The complete procedure of hard drive recovery

No matter whom you are, where do you work and what type of computer system you use- the data stored on your computer hard drive is at stake of loss. With user errors, virus attacks, natural disasters, power outages, and mechanical failures, the threats are ever factual.

To be on safe side, you will require to backup your business critical information, your memorable photos, your identity, personal emails and other important stuff. In case of any mishap, you can retrieve your data easily and effectively from backup.

In earlier times, the hard drive recovery was very complicated. If you had not made a backup and the data loss has stroked to you, there was no way of hard drive recovery for general users and small businesses. The hard drive recovery process was extremely complicated, time consuming and expensive.

But in modern era, the hard drive recover e very easy. It is affordable for each category of users. Even users can perform hard drive recovery at their own, without having any sound technical knowledge and training regarding the hard drive recovery methods.

The hard drive recovery is possible in two different ways, depending upon the type and cause of the data loss. The data loss may take place in two forms: Logically and Physically. The logical data loss is one in which the physical components of your computer remains intact, only the stored data could not be accessed.

On the other hand, the physical data loss is considered in case of damaged computer hard drive or other storage media. In case of physical damage, the data could not be accessed from the storage media due to its inability of being started.

In both of these cases, the ultimate loss would be of your precious information and thus it will affect the dependent things. If your data was vital from business’ point of view, it will affect your business and if it had significa ormation, it may affect your personally.

Because of the worse effects of data loss, it becomes essential to take corrective steps towards hard drive recovery. In case of logical data loss, hard drive recovery is very easy, fast and affordable. You can perform Do It Yourself hard drive recovery using data recovery software.

If you are having physical damage to the hard drive, the hard drive recovery will somewhat complicated in this case. Physical hard drive recovery needs special tools and techniques and qualified technicians to perform the absolute hard drive recovery in all possible cases of damage. It is feasible with hard drive recovery service, offered by data recovery companies in Clean Rooms.

Securely remove sensitive data from your PC

When you delete or remove the data from your computer, it is removed from the Master File Data only. One still can access the parts of the data without many efforts. Thus, it becomes necessary to remove the traces of the erased files as well. There are different software programs available online that claim to remove the data easily. But see to it that it’s a genuine one.

If you are going to delete the sensitive information about your company, then take a back up. At times accidentally, we delete the important files that could lead you in big trouble if there is no support. If you haven’t deleted the files before then it is good to take the help of a professional.

Here are some easy steps that will help to remove the sensitive data from your personal computer easily:

* Always use a secure program that can help in deleting private files. On Google you can type the words "secure file delete" and go in for a paid version or look for a freeware version.

* The other method is to just simply delete the files usually. Deleted the files and empty the recycle bin. You can copy a big file make a bunch of copies until the drive is full. The computer responds promptly to the situation and all the deleted files are over written and cannot be recovered. Now just simply put the files in the recycle bin. Or take a data manager help.

* If the data is on CD –ROMs or DVD rewritable disc, then use a compact disk eraser. All the data will be permanently swabbed off.

* There is another way of deleting the data from the hard drive. Cover the drive by a strong magnet and move it about around the disk.

Managing the data storage to prevent data Loss

There are so many unforeseen data loss situations, ranging from unique to ordinary, which can take place to anyone at any point of time. These data loss cases are becoming very frequent than ever.

The finest way to keep away from the data loss is to have a complete disaster recover strategy. There are several protective measures, like backup, to avoid the data loss situations or have easy and quick recovery if data loss happens.

Since the data loss disasters would take place, there is a list of recommendations for the IT administrators and executives, which will augment the possibilities of efficient hard drive recovery:

Always use hard drive defragmenter. The defragmenter shifts the pieces of every file to one memory location, so that they occupy contiguous space on the hard drive. It helps you in improving the quality of hard drive recovery. But you should never use defragmenter on the bad hard drives as it could further damage the drive and make the data irretrievable.

Regularly er backup of all your essential data. It will help you in restoring your system, in case any disaster happens.

If the hard drive is making strange mechanical noises, switch it off immediately and get help from the hard drive recovery service provider company.

