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Know What You're Dealing With: Essential Facts You Must Be Familiar with Before Paying for Data Recovery
Data recovery companies thrive on their customers' lack of knowledge and often get away with charging high rates for any recovery, regardless of difficulty. This article solves the following essential questions users must ask before buying data recovery services: What are the chances of successful recovery and how much can I expect to pay? How do hard drives work? How can they fail?
1. Be Knowledgeable about What You're Dealing With
The world of data recovery is a huge mystery for most users and even some IT specialists. This is mainly because hard drives themselves are complex devices and their technical specifics are not usually well known. Data recovery companies thrive on their customers' lack of knowledge and often get away with charging high rates for any recovery, regardless of difficulty. I hope this article will be a useful resource for users and specialists alike. I provide some basic information about data recovery by shedding some light on what are the chances of successful recovery and how much the user can expect to pay, how hard drives work, and how they can fail. This information will enable the user to make an informed decision when selecting a data recovery company.
2. A Little Bit of Hard Drives
A computer hard drive stocks data on metal oxide platters that spin up to 10,000 revolutions per minute. An actuator arm contains the “head” that reads and writes the information in the form of magnetic charges one-millionth of an inch above the surface. Any given drive can have numerous read and write heads and each head can 'crash' individually. A head crash happens when the read/write head comes in interaction with the platters of the disk (more on head crashes below). As companies strive to cram more space on hard drives without increasing their physical size, the data gets written gradually closer together, making for a very challenging recovery should one or more heads crash. The brain of the hard drive is its controller board and this is exclusive for each individual hard drive. One additional factor worth a mention is the service path of a hard drive. This is a part located on the external part of the disk platter and it holds the drive's firmware zone. The firmware of a hard drive is the data used by the computer to connect properly with the drive. These are the main parts that make a hard drive work, now let's talk about what issues you might encounter.
3. Ways in Which a Hard Disk Can Fail
Hard drives are very delicate and can suffer failures in numerous different ways, leading to a loss of data. The five most common types of drive failures are firmware corruption, electronic failure, mechanical failure, bad sectors, logical errors, or any combination of these. The least simple of these is typically data loss due to logical errors.
Logical errors are often the simplest and occasionally the most challenging problems to deal with when recovering data. They can range from a simple problem that needs little work, an invalid entry in a file allocation table, to severe issues such as the corruption or loss of the whole file system. Logical errors can be noticeable when there is a delay in starting up the computer, programs do not run properly and files become inaccessible. Logical errors are frequently seen as simple because there is nothing wrong with the physical drive leading users to try recovering it themselves by using third-party software. This is quite risky; however, as running such software on a damaged drive can result in a complete loss of data. The most effective way to avoid logical errors on your hard drive is to habitually use the Disk Defragmentation tool in your operating system.
Recovering a drive with logical errors can be simple and fast, however, if the problem involves manual bit-by-bit restoration of the data, it can also be quite complex and time-consuming. In general, logical errors are at the lower end of the price range as they do not involve manual disassembly of the drive; however, there are circumstances when logical failures end up in a higher price range. The bottom line with logical errors is the sooner they are caught and the less a user tampers with the drive, the better the chances for a fast and thorough recovery.
Mechanical failures are often much more serious than any other failure and often lead to a partial or even complete loss of data. The most common type of mechanical failure is a head crash, which is when the read/write head comes in and interacts with the disk platter. Head crashes can be caused by a variety of reasons, including static electricity, physical shock, mechanical read/write failure, and power surges. Mechanical failures are detected by a continuous clicking or grinding noise coming from the drive. If you suspect mechanical failure, you must instantly shut down your computer and call a data recovery company for assistance.
Mechanical failures are commonly the most simple and most challenging to recover from. All mechanical failures involve the physical disassembly of the drive. The replacement of a read/write head is one of the most difficult and costly procedures that can be done by a data recovery engineer, especially with larger capacity drives. The probabilities of recovery depend entirely on how much damage the drive has sustained, however, they can be quite good. A crashed head does not mean that your entire data is lost! Once again, the sooner you notice a mechanical problem and turn off your drive, the more of your precious data is likely to be saved.
Electronic failures are the most common after a power surge or due to some other electrical problems, and the most common kind is control board failure. A power surge can hit the control board, making the drive invisible in the BIOS. Because each drive is built-in with a unique control board, recovery of this type is somewhat complex. However, the good news is that usually once the control board issue is fixed, the data is 100% recoverable.
Recovering a drive that has suffered from an electronic failure can be time-consuming, generally because the specific problem takes some time to identify. Once identified, though, the recovery is commonly not extremely complex and would possibly land in the mid-range in terms of price. Most of the time, we are able to achieve a 100% recovery from drives that have suffered an electronic failure.
Firmware corruption is triggered by logical problems or any physical damage to the firmware zone on the disk platter. When the firmware becomes corrupt, the computer is often unable to correctly communicate with the hard drive, and the drive is not recognized in the BIOS. Luckily, when the drive fails due to firmware corruption, the data is commonly fully recoverable once the drive has been fixed.
Recovering a drive that has suffered from Firmware corruption is possible with the use of our exclusive technology. Because the firmware information is inaccessible on the outer rim of the disk, most of the data can be recovered successfully. The difficulty of recovering a drive that has suffered from firmware corruption depends on the extent of damage suffered by the service track on the disk's platter. Expect the charge of this type of recovery to be in the mid to high-price range.
4. Bad sectors are a common outcome of all hard drives
In the end, all drives develop areas that are no longer functional and when this happens, they are isolated by the operating system. Bad sectors are the same as bumps in the road, areas which are avoided by the read/write head and which are no longer open to the user. If mission-critical data exists on the drive, we recommend backing up as soon as possible, as the formation of bad sectors often indicates the approaching end of the drive. Finally, and most importantly, do NOT, under any circumstances run the ScanDisk or Chckdisk utilities when data becomes inaccessible. These utilities are intended to fix only file system errors and not any other kinds of errors, so if your hard drive has suffered from bad sectors, these utilities only make things worse.
5. Bad sectors are accessible
We are capable of recovering drives with bad sectors using our exclusive mirroring technology. The method often includes manual mirroring bit-by-bit, which can be time-consuming. The price of this type of recovery will usually be in the mid-range of the pricing schedule.
I hope the above explanations can help some users. The basic information is that data loss occurs to everyone. Every hard drive crashes, and sometimes when you least expect it to happen. Backup is vital for end-users and business users alike, and there are many exceptional ways to back up your data. But if you've lost data, try to understand the problem before calling a data recovery company. Be knowledgeable, get your data back, and save your money.