Data Recovery Resources Freeware Software SNAP RAID How To Guides » How To’s

Using Recover It All Data Recovery Software On USB Firewire External Hard Drive

Michael Stankard — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:29:53 +0000

This video from Jacqui Best our tech guru explains how to use Recover It All. It not only gives a concise explanation on the inner workings of the program, but goes into detail on the best way to use it when recovering external hard drives!

Download now! Recover It All Demo will show you your data before you buy! No registration required, download a demo NOW!

Purchase Recover it All now. Instant delivery of software. RECOVER YOUR DATA NOW!

Not Formatted Would You Like to Format Now?

Jacqui Best — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:46:38 +0000

This is a common problem with external hard drives like the Western Digital My Book. The reason is that we as a USB using public do not “Safely Remove” the hardware before we turn off or unplug the devices from our computers. A lot of the time this is due to the fact that Windows will not allow us to safely remove the drive. We get an error that says the device is still in use by some ghost application. This seems to be less and less of problem with the release of Windows 7. When we remove the device improperly there is always a chance that the cached data will be dumped somewhere inconvenient and a lot of times that area is going to be the “system area” or what is also referred to as the MBR or the OS Boot Sector. Why does the data dump choose to go there? I have to come to believe over the years that it is because some coder somewhere thought it would be funny.

How do I fix it you ask? There are couple of different ways. The first way would be to download a piece of recovery software, something like Recover It All, let it scan and then move the data off to another hard drive. After you move all the data it would then be safe to format your external hard drive and move the data back. This method is the tried and true method of data recovery, but it is time intensive and requires that you have another drive with enough storage to hold the data. The other problem I foresee is that you may also miss an important file.

There is another option though, and that is the Recover It Now service we offer. With this service I use LogMeIn to come into the machine remotely. I load my tools on to your machine and then fix the drive on the fly. When all is said and done you will be back up and running like crash never happened. I can also offer diagnostic analysis of the hard drive for free as well as point you in the right direction of what recovery software will be the best option.

If you want to discuss the options please give me a call at 727.345.9665 ext 236 and I will be happy to help!

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!

Hard Drive Data Recovery From Bad Sectors

Michael Stankard — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:19:12 +0000

One of most common hard drive data recovery scanrios is when we are faced with multiple bad sectors on a hard drive. Since we have released our popular Windows Surface Scanner, I have gotten a ton of emails about what to do when your drive has a bunch of bad sectors.

What do bad sectors mean?

Bad sectors on a hard drive can be caused by a lot of different things, but some of the common problems we run into are:

The integrity of the sufaces of the platters are compromised by old age, excessive heat or misuse like being dropped in external hard drives.
Track data corruption which can be a result of a logical problem that leads to incorrect writing, viruses or physical movement of the sectors themselves from platter warping.
Read/Write heads failing make magnetic media getting worn out from excesses read/writes. There are limited amount of read/writes that every hard drive has. Each hard drive has its own MTF or mean time between failures. This is an average based upon normal computer use.
Damage to the actual drive system area.This is very common when there has been a loss of error correction control. There are 2 lists, a permanent defect list and a growth defect or (dynamic)) defect list. Can’t be made perfect, so there are lists that are scanning sectors which is manufactured. New maps are created as bad sectors, there is a limited pool of sectors. When pool is used up, then you get bad read writes.

When Bad Sectors Are Really Really Bad

If you have used the DTI Windows Surface Scanner and it reports bad sectors you need hard drive recovery. Call 727-345-9665 to speak with a data recovery tech.

Failed Hard Drive Recovery From Stuck Heads

Michael Stankard — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:07:49 +0000

One of the most common problems facing computer users is a failed hard drive. We see all types of failed hard drives, but the most common fatal problem revolves around broken heads. If there are any issues with the platters, often times it will be the heads that fail. They are fragile and don’t stand up to a lot of wear and tear.

The video below shows 2 things of importance when looking at failed hard drives, the initialization process that lets the heads know when they are ready to start scanning the drive, and a drive with stuck heads. Newer hard drives have built in safety mechanisms that stop the heads from scanning the platters.

Learn more about hard drive recovery.

SATA Hard Drive Recovery Reversed Cable Causes Smoke

Michael Stankard — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:18:10 +0000

When connecting a SATA drive, you might think that the interface is pretty straight forward, but you would be amazed at how many damaged hard drives we get in due to reveresed power cables.

The video below shows the result of two very bad things that happened to a SATA hard drive. First off the connector was put in upside down, but then it was taken out and put in the right way. Both times, the chips on the PCB board got fried.

Exchange Data Recovery Guide

John Best — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:37:27 +0000

First and foremost, DON’T PANIC. I cannot remember how many times I have seen somebody (myself included) do something completely idiotic and often times irreversible because they didn’t take the time to think things through. For example, wanting SO badly to get the database mounted again before anybody notices that you don’t do the MOST important step when recovering any data, making a backup and working off of the backed up copy rather than your live data.

That being said, here are the steps to take when disaster hits and your Exchange server is not cooperating.

