Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 VMFS File System Reconstruction (Part 4) In the last three installments we have taken an in depth look at the VMFS file system. As we have seen there are many different components that make up the file system … [Read more...]
VMFS File System Reconstruction (Part 3)
June 13, 2013 By
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 In the last two sections we covered the coarser portions of the VMFS file system. First we looked at what a volume consists of and the best way to find a volume on a storage device where the file system has been … [Read more...]
VMFS File System Reconstruction (Part 2)
May 24, 2013 By
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 In the first installment of our explanation of rebuilding the VMFS file system from a damaged volume we covered some of the attributes of the volume on disk data structure. In addition to that we reviewed some … [Read more...]
VMFS File System Reconstruction (Part 1)
May 15, 2013 By
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 Recently DTI Data received a challenge in the form of a VMWare ESXi 5.1 server which contained 16 (sixteen) 2 (two) terabyte Seagate ST2000DM001 hard drives. These drives were configured as a RAID 10, 8 (eight) … [Read more...]
File Data Recovery Step by Step
April 30, 2013 By
File Data Recovery Guide Problem: A file that you now need has been deleted from your hard drive data on the C drive. Solution: Shut down the computer. It is important not to run the machine anymore. Windows works under the idea that areas … [Read more...]
SAN Data Recovery – iSCSI RAID 6 Issue
October 22, 2012 By
Serial attached SCSI devices have been a high speed blessing to the SAN, NAS, and Enterprise Storage Array class of systems. These devices offer a clear solution for any storage requirement due to capacity and configuration. Whether it is Fiber … [Read more...]
NTFS Master File Table Fixup
July 18, 2012 By
Recently DTI Data received an interesting question about the values stored in the Master File Table. The question referenced the value following the magic value of ‘FILE’ in the record. Some of the time the data is an asterisk ‘*’ and other … [Read more...]
Toshiba Recovery – Crashed Hard Drive
June 18, 2012 By
Common Toshiba Hard Drive Failures All mechanical devices will fail sooner or later. Hard drives fail for various reasons. We will describe what we find to be the most common cause of failure with Toshiba hard drives. In the last decade, the … [Read more...]
Lost File System Recovered
March 30, 2012 By
The Mysterious Case of the Missing File System Sometimes there is just no way to ascertain the events leading up to the loss of an entire file system index. The client may have no idea what happened. When looking at the file system as a whole … [Read more...]
RAID 5 Sybase Data File Diagnostic Software
February 24, 2012 By
Recently I received a set of drives that were originally in a RAID 5 (stripe set) configuration. These drives were old Seagate forty gigabyte Parallel ATA (PATA) drives. The client explained that they had rebooted the server and when it came up again … [Read more...]
Troubleshooting Basic Hard Drive Problems: You Need to Format the Disk
February 10, 2012 By
A common hard drive fault that I think most of us have run in to at one time or another is : “You Need to Format the Disk in Drive:â€. This problem seems to be even more prevalent with the popularity of portable external hard drives like the … [Read more...]
Troubleshooting Basic Hard Drive Problems: Does Not Show Up In My Computer
January 24, 2012 By
Hard Drive Problem #1: The hard drive is not showing up in “My Computer†or in Windows Explorer (not to be confused with internet explorer). Generally, I get phone calls where the customer states that the computer is no longer seeing their … [Read more...]
iPod Touch 4th Generation Giveaway
December 9, 2011 By
It's that time of year again! DTI Data is proud to announce our 2011 iPod Touch Holiday Giveaway! If you or someone you knows could use a free iPod Touch this season, make sure you enter before the drawing. There will be two drawings: the first … [Read more...]
Water Damaged Hard Drive Recovery Shipping
August 29, 2011 By
As Hurricane Irene approaches our shores we thought it a good idea to revisit the topic of how to package your hard drive for shipment after it has been submerged in water. This is a very important topic and we covered it in depth during an interview … [Read more...]
Online Data Backup Service
August 16, 2011 By
As home and business computer users have to cope with a rapidly increasing amount of information, data storage is becoming one of the most important aspects of computing. For storing hundreds of family photos or sprawling databases, the large … [Read more...]
How to Fix Bad Sectors on a Hard Drive
March 30, 2011 By
The truth of the matter is; you can't repair bad sectors on a hard drive. Receiving ‘Bad Read’ errors or I/O errors from a hard drive is not the type of problem that can be remedied or ignored. The following is an explanation of how hard drives … [Read more...]
VMWare and DoubleSpace The Old Meets The New
March 11, 2011 By
Ever hear of DblSpace (dos hard drive compression)? Maybe you heard of DrvSpace? I know, how about Stacker, everyone has heard of Stacker. No? Well if you haven’t heard of these it might be because these file system handlers were used … [Read more...]
Finding Hard Drive Parts for an IBM Deskstar 82.3GB
March 9, 2011 By
Among other duties I have around here finding parts for drives is one of them. We of course out source to other companies when I am unable to find the parts but it is always better and more more cost effective if someone in house finds them. The … [Read more...]
Data Recovery Case Study: WD5000AAKS
March 2, 2011 By
This might be the most popular drive sold in the past 5 years. It is fast and the storage capacity for the bang for your buck was huge! When they first came out you couldn’t get anything close in size for the pennies Western Digital was asking for … [Read more...]
What Does CHKDSK Really Do? From a Software Engineers View
February 28, 2011 By
I wish I had a nickel for every potential client that has called the shop and explained to me that they have a hard drive that is locking up (bad sectors usually) and it won’t populate the file system. As I am listening I hear things like “I … [Read more...]