Never restore your data on the server, which has lost data. You should always restore your critical data to a different server or any alternative location.

In power failure case with RAID, if file system becomes suspicious, drive is un-mountable or data is inaccessible, never run any disk repair utility.

All these protective measures are very helpful for you to prevent data loss and have safe and trouble-free data recovery. But if you do not take these protections, the data loss may happen and might harm you in many ways.

If the lost data is business crucial, the data loss situa ut you out of the business. In such grave situations, you need to take help of hard drive recovery.

Hard drive recovery is the procedure of retrieving lost, deleted or inaccessible data from failed or damaged hard drives and other storage media, which can not be accessed normally. It is potential by two methods: hard drive recovery software and hard drive recovery service.

Hard drive recovery software are easy to use tools, which allow users to have Do It Yourself hard drive recover in all possible cases of logical data loss. On the other hand, hard drive recovery service is the personalized help delivered by hard drive recovery experts to handle physical data loss posers.

To ensure absolute, safe, easy and quick extraction of your data, selecting a reliable hard drive recovery company, like Stellar Information Systems Ltd, is extremely important. Stellar is the leading hard drive recovery company and offers you both hard drive recovery solutions i.e. hard drive recovery software and hard drive recover service.

Strategies for maximizing the lifespan of hard drive

If I ask you a question: which is the most fragile part of your computer system, what will be your answer ? What if I ask: which is the most important part for you ?

Generally the answer of both these questions is the hard drive of your computer system, no matter which operating system you are using.

The hard disk is probably the most significant thing you own. It stores all of your important work data, emails, photos, tax information, your identity, school data etc. Incidentally the hard disk is also one of two moving parts of your computer (other one is optical drive).

Hard drive is very prone to failure and you need to take some preventive measures to save it from being failed. You should follow the below given monitoring and maintenance steps to maximize the life of your hard drive and avoid data loss:

Hard disks are fragile- handle carefully

Almost 34-40% of data loss occurs due to the physical problems with hard dive. Hard drive is a very delicate device, ds and writes data using minute magnetic particles. Any shock, vibration and other operations might damage the disk and cause data loss.

Hard disk writes data in non-linear fashion, forcing it to be fragmented

When the files accumulate on the hard drive, they don’t just get written in linear way. Hard disk writes data in small pieces and spreads it over the surface. It could cause hard drive fragmentation. It could possibly cause to file system corruption and finally the data loss.

A small power outage could fry the hard drive

Another known fact about hard drive fragility is its susceptibility to the electrical damage. An electrical damage could be the result of lightening strikes, power surges, power outages and faulty power supply. A power outage might cause a number of mishaps like circuit board burning.

Fool-proof method to avoid data loss- Backup!

If you want to prevent data loss as whole, you should always make proper up of your hard drive on a reliable storage device. A good backup might help you in restoring your important data in case any damage occurs.

In case if you don’t succeed to prevent data loss and unfortunately your hard drive fails, the only way to get your data back is hard drive recovery. Hard drive recovery is feasible in two ways through hard drive recovery software and hard drive recovery service.

Hard drive recovery software are third party tools, which are capable of handling all of the logical data loss scenarios. On the other hand, to recover your data from physically damaged hard drive, data recovery service is helpful.

To ensure perfect hard drive recovery, availing software and service of a good data recovery company like Stellar Information Systems Limited, is required. Stellar’s data recovery software are extremely powerful and perform absolute data recovery by systematically scanning the hard drive. Personalized hard drive recovery service of Stellar is delivered by experienced data recovery experts in Class 100 Clean Rooms.

Partition recovery with Partition Table Doctor

Software Accidentally deleted the partition on your hard disk drive ? Partition can not be seen from "My Computer" ? This is probably the worst nightmare you can think of in a computer user's life when all the important files on the deleted or lost partition can not be accessed. Fortunately, EASEUS provides an excellent solution for computer users to recover a deleted, damaged or lost partition - Partition Table Doctor, a "magic" partition recovery and repair software solution.

A user's experience with Partition Table Doctor: "Trying to recover a deleted partition on a hard drive, I accidentally deleted the partition D: on the hard drive with all the data. Being anxious to access my important files, I purchased Partition Table Doctor and have run the program to recover the lost partition and perform a restore; it indicates it is successful recovering the lost partition. Amazing, all the important files were back with the deleted partition."

Partition Table Doctor for partition recovery and repair works with FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, EXT2, EXT3, SWAP File Systems on different kinds of drive (IDE, ATA, SCSI). By creating emergency floppy disks or bootable CD, you still have access to your computer even if your operating systems doesn't boot.

With Partition Table Doctor, you can recover the deleted, damaged or lost partitions in your hard drive, as well as try to fix any of them in case of hard drive failure.

Pricing and Availability

Partition Table Doctor runs under DOS, Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003 to do partition recovery and repair and costs $49.95 (USD) for a single-user license. Discounts for the buyers of multiple licenses and academic/non-profit users are available. Licensed customers get lifetime technical support and free minor upgrades.

Data recovery after Virus attacks

Virus – a threat to every computer whether used at home or in any organization. Most of us must have encountered a data loss after a virus attack on our computer. Those who haven’t may face a virus attack in future. A virus basically is a computer program, which is capable enough to destroy the entire data saved in the hard drive of a computer system.

Who creates these computer viruses ?

Programmers with good knowledge of various computer programming languages create such malicious applications, which are intelligent enough to target certain loopholes like open ports, code vulnerability etc. of the computer operating system or BIOS.

What are the main causes and consequences of a computer virus?

The main cause of a computer virus is the connection of the computer system to the internet. Most of the viruses attack the computers when a user is downloading any file from the internet. Viruses can attack your system when you are downloading an attachment (containing the virus) from your email. Installation of poor anti-virus software can also lead to virus attack on your computer. If no firewall is installed on the computer or the network (hardware firewall) can result in virus attack.

The main consequences of a fatal virus attack are as follows:

1) Loss of data viz. from My Documents folder in Windows as the viruses target files with certain extensions as well 2) Operating system file corruption viz. Windows/System/System32 folder files get infected in Windows 3) System performance degradation 4) Instable computer behavior

In order to protect the computer from viruses, users install anti-virus software, firewall, and spyware.

Out of the above consequences, the worst that a user encounters is the loss of important data. In order to recover the lost and corrupted data, the user needs to use effective data recovery software. This data recovery software uses advanced scanning algorithms to restore the lost data, which has been affected by a computer virus.

Stellar Information System Ltd. provides the finest data recovery software. The data recovery technicians at Stellar Information System Ltd. are equipped with good technical skills, which allow them to extract complete data from any storage device that is affected by a computer virus. These technicians perform data recovery process from the storage devices in sterilized surroundings in Class 100 Clean Rooms. Stellar Information System Ltd. has more than 1,000,000 customers worldwide and the list is increasing on daily basis.

Log on to Data Recovery software for your data recovery needs .

Read Write Head Change Tool

In a hard drive, the heads fly above the disk surface with clearance of as little as 3 nanometres. The "flying height" is constantly decreasing to enable higher aerial density. The flying height of the head is controlled by the design of an air-bearing etched onto the disk-facing surface. The role of the airbearing is to maintain the flying height constant as the head moves over the surface of the disk. If the head hits the disk's surface, a catastrophic head crash can result.

The heads themselves started out similar to the heads in tape recorders -- simple devices made out of a tiny U-shaped piece of highly magnetizable material called ferrite wrapped in a fine wire coil. When writing, the coil is energized, a strong magnetic field forms in the gap of the U, and the recording surface adjacent to the gap is magnetized. When reading, the magnetized material rotates past the heads, the ferrite core concentrates the field, and a current is generated in the coil. The gap where the field is very strong is quite narrow. That gap is roughly equal to the thickness of the magnetic media on the recording surface. The gap determines the minimum size of a recorded area on the disk. Ferrite heads are large, and write fairly large features. They must also be flown fairly far from the surface thus requiring stronger fields and larger heads.

Metal in Gap (MIG) heads are ferrite heads with a small piece of metal in the head gap that concentrates the field. This allows smaller features to be read and written. MIG heads were replaced with thin film heads. Thin film heads were electronically similar to ferrite heads and used the same physics. But they were manufactured using photolithographic processes and thin films of material that allowed fine features to be created. Thin film heads were much smaller than MIG heads and therefore allowed smaller recorded features to be used. Thin film heads allowed 3.5 in drives to reach 4GB storage capacities in 1995. The geometry of the head gap was a compromise between what worked best for reading and what worked best for writing.

The next head improvement was to optimize the thin film head for writing and to create a separate head for reading. The separate read head uses the magnetoresistive effect which changes the resistance of a material in the presence of magnetism. These MR heads are able to read very small magnetic features reliably, but can not be used to create the strong field used for writing. The term AMR (A=anisotropic) is sometimes used instead of MR. The introduction of the MR head in 1996 lead to a period of rapid aerial density increases exceeding 100% per year. In 2000 GMR, Giant Magnetoresistive, heads started to replace MR/AMR read heads. In 2005, the first drives to use TMR, tunneling MR, heads were introduced by Seagate allowing 400 GB drives with 3 disk platters.

In 2005, Seagate introduced TMR heads using integrated heaters to control the shape the pole-tip region of the head during operation. The heater is activated prior to the start of a write operation to ensure close proximity the write pole to the media. This improves the written magnetic transitions by saturating the media.

Read Write Head Change tools are the mandatory tools to replace read write heads of damaged hard drives that are unable to detect any data.

To keep the heads from crashing into the platter is just as important to keep them from crashing into each other although they shouldn’t be allowed to touch the platters. This read write head replacement tool that when used in a data recovery process will prevent the read / write heads from making any contact with each other, and /or crashing to the platters of the hard drive. The tool is made up of derlin plastic and finds is use in almost all the process of data recovery.

The heads on each type of drive sit at different heights to fly over the different heights of the platters. The platters vary in height due to the spacers (metallic/plastic) that are used to keep them apart. Read write head tool is fully adjustable for one or more (up to 4) heads at different heights. One tool fits all. This can do multi platter, single platter and dual or two platter hard drives head stack swaps.

The head replacement technology is used where hard drives have been burned and the read write heads are almost burned out completely, flooded drives where the heads have suffered water or corrosive damage. Some hard drives suffer head damage due to the heads knocking against the limiters or if the hard drive has been dropped. The Read Write head tool is a standard tool in order to recover data from above written hard drives. The read write head tool itself is very simple to use and causes no damage to the heads or the platters surface. The tools are available for both desktop and laptop hard drives. To work on both, the products namely read write head replacement tool for desktop and read write head replacement tool for laptop are required. Once they are adjusted to the appropriate heights using the platters as a guide, the heads need to be slided onto the wedges to remove the heads without damage. It is important with any of read write head change tools that they are not inserted between the heads as this would damage the sensors. The tool should be only inserted between the sliders.

On taking a close look at a read / write head it can be seen that there are copper coils belonging to the transducer, and tiny electric wires attached to gold pads. The read write head tool is used to keep the heads from crashing during alignment. If large quantities of these hard drives are available, read write head tools, the plastic wedges in donor drives can be left prior to using these parts if one wanted to prepare ahead.

The tools are available in a very low cost starting from 25 USD.There are total twelve read write head tools available. A separate tool for hard drives with one, two, three or four platters can be purchased. A complete economical kit consisting of all twelve tools is also available. This complete kit is mandatory for those who are into the data recovery process continuously in one or the other hard drives. The tool keeps the heads apart so that one can align the read write heads and make repairs to the hard drive heads. It will work for any hard drive - Seagate, Hitachi, Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Conner, Western Digital, Samsung. Read write head tool allows you to perform your data recovery quickly and safely, saving you time and money. If several of our tools are purchased, you will have enough components to remove as many heads as you want. A single tool will handle 1-6 heads. Two tools can be combined to remove 12 heads not that we see many drives like that in this day and age.

Some tips to Protect your data.

A lovely saying “The prevention is always better than the cure”. Some important tips and tricks have been listed here for protection of your data. By following these , You can avoid the lossage of data and a difficult data recovery .

Make Backups