The new external hard drives are small in size, but large in capacity. According to Western Digital, they are the largest hard drives on the market that don’t require a RAID system. Being in hard drive recovery, we see a lot of external disks that overheat. WD is taking on that problem by putting the new drives in standby mode if they are not accessed after 10 minutes. This power saving function could increase the life span of these external hard drives.

The only drive that I haven’t tested is the MAC edition because I just don’t do Mac’s. I had no problem getting the My Book to work with Kubuntu or Vista, the two operating systems that I use. I like the price, but am still concerned over the vast amount of heat that external hard drives use. Heat kills hard drives!

If you need huge amounts of storage, your best bet is to get 2 of these and back one up to the other. If you think I am being paranoid, remeber that we do hard drive recovery for a living, and hard drives all fail!

New Western Digital 2 TB External Hard Drive Recovery

Not So!

Last Monday Western Digital announced it bought the leader in solid state storage: Silicon Systems. They threw down a whopping $65 big ones (millions) for the company and the patents that they own. While Western Digital is a huge player in the 2.5″ hard drive market, before this purchase, they had nothing as far as solid state goes. That all changed on Monday with the creation of WD Solid-State Storage, the division filled by the acquisition of Silicon Systems.

So what does this mean to regular computer users? Solid state storage will be more reliable than magnetic media which requires hard drive recovery all the time. Solid state hard drives will probably last longer than their magnetic predecessors. The downside is when they die, there is virtually no chance for recovery because there is no way to repair anything like a hard drive. Now we do have some tricks that allow us to read solid state media when normal means fail. This will give us a leg up when the time comes for solid state to firmly replace magnetic media as the storage of choice for computer manufacturers.

With solid state storage knocking on the door, magnetic media companies, and businesses that rely upon magnetic media, had better take the long view and figure out their place in the solid state world. If you are wondering what DTI is doing, we are putting together a new product that will be launching in the next few weeks, that will be a virtual data insurance policy. This will be a necessity for those taking the solid state plunge. While it will take some time for all computer makers to embrace solid state storage, the death of magnetic media and hard drive recovery as a business is no more than 5 years away!

Even though on Apple’s website they call the iPod’s storage a “hard drive”, not all of them are. The storage is for the most part flash media or solid state, not a drive with platters and heads. Some of the exceptions are the 60GB, 80GB and 120GB which use Toshiba hard drives. Look at the Apple site to see what is in your iPod. As far as data recovery goes, we have a lot more options when a hard drive is involved since they have working parts that can be fixed. Solid State Storage has no moving parts, but there are still plenty of things that we can do from an electronic level to perform iPod data recovery.

DTI Data has the capabilities to recover all files that reside on an iPod, music, pictures, video, etc.

