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:32:39 +0000

In my last installment I described the file entry record and its on-disk format. I used a ‘C’ structure to denote the different fields of the record and defined which five are most important to us when trying to recover a FAT32 file system where all the main file system components have been destroyed or corrupted. In this installment I will describe what is unique about the file entry record for a folder entry and how we can use that as a filter for the software logic.

The first two elements of the file entry record are the file name which is eight bytes, and the file extension which is 3 bytes. For the beginning of every folder the first file entry record has the file name “. “, that is, a period, followed by ten spaces. In other words the first eleven bytes of the beginning of a sector that stores the beginning of a folder are static and are always the same. Now this fact is important in as much as we can look for this particular attribute in a sector and when we find it there is a very good possibility that we are looking at the beginning of a folder. With the being said it is always better to try and refine a filter in order to make sure that you have in fact found the beginning of a folder. Oddly enough, the second file entry record had the file name “.. “, that is, TWO periods followed by nine spaces.

Each file entry record is a static thirty-two bytes long. That being said we can now assert this. If bytes zero through seven of a sector are a period followed by ten spaces and bytes thirty-two through forty-two of the same sector is two periods followed by nine spaces then there is a high probability that we have found the beginning of a folder.

The pseudo logic for this might look like:

    while(1)
    {
        if(ReadSector FAILS) break;
        if(FileEntry Record Zero equals “.          “ && FileEntry Record One equals “..         “)
        {
            We have a valid folder
        }
    }

The chances of a sector slipping by that may not be a folder entry is very slim. This is good in as much as it can be difficult to define a filter that will give you the most optimal results without flooding you with a set of worthless data.

In my next installment I will explain what this ‘.’ and ‘..’ mean. If there are some old DOS command line users out there I am sure you are well aware of what I am talking about. Until next time…

Part 1 Recovering FAT 32 With File Entry Data
Part 2 Recovering FAT 32 With File System Markers
Part 3 FAT32 Recover File Entry Table On-Disk Layout Using a C Structure
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Recover It All ON SALE! Save $50.00 On Powerful Data Recovery Software

Michael Stankard — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:37:56 +0000

DTI Data Recovery is pleased to announce that it’s most powerful data recovery software is now on sale for $49.99! Recover It All is professional data recovery software that has many features and a powerful scanning engine. Recover It All runs on any Windows Operating system, but will recover lost data from all external hard drives as well. Designed for professionals, it is still easy enough for regular users to recover data from damaged file systems, and on their external USB and Firewire hard drives.

Recover It All is one of the few fully featured data recovery tools that can recover data from damaged or corrupted FAT 32 file systems as well as NTFS. If your external hard drive is giving you trouble, Recover It All can fix those problems. The demo version will show you your data before you buy it. See all of the features here.

Buy Recover It All Now!

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