Make a backup of your important data, NOW! Do not hold off on this step:
1. For Exchange 5.5, you will want the Priv.edb, Pub.edb and Dir.edb at the very least. For Exchange 2000 and 2003, grab the Priv.edb, Priv.stm, Pub.edb and Pub.stm. For 2007, there is no longer an stm so just grab the Mailbox Database.edb and Public Folder Database.edb
2. Grab any uncommitted log files. I will explain later in this article on determining which log files have been committed and which have not. You may also want to grab committed log files because if you need to go to an older backup of your database, these can be played back to bring the database up to date.
3. By default the data files and log files are stored in the <exchange directory>\MDBDATA folder but can be split over 2 different drives.
4. I highly recommend backing 2 separate backup copies of your data, at least one of which is stored on a completely different physical drive, computer or storage device.
While you are waiting for your data to copy, assess the situation and gather information:
1. Find out what the problem is that is preventing Exchange to function by checking the application and system event logs. Copy any events related to Exchange to a notepad document or write them down.
2. Check for any other serious errors in the logs that could point to an issue possibly related (hard drive going bad, virus, etc…)
3. Check to make sure there is enough hard drive space. A hard drive filling up can corrupt your database if there is not enough room to grow it.
Gather information from ESEUTIL:
1. Run ESEUTIL.exe /mh
  1. This will tell you if your file is in a Dirty or Clean Shutdown state
  2. It will also tell you which log files are needed to bring it to a Clean state on the “Log Required” line.
Resolve underlying issues first:
1. If your problem is because of faulty hardware, inadequate drive space, a virus / malware, or something else external to Exchange, resolve that first.
Research the errors obtained during step 2:
1. One of the best resources: Google it! Searching for your error on Google can produce a wealth of useful information
2. Also look on support.microsoft.com
Decide on a recovery strategy:
1. Your options are:
  1. Recover yourself using Microsoft tools, 3^rd party software and online resources
  2. Restore from backup.
  3. Call a professional recovery company to assist.
For a corrupted database, here are the steps I would take to recover:
1. See if ESEUTIL can solve the problem with a soft recovery
  1. Run ESEUTIL.exe /r E00 /d /l /s where E00 is the first 3 characters of your log files.
2. Try to fix with ESEUTIL hard recovery
  1. I actually forego this step in most cases and only use it as a last resort as it CAN lose data from your database, but it can bring a database to a mountable state. Use at your own risk!
  2. Run ESEUTIL /p
3. Restore from a recent backup.
  1. If you have a recent backup, sometimes this may be a better option than trying to fix a corrupted database, because there is almost always some data loss when fixing a corrupted data file.
4. Restore from an OLD backup and replay logs to bring current.
  1. If you have located an old backup AND you have ALL logs files from then until now, the log files can be replayed into it to bring it up to date. If any logs are missing or corrupt, this may not be a viable option.
5. Restore from 3^rd party software or call a professional.
  1. If all other recovery options fail, it may be time to enlist the help of outside sources. Only you can put a value on what your data is worth to you and if it is feasible to hire (or purchase) outside help to restore your server back to normal.

Well that’s it for now. This is NOT a comprehensive list, just a few pointers that are often overlooked. If you need any help with an Exchange issue, you can email exchangesupport@dtidata.com

Recovering from a RAID Controller Failure

Dick Correa — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:36:16 +0000

There are many reasons why a RAID goes down. A technician will normally assume that one or more of the drives have failed. This is a common diagnosis as the diagnostic lights on each of the drives may be blinking, the lights may have gone amber, or in some cases the drive may not be spinning up at all. All of these surface indicators would surely lead the most seasoned technician to assume that the drives have either failed or are definitely on their way out. There is another reason why all these things would happen, and that would be a RAID controller failure. The challenge is to diagnose the problem with a damaged controller. Using a damaged controller to make a diagnosis is the same as having a sick doctor diagnose his own health problems. Some technicians will try and replace the controller and hope the configuration will reload from the drives and the RAID will mount. DTI Data has made a very good living on technicians that swap controllers and cross their fingers in hopes that the RAID will come up. There are so many problems with this method of trying to bring the RAID online that they are too numerous to mention.

What needs to be done is to separate the primary component of the RAID which is the hard drive from the controller in order to make a legitimate diagnosis. The following are some methods you can use that are isolated from a damaged RAID controller that will help you recover the data of your client.

First of all check the drives to make sure they are electronically sound. If you have SCSI drives use an Adaptec SCSI controller. Perhaps an Adaptec 2930 would suit your needs. They are inexpensive and have been around for a bit so all of the firmware bugs are worked out. Put the SCSI card in a reliable computer and mount each drive individually. If the drives are SATA, or PATA use a standard interface port to mount the drives.

If the drive shows up in the ‘Disk Manager’ item of the ‘Computer Management’ then it is a pretty safe assumption that the interface is intact and you have some I/O between the drive and the controller. In addition to this DTI Data has a free surface scanner that will allow you to look at each drive and map any bad sectors on the drive. If two or more drives come up having bad sectors then that could be the reason why the RAID went down. RAID controllers are very sensitive to more than one drive exhibiting bad sectors or slow reads. A RAID 5 controllers’ firmware may be fault tolerant, but when two drives have bad sectors the controller will degrade the array and bring it offline.

If, however, there are not any bad sectors on any of the drives then that is normally a controller problem. You may have received a power spike, or some kind of memory fault but the fact of the matter is that barring those kinds of things the raid controller failed and will not mount your array.

In addition to doing a surface scan to verify if in fact you have had a raid controller failure you can check the integrity of the raid. In a raid 5, the controller will do a set of mathematical operations on the data in order to be able to reverse engineer the data if a drive drops out of the array. These XOR math functions are used to do a rebuild on the array and take a degraded raid 5 hard drive and build it. The drive will have to be replaced before the build but a raid 5 controller has the ability to integrate a brand new drive back into the array.

I bring up the raid 5 mathematics, because in order for the array to have a ‘clean bill of health’ the parity integrity must be intact. If a raid card does not detect the fact that a drive has dropped out of the array then the drive will become stale. A raid 5 will continue to function even if one drive is out of the array; however the raid card should notify the technician that the array has been degraded and the drive should be replaced and a rebuild performed.

DTI Data has a free diagnostic tool for raid 5 and will allow you to see if in fact there is a stale drive in the array. I wrote a blog on how to detect a stale drive in the array and hopefully this will help you diagnose drive array controller failure. If in fact the software finds a stale drive and the raid controller did not indicate that then the only way to recover the data is to create a virtual raid 5 array offline using software and images created from the raid 5 drives.

In order to create the images DTI Data has an inexpensive solution on our web site. The software was designed and written with the technician imaging multiple drives to a single drive. It is as easy as mounting the drives, selecting the source drives, the destination drive and then just walking away. The software will not only image the drives but it will map all the bad sectors its finds and generate a comprehensive report.

These are just a few things that you can do to detect a raid controller failure. DTI Data offers a set of comprehensive tools that will check all aspects of the raid 5 hard drive. These tools are all on our website and will hopefully be an addition to your tool set.

If you need RAID Data Recovery Call Toll Free 1-866-438-6932 ext. 203 or direct 1-727-345-9665 ext. 203 to speak with a qualified RAID engineer now!

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.

RAID 5 Stale drive detection

Dick Correa — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:26:56 +0000

Over the course of a week I receive several calls regarding the recovery of a RAID 5 array. In the course of the initial interrogation of a client I ask several questions regarding the state of the array, what has been done to recover the array and most importantly what happened to the array that made this particular technician begin a recovery? In over half of the conversations I have with the client/technician two drives have dropped out of the array. By virtue of its design a RAID 5 can run with one drive down which is why it takes a second drive to fault before the RAID goes offline. That being said, when a second drive goes down then the RAID firmware will flag the RAID as offline and refuse service.

The fact of the matter is very rarely do I see only two drives go down simultaneously. I will see a single drive down, or all drives down, but almost never do two drives go down at the same time. Almost without exception one drive has failed before the second one has. In other words, one drive fails, the RAID card degrades the array and continues to provide service, then a second drive fails and the array goes offline. How does this happen?

There are several reasons. First of all, a RAID card will normally send a loud alarm that can be heard in the far reaches of the universe. In order for that alarm to work it has to be configured in the firmware, and the speaker has to be undamaged. Many times the alarm does work, however the technician does not want to take the array offline since there are several users who would burn his image in effigy if he did. So, he turns off the alarm and promises himself to replace the drive when he shuts down. That day never comes. If the array is software managed and not hardware managed then there is no alarm, however an email is usually sent to apprise the technician of the impending catastrophe he will experience if the drive is not replaced and a rebuild initiated. But! The email address that was used at configuration time 8 years ago is long gone, or, the spam filter set up by the same technician bounces the email that has the ominous warning. For whatever reason, the drive is left offline and the RAID continues to provide service.

Then a second drive goes offline and the entire array comes crashing down. Most technicians try several reboots, or forcing the drives online. Some will try a rebuild, and some will replace both drives and try to do a rebuild of the array with two new drives in the array. None of these work, and all will cause permanent data loss making recovery impossible. The best course of action for any array recovery is to take the drives that are still working and make images of them onto another hard drive. We have a very good piece of imaging software on the web site that will allow you to image multiple drives onto a single drive titled “Speed Clone for Windows”. If you have more than one drive in the array that is damaged then those drives need to be sent to a clean room for an image recovery, however, the majority of the time there is no damage to any of the hard drives in the array and the imaging software will act as a safeguard for any steps you take for a recovery.

With all of this being said a technician will still have the problem of a stale drive. If the stale drive can be isolated and the drives in the array are not damaged then the stale drive can be replaced with a new drive and a rebuild performed on the stale drive. So the challenge is, how does a technician find the stale drive? Using a simple hex editor which has a search routine any technician can find a stale drive. One note, this technique only works on the NTFS file system, but I am sure it can be adapted for other file systems as well.

NTFS uses a table for keeping track of the files stored on the drive. This table is called the Master File Table (MFT). Each file on a drive has one entry in the MFT. Each MFT entry houses a great deal of data pertinent to the file. The MFT keeps the dates of the file, security attributes, the file type, the file name, where the file is stored and many more items too numerous to mention. The MFT also has an internal attribute that is unique to the record. That attribute is called the MFT record ‘magic’ value. Each record has the same ‘magic’ value to allow the operating system to verify that it is processing an MFT record. This ‘magic’ value for the MFT is the four letters ‘FILE’. This value is located in the first four bytes of the MFT record. Knowing this, if we count every sector that has the ‘magic’ number located in the first four bytes we would get a very accurate idea of how many files are on this drive. In other words, by counting the magic numbers for the MFT, we can determine how many files reside on a drive. In addition to the magic number, the MFT is normally stored in one area, this can also help us find each MFT record. Now knowing that we can find every MFT record by using a search for the magic number how a RAID 5 stores data across the array becomes very important and I’ll explain why.

A RAID 5 stores data equally between all drives in an array. Using a four drive array as an example a 800 KB file will be stored across all four drives equally. In other words each drive in the array will receive 200 KB of the file. This fact does not hold true for smaller files due to the stripe size, however, for our purposes we are dealing with a very large file, the MFT. The average server will have between 250,000 and 500,000 files on the array. As an example let’s use 400,000 files to illustrate this point. If a four drive array has 400,000 files then each drive will have 100,000 MFT records. In other words, if we were to search each drive for the MFT ‘magic’ value we would find 100,000 entries per drive. Let’s take this scenario one step further. A drive drops out of the array with 400,000 files but continues in service. As the array is used more and more files are added to the array until a few weeks later the server now has 500,000 files on the array. If we do a search now for the MFT magic we will find 125,000 files on the three drives that have remained online, and only 100,000 files on the drive that dropped out of the array several weeks ago. As you can see it is an easy matter to determine that the stale drive in the array is the one with fewer MFT entries.

It must be noted that even though one drive has dropped out of the array it is still a four drive array. The drive that has dropped out of the array becomes virtual. In other words, there is no data written to the drive and all data read from the drive is calculated from the other three drives. For this reason a degraded RAID 5 will run slower since it is calculating the virtual drive on the fly.

This is example is somewhat simplified but the method is sound. I have written a scanner that does all of this automatically and will tell me which drive is the stale one. The software uses a much more enhanced MFT record filter and keeps track of the calculations real time. The software is also available from attending one of our training classes.

I hope this information has been of service to you. If you have any questions I will be more than happy to answer them on our blog which is updated daily or you can call me directly at 727-345-9665 ext 203.

Data Recovery Forum Questions Answered PST Recovery and Hard Drive Not Detected

Jacqui Best — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:22:05 +0000

So I trolled the Internet for topics to write about and found tons of forums with very good questions not being answered so I am going to post the questions and then give you the best possible answer I cam up with.

Q: Yesterday I was cleaning out the rubbish from my PC, as it was getting a bit slow. Along the way I deleted an old user account folder from Documents and settings on my C drive.
Later that day I went to check my emails only to find my PST file was missing. at which point I remembered it was in the old user folder. I started looking for software to recover this file. The file is about 1GB and has lots of info that I need.

A: Their are a a bunch of schools of thought on this recovery method but generally they are all just that THOUGHT. You have to take into account a ton of different variables. The first being how much data was applied to the drive after he deleted the PST file. My guess would be a lot since he eludes to the fact the drive was full in the post. If the drive was being written to at all recovery options are dropped DRASTICALLY since the data is more then likely gone due to an over write. If there was no data put on the disk after he deleted it, then the best course of action would of course be an piece of software that could UNDELETE the file. As a last ditch effort I would sometimes recommend that the customer try some for of raw file harvesting but the drive will have to been defragged on a regular basis other wise the file will be all over the hard drive and the harvester will not be able to locate all of the pieces.

Q: I got an old Dell Dimension 3000 laying in pieces on my hardwood floor… and I can get other hard drives to read in it, even get an operating system to boot, and such. No issues.. But when I try to put this… Seagate Barracuda 7200.9
160GB hard drive in, it will not detect it, at all. Pulled up the bios, planning on inputting everything manually into it… But I can’t seem to find the option to do it… I can change the “Master drive” from … “Auto” to “Off” and that’s it.
I’m curious if there’s a way to know if the bios is compatible with this hard drive… if there’s a way to find out if it is, or isn’t.. Or just something I’m completely lacking intelligence on figuring this thing out. Seriously need this computer up with this hard drive. I can still access the drive from my computer… But I’m worried that if the HD Is infected.. IF it would infect my other HD’s… and I don’t want that to happen. I currently run No anti virus. I tend to avoid virus’s pretty easily, and very rarely actually get hit with them. and when I do, it’s usually pretty simple for me to remove them because I catch them pretty instantly..

A: So here is the deal this is a boot drive from another computer, slaving it into the machine COULD be causing some kind of “which drive should boot” conflict. The second problem he could have is that the bios is too old to see the drive, that it doesn’t support LBA mode or something strange like that. My personal recommendation would be to pull the drive out and get yourself a USB enclosure this will take all of those other issues out of the equation and then you can just deal with the OS seeing it which will make things much easier. It is a trick we use as a data recovery company when either Windows is having trouble booting with a certain drive in it or when we can not get the bios to see a drive.

Do It Yourself Dual LCD Monitor Stand

John Best — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:52:52 +0000

Cheap Do-It-Yourself Dual LCD Monitor Stand

OK, so I was really wanting a dual monitor stand for my two LCD flat panel monitors, mainly to get them up off the desk more to give myself more desk space and to raise them up higher. The cheapest I could find one for was around $80.00, so I decided to attempt to build my own. I did a little research and saw how other people were building theirs and came up with my own design (based on the size of the LCD’s, the height I wanted them and distance, angle, etc…) I am SURE there are much better ways of doing this, but I wanted to keep it rather inexpensive. Total cost of all parts came to around $25.00, give or take a few dollars.

Design:

First come up with a design. Measure your two monitors and find out the length of pipe you will need.
Here is a scan of my original design:

Parts:

I chose to build it out of Galvanized plumbing pipe. I used ¾” for the base and used a reducing coupling to make it ½” for the rest. I also decided to use a 45 Degree elbow to have the monitors at an angle to each other. The LCD mounts I cut out of plywood scraps.
Here are the parts I used:

Assembly:

Putting it together:

After painting it black:

Mounted to desk:

Make sure you have mounting hole measurements correct on the LCD mounts. I had to go back and redo several times because I had measured the holes to be exactly 4” apart and it turns out they are not exactly 4” apart. Also getting the correct machine screws gave me a problem. #8 – 32 screws appeared to be the right size, but it turned out I needed metric size 4mm for the back of the monitors.
Mounting first monitor:

Finished!

Speed Clone For Windows Released

Dick Correa — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:43:10 +0000

DTI Data Recovery continues its excellence in software development by releasing Speed Clone for Windows. The new Speed Clone download package includes the Windows version as well as a bootable DOS ISO for cloning hard drives that are registered in the BIOS. It also has the original Speed Clone that works off of a floppy.

Speed Clone is a powerful tool that allows technicians to clone from physical to physical drive or create an image file of a physical drive. The most powerful feature of the software is the error reporting facility. Using native Windows diagnostics as well as the internals of the software the technician can get a clear idea of the physical status of the drive. By using a simple file system map a technician can accurately pinpoint problems in the file system. This software was designed with the knowledge that there may be bad sectors on a drive and that is the reason it is being cloned/imaged. In order to facilitate an accurate diagnosis a robust error reporting system has been integrated into the software. This fact alone will make Speed Clone a technicians most valuable tool.

In addition, Speed Clone will allow the technician to walk away from a multi-drive multi-image session instead of watching for each image to finish. This time saving function will allow for easier replication of RAID components before a destripe or RAID mount is attempted.

Even if the technician is not cloning the ‘Scan’ facility allows you to take a diagnostic look at a hard drive. With the printable error report this tool can be used to advise a potential client of the possibility of recovery.

When working with hard drives a technician rarely sees one that is not damaged. Speed Clone was designed with the technician in mind to help give them a leg up in this competitive market. Add this software to your arsenal of data recovery tools in order to better and more accurately serve your clients.

DTI Data Recovery continues its excellence in software development by releasing Speed Clone for Windows. The new Speed Clone download package includes the Windows version as well as a bootable DOS ISO for cloning hard drives that are registered in the BIOS. It also has the original Speed Clone that works off of a floppy.

Speed Clone is a powerful tool that allows technicians to clone from physical to physical drive or create an image file of a physical drive. The most powerful feature of the software is the error reporting facility. Using native Windows diagnostics as well as the internals of the software the technician can get a clear idea of the physical status of the drive. By using a simple file system map a technician can accurately pinpoint problems in the file system. This software was designed with the knowledge that there may be bad sectors on a drive and that is the reason it is being cloned/imaged. In order to facilitate an accurate diagnosis a robust error reporting system has been integrated into the software. This fact alone will make Speed Clone a technicians most valuable tool.

In addition, Speed Clone will allow the technician to walk away from a multi-drive multi-image session instead of watching for each image to finish. This time saving function will allow for easier replication of RAID components before a destripe or RAID mount is attempted.

When working with hard drives a technician rarely sees one that is not damaged. Speed Clone was designed with the technician in mind to help give them a leg up in this competitive market. Add this software to your arsenal of data recovery tools in order to better and more accurately serve your clients.

If you work on hard drives you cannot be without the full suite of Speed Clone!

Purchase Speed Clone here or read more about it on our Speed Clone page.

Only $49.50

Windows Surface Scanner Freeware Utility

Dick Correa — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:05:57 +0000

Several times a week DTI Data receives calls from clients describing a situation where their computer seems to ‘freeze’ or ‘lock-up’ on boot up. No matter what they try the system will no longer boot and they receive a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Normally we will recommend that before they spend money on data recovery to take the drive out of the computer and place it in an external USB enclosure. Once in the enclosure the system is rebooted with the enclosure off. When the system comes online then we ask the client to turn the USB enclosure on. Several things may or may not happen at this time and we offer a description and a remedy to all of them in our online classroom, however for this particular case we are watching for the system to ‘freeze’ again. If the system freezes again then there is usually one problem; bad sectors on the drive.

Bad sectors on a drive are very hard to diagnose as they look like so many other problems and can be masked very easily. One minute the drive is working and the next it is not. This usually sends a technician into a flurry of questions as to what new software has been loaded, what websites have been visited, is the virus and malware software up to date, and on and on. Ultimately there is really only one way to check the drive for bad sectors and that is with software.

DTI Data offers this tool to all who think they may have bad sectors. We send it to everyone who we believe may have bad sectors to help us diagnose their problem and to give them a proper and accurate quote. We try our best not to quote using some sort of arbitrary cost spread. When a person is getting ready to spend a large sum of money they want the amount to be as accurate as possible. DTI Data works closely with the prospective client to offer the best value for their dollar in addition to helping them accurately assess their data recovery situation.

One final note, while running the software if there are several bad sectors and it is taking a very long time to scan the drive then it is advisable to stop the scan. Never brute force a drive scan as it can cause more damage to an already tenuous situation.

Download The Freeware Utility – Windows Surface Scanner here.

A Recovery Solution from the NTFS File System

Dick Correa — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:05:26 +0000

I started programming almost thirty years ago. I cut my teeth on the ATARI 400 and stayed in that venue for almost two years. After awhile though, I came to realize that although the ATARI and its design were simple and powerful, if I were to make my way in the programming world it would be with a PC. With the ATARI there were wonderful reference books like ‘Mapping the ATARI’, which was a very thorough look at the interrupt architecture and how it could be used in programming. ‘ATARI Roots’ was another superb book, and finally ‘De Re ATARI’ a staple for the ATARI programming guru. When I made the switch from ATARI to the PC world I hoped that there was a book like the ones offered for the ATARI. There was.

Thirty years ago the Internet was a fledgling set of 2400 baud modems and the communications monster Compuserve. Compuserve had ‘Mega Wars’ and a small library of source code that could help a programmer. However if an indie developer wanted to use the full power of a PC it was the book store and the myriad of technical masterpieces that would enable me to turn a PC into a computing dynamo. One of the first books I purchased and still have to this day was ‘The Programmer’s PC Sourcebook’. This book had every BIOS interrupt and all the different flavors of the interrupt. It had thorough descriptions of the DOS interrupt architecture and how it could be accessed and in many cases used to adapt the operating system to your own design. The book is a marvel and there were many a time that I would just sit and thumb through its pages reading it like a good fiction. Times were simpler then, you had to understand the hardware, the underpinnings of the operating system, and the ins and outs of how it all worked together, but it was much cleaner back then. When you programmed on the wires there was an almost reverent symbiosis between the coder and the platform. It’s hard to describe but I miss those days. I suppose I am a purist at heart.

Anyway, I digress. This book, ‘The Programmer’s PC Sourcebook’, other than being one of the best technical reference manuals in print was one other thing. It was HUGE! I don’t mean it had a lot of pages, which it did, but the size of the book is like 18″ x 14″. It wouldn’t fit on a normal book shelf; I had to leave it on my desk all the time! It was also a paperback that I used daily for years. All of that being said what does that lead to? Eventually, the book started to fall apart. Pages would fall out, and soon it was just a stack of pages on my desk. After awhile I lost the index to the entire book and that made using it almost impossible. If I had to look up something I would have to thumb through the entire book and try to find the information. After awhile I started my own index which I kept on the side for the most used sets of information. If I had only made a copy of the index on some copying machine I could have used the book more, but I didn’t and mores the pity.

After my sad book story, I suppose you are now scratching your head wondering, how does this have anything to do with data recovery from NTFS. Well, you can stop scratching your head because here is the explanation.

A file system, any file system, is broken up into two categories, the index, and the data. A file system is no different than a database. A file system is no different than a reference book and its index. You have the data, and you have an index. In the NTFS file system you have the data which is stored in clusters, and you have an index called the Master File Table (MFT). With this being the case, what if there was a way to save the index (MFT) in case something happened to it? ‘What could possibly happen to my index (MFT)? You could accidentally format your hard drive; people do it all the time. A full restore could be done from either your restore cd or from the restore partition on your DELL, or HP, or whoever else has a restore facility and wipe out your entire file system. Bad sectors could develop in your index (MFT) and the file system can become corrupt. A virus can destroy an entire index (MFT) in the blink of an eye. There are other ways but I am sure you get the picture. With all of these chances of your index (MFT) being destroyed isn’t it prudent to save your index? I should have made a copy of the index to my favorite technical manual before I lost it. Shouldn’t there be a way to save your NTFS file system index (MFT)? Well there is.

I have developed a piece of software that will take your index (MFT) and save it to our servers in Florida. It is extremely easy to use and allows you to save one (1) volume index onto our servers. In the event that you run into a catastrophic situation and lose your index, you may have a chance of recovering a large portion of your data if you have saved your index to our servers.

A word of caution. This is NOT a backup program; this is a way to backup the index of your NTFS file system. Just like a book, if I backup the index of a book using a copy machine, but the book is destroyed in a fire, the copied index of the book does me no good. However, if I make a copy of the index of my book, and lose the index, I can use the backup index to look up my data. Finally, when you save new data to your file system the MFT is updated and changed to reflect the new data on your drive. In the same manner an index from an older version of a book will not work on a newer version of the book. So, if you save a lot of new data to your hard drive, it would be a good idea to backup your index again. Once again, this is not a backup program, just a way to backup your MFT.

This may not be the total answer, but it is another option in the war to keep our data safe. The more chances you give yourself for recovering your data, the better off you will be. Remember, it is not if it will happen to you, but when…

Download MFT Save Here

For more information about MFT Save Remote Restore Point for NTFS

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.

What is a Hard Drive Boot Sector?

Jacqui Best — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:40:34 +0000

A common misunderstanding is that because a hard drive is not a boot drive it does not have or need a boot sector, this just isn’t the case. All DOS based (Windows) hard drives have a boot sector. It is often also confused with the MBR (Master Boot Record) which makes things a little more confusing since they use the same word to explain 2 totally different sectors.

The Boot Sector is its official name and is the sector that holds the information on where the master file table or the FAT start on the drive. It also tells us important information like how big this particular partition is and where this partition starts. The really awesome part of the boot sector is that it keeps a back up of itself. The backup can be found at the end of the partition.

Ok so here is a boot sector, we can tell it is the boot sector because it of the NTFS in the upper left and side of the text side of my hex editor. When using a Hex editor/viewer it is also a good idea to make sure you have the 55 AA in the lower right hand corner of the HEX. Most HEX editor have a way for you to Apply and template to a boot sector so that you can view it as something you can understand and change.

This is the boot sector in a more readable format. You can see the important notes like the file system, hidden sectors (often call the offset). You can see the total sectors which gives us the total size of this particular partition if we take that number and divide it by 2097852 (which is how many sectors in 1 gigabyte). Also see that it has the starting MFT cluster, which is important because this is where the MFT starts. We can figure out where that is on the hard drive by taking that number and x by the sectors per cluster and then adding the offset. When I try to explain the boot sector to customers I use the analogy of a car the MBR is the key that starts everything off but the boot sector is the like the engine it gets you where your going and does all the heavy lifting. I can usually repair a boot sector even when the backup boot sector have been lost with our remote data recovery service. If your hard drive is clicking or not seen by anything, you need hard drive recovery.

Call Toll Free: 1-866-438-6932 if you need help!

Damaged Hard Drive Recovery

Michael Stankard — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:07:32 +0000

When a hard drive is damaged it almost always comes down to one of two things that are wrong. Either the electronics are bad or the heads have failed. Damaged hard drive recovery involves repairing the parts that are broken and then accessing the data stored on the platters. The image below shows details of what hard drive parts look like as well as a close up of the platters and head assembly on a working harddrive.

Parts for Fixing Damaged Harddrive Recovery

Techniques Used To Repair Damaged Hard Drives

While it is true there are a lot of articles around the Internet on how to fix a damaged hard drive, most of them are very dangerous if you actually care about your data. There are actually videos out there that tell you to whack your hard drive or use a screwdriver to get the platters and heads unstuck. Below I put in a tongue in cheek version of a hard drive repair video That is amusing, but still not too far from some of the other stuff I have seen online!

For the most part a damaged hard drive MUST be opened in a clean room to protect not only from dust, but from magnetic and static discharges. Anything else is putting your data at a great risk! Visit our main site if you have questions about hard drive recovery.

How To Recover Data from Your Teens Cell Phone

Jacqui Best — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:58:40 +0000

I have a lot of customers who are wanting to be able recover data from their child’s cell phone. With all the news lately about teens being convicted of child pornography I find it to be a valid worry. In the case of MOST phones when you teen takes pictures with their camera it is usually stored on a Mini or Micro SD card. Now you can look and see if your teens phone came with a USB cable for your computer or not.

If it did you should be able to plug it in and mount the phone as a drive on the computer just like you would a thumb drive. If it did not come with one then you are going to want to get a card reader for the type of SD card the phone has. You can take the phone to Best Buy and they should be able to point you in the right direction. Once you have the phone or card mounted as a drive on your machine you can use any photo harvesting software out there to get the photos off.

We sell Digital Picture Recovery which I was very successful in getting pictures off my teens phone he had deleted. The cool thing about Digital Picture Recovery is that you can run the demo and see all the thumbnails just to check up on your child without having to actually have any out of pocket expense. On the downside since cell phones are proprietary it would be very hard to recover text messages from the phone. They are generally kept in the internal memory of the phone which isn’t easily access without cracking or hacking the phone.You can buy Digital Picture Recovery Here.

If you want either more info or the demo click here for Digital Picture Recovery.

Missing Email in Outlook Express and How to Get it Back

Jacqui Best — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:14:26 +0000

Up until recently it had been the general thought that after an archive or compression in Outlook Express that if you had lost email you were just out of luck. I recently found that when Outlook is doing this compression/archiving that it move you original folders/ dbx’s to the recycle bin and rename them with a . tmp extension or .bak extension. This is a great discovery because then you can in theory get your email back the way it was before the data loss. I have gone in remotely to a few customers and been very successful in getting their mail back. The way you do it is a little tedious but should get you back up and running.

Ok so first, lets open the recycle bin and look to see if there is files in there that look like “inbox.bak” “outbox.bak” and so on.. if you have custom folders you should also be looking for those. (NOTE: if you do not see these files you will not be able to use this recovery method) You want to click on each one and restore them from the recycle bin. After this is done I want you to make a folder on your desktop and call it “Outlook SAFE”. Ok now we need to open up windows explorer. This can be done by right clicking on “My Computer” and going to explore. We need to get into the Outlook Express DBX directory the default location is “C:\Documents and Settings\{Affected User}\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{LONG NUMBER}\Microsoft\Outlook Express”. In this directory you should see all of your current DBX files as well as the restored files. I want you to select all of them and copy and paste them to the folder we made on the desktop. Now for the tricky part.

There is a file called “folders.dbx” now this file is what tells Outlook Express what folders are supposed to be in your tree, it is not easy to modify this file so we are going to trick this file. I want you to open up Outlook Express and make folders identical to the folders you lost. ( EXAMPLE: if you had a folder called PAYPAL and it is missing you need to make that folder again and leave it empty) At this point I also want you to make a folder called NEW MAIL and copy anything new that has come in since the compression/archive debacle. Now close Outlook Express and reopen it click on the “new” folders you made and then close outlook express again. Now Look at the directory with your DBX’s in it, you are going to want to delete every DBX you are trying to recover from .. like INBOX / OUTBOX/ (CUSTOM FOLDERS) don’t worry we have this backed up on the desktop in the safe folder. Now I want you to rename the BAK/TMP files and change the extension to .dbx once you finish this I want you to open Outlook Express and all of your email should be there. DO NOT CHANGE THE FOLDERS.DBX FILE AT ALL THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

If you have any problems doing this please feel free to give me a call and I can always remotely come into your machine and do it for you.

Computer Hard Drive Recovery Services

Michael Stankard — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:19:26 +0000

Unless you have a very new computer like one of those mini-laptops, then you have a magnetic media hard drive as storage. Only the very latest and small capacity computers are shipping with solid state storage currently. That is going to change over the next few years, as the solid state industry gets better and bigger. Right now though, you need a traditional hard drive with spinning platters, and magnetic read write heads.

Computer hard drives fail for a lot of reasons, some involving heat, others involving physical damage like being dropped in the case of external hard drives and laptops, but the fact is they will all fail. That seams like a pretty depressing statement, but even computer hard drive manufacturers know this to be true which is why the Mean Time To Failure statistic was created. A timeline that estimates how many hours your hard drive will spin up until it fails is usually a bit optimistic.

When these failing disks are no longer seen by the computer, you need hard drive recovery services. That is what DTI Data specializes in, hard drive recovery. We are in fact one of only a few companies even listed on Western Digital’s data recovery partner page. We have also gotten a lot of quality press over the years including from CRN, Free Software Magazine and PC World. Call 1-866-438-6932 if you need hard drive recovery services for your computer.

New Hard Drive Recovery Tools From DTI

Michael Stankard — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:36:28 +0000

DTI Data is happy to announce new hard drive recoverytools, for professionals and users alike. We have always had the best in Freeware data recovery software, and these new tools are no different. In today’s marketplace, home users are as likely to have a RAID system in their home PC’s as a business would. The unfortunate thing is most users choose a RAID 0 which is a spanned set, rather than a RAID 1 which is a mirror.

Our new hard drive recovery suite is especially meant for RAID users. It will diagnose problems as well as allow users to see what data exists on either a broken RAID or on individual RAID drives.

Stay tuned for more information and links to the hard drive recovery download page.

Hard Drive Recovery Comes To You

Michael Stankard — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:59:32 +0000

DTI Data a global data recovery company has created unique new technology that allows users that have suffered data loss, to have their operating system and data put back to where it was prior to the problem! We have been performing remote data recovery for years, but this is a new and different way of performing hard drive recovery. It will work on every situation where the hard drive is seen by the BIOS.

If you have a data loss situation where your hard drive is clicking, or is not seen by the BIOS, you will need traditional hard drive recovery. All other situations can be recovered remotely by our trained technicians. Most remote hard drive recoveries are less than $100 and we only charge if the recovery works.

The fact that DTI can put your computer back to where it was before the problem without data loss, is a completely new technique of hard drive recovery. Call 727-345-9665 for more information!

Removing Attachments from Outlook Messages

John Best — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:50:56 +0000

Here is a simple trick that not a lot of people are aware of. If you are anything like me, you probably keep ALL incoming and outgoing email, just in case you need to go back and reference something either you sent to somebody or they sent to you. And in some cases, it is a requirement of the company you work for that you keep all email correspondence for a period of time. When some of these messages contain attachments, your Exchange mailbox or PST file can grow to ridiculous amounts. Sometimes you have an email that you would like to keep, however the “Joke” AVI movie file your colleague included along with it is not necessary, or you have saved off the attachment and do not need it taking up space in your PST or Exchange Mail Store.

For the longest time, I didn’t know this could be done either, but the attachment can be stripped from the message and the message saved back freeing up space. Just open the message in its own window (This cannot be done from the preview pane inside of Outlook, the message has to be double-clicked, opening in its own window), then right-click on the message attachment and choose “Remove”. You can then either click on FileSave, or just choose close the message and choose “Yes” when the dialog box asks you if you want to save.

Reload Windows Restore CD Hard Drive Data Recovery

Jacqui Best — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:42:21 +0000

I have been doing technical support for DTI Data Recovery for 3+ years now and there has been one constant problem across those years.

Here is the scenario, a user will plug in an external hard drive and back off all of their important data to that drive in preparation of a format/reload of windows. They then reboot the machine and boot from their Windows cd. They begin by deleting the primary partition on the boot drive and then formatting with NTFS. They go through the entire windows load with out incident. Finally in windows they go to My Computer only to see that the external drive is no longer accessible. I have seen 2 different problems here one is that the drive still has a drive letter but it will throw the error “The drive is not formatted would you like to format it now?”. The second situation is that the drive has no drive letter at all and in Disk Management it will say the drive is unallocated or raw. My recommendation is that you never leave any drive, except the one you are installing windows too, connected to the machine while you are reloading Windows. Now on to how to fix this problem.

There is a couple of ways to fix the problem, the first one is to get Recover IT All Professional and allow the software to find your files. You can then mark them and move them off. The problem with this option is that it requires a lot of transferring of files, and you may miss some. The other way to do it would be to have DTI Data Recovery remote into your computer and repair the problem remotely. With a hex editor I can put the drive back to the way it was before this happened. This is a nice option and limits the down time to the user. There is no cost to the customer for me to come into the machine and take a look and see if I can recover the drive. If you have any questions about the software or remote service you can reach me at 727-345-9665 ext 236.

If you are restoring Windows because of a hard drive failure, you may need hard drive recovery. Don’t use Windows restore CD’s if your hard drive is clicking, or isn’t seen by the BIOS.

* Email
* First Name
* Last Name
Phone
* Business Type
* State Abreviation
	* = Required Field