Icon	Model	Year-Month introduced	Scrolling device	Capacity	Current iPod Software Version
	iPod shuffle (2nd generation Early 2008) (2 GB) data recovery	2008-02	n/a	2 GB	1.0.3
	iPod touch (32 GB) data recovery	2008-02	multi-touch display	32 GB	1.1.3
	iPod touch (8 GB or 16 GB) data recovery	2007-09	multi-touch display	8 GB or 16 GB	1.1.3
	iPod classic (80 GB or 160 GB) data recovery	2007-09	Click Wheel	80 GB or 160 GB	1.1.1
	iPod nano (3rd generation) data recovery	2007-09	Click Wheel	4 GB or 8 GB	1.1
	iPod shuffle (2nd generation) (1 GB) data recovery	2006-09	n/a	1 GB	1.0.3
	iPod (5th generation late 2006) (30 GB or 80 GB) data recovery	2006-09	Click Wheel	30 GB or 80 GB	1.2.3
	iPod nano (Second Generation) (2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB) data recovery	2006-09	Click Wheel	2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB	1.1.3
	iPod nano (1 GB) data recovery	2006-02	Click Wheel	1 GB	1.3.1
	iPod (5th generation) (60 GB) data recovery	2005-10	Click Wheel	60 GB	1.2.3
	iPod (5th generation ) (30 GB) data recovery	2005-10	Click Wheel	30 GB	1.2.3
	iPod nano (4 GB) data recovery	2005-09	Click Wheel	4 GB	1.3.1
	iPod nano (2 GB) data recovery	2005-09	Click Wheel	2 GB	1.3.1
	iPod with color display (60 GB) data recovery	2005-06	Click Wheel	60 GB	1.2.1
	iPod with color display (20 GB) data recovery	2005-06	Click Wheel	20 GB	1.2.1
	iPod photo (30 GB) (also known as iPod with color display) data recovery	2005-02	Click Wheel	30 GB	1.2.1
	iPod mini (4 GB Second Generation) data recovery	2005-02	Click Wheel	4 GB	1.4.1
	iPod mini (6 GB Second Generation) data recovery	2005-02	Click Wheel	6 GB	1.4.1
	iPod shuffle (512 MB) data recovery	2005-01	n/a	512 MB	1.1.5
	iPod shuffle (1 GB) data recovery	2005-01	n/a	1 GB	1.1.5
	iPod photo (40 GB) (also known as iPod with color display) data recovery	2004-10	Click Wheel	40 GB	1.2.1
	iPod photo (60 GB) (also known as iPod with color display) data recovery	2004-10	Click Wheel	60 GB	1.2.1
	iPod (20 GB Click Wheel) data recovery	2004-07	Click Wheel	20 GB	3.1.1
	iPod (40 GB Click Wheel) data recovery	2004-07	Click Wheel	40 GB	3.1.1
	iPod mini data recovery	2004-01	Click Wheel	4 GB	1.4.1
	iPod (20 GB dock connector) data recovery	2003-09	touch wheel	20 GB	2.3
	iPod (40 GB dock connector) data recovery	2003-09	touch wheel	40 GB	2.3
	iPod (10 GB dock connector) data recovery	2003-04	touch wheel	10 GB	2.3
	iPod (15 GB dock connector) data recovery	2003-04	touch wheel	15 GB	2.3
	iPod (30 GB dock connector) data recovery	2003-04	touch wheel	30 GB	2.3
	iPod (10 GB touch wheel) data recovery	2002-07	touch wheel	10 GB	1.5
	iPod (20 GB touch wheel) data recovery	2002-07	touch wheel	20 GB	1.5
	iPod (10 GB scroll wheel) data recovery	2002-03	scroll wheel	10 GB	1.5
	iPod (5 GB scroll wheel) data recovery	2001-10	scroll wheel	5 GB	1.5

If you are here you need data recovery, more than likely, internal hard disk repair. Call Toll Free: 1-866-438-6932 or fill out an online quote form if you need data recovery.

NAND Storage Explained

 NAND Flash architecture is one of two flash technologies used in memory cards like the type in MP3 players, USB pocket drives and the most common application: digital picture storage. NAND is particulalry useful for high capacity data storage in small devices.

NAND flash devices offer faster erase, write, and read capabilities over NOR architecture.

NOR Storage Explained

NOR flash is the preferred technology for flash devices used to store and run code, usually in small capacities. NOR flash devices have fast read capabilities, but they have slow write and erase functions compared to the NAND architecture. NOR technology is more commonly found as embedded designs and in lower-end set-top boxes and mobile handsets, or BIOS chips.

NOR flash architecture was introduced by Intel in 1988.
NAND flash architecture was introduced by Toshiba in 1989.

Unlike hard disk drives, solid state storage devices have no moving parts. The majority of data recovery that happens on flash media whether it is a SmartCard, SanDisk or some other type of digital media is done on a software level. Most flash media storage devices emulate a hard disk’s way of dealing with file systems. Cameras or MP3 players have an embedded operating system that needs to access the storage device the same way your computers operating system accesses a hard drive. Unless the media was damaged physically, the problems lie within the file system and can be recovered with DTI’s file recovery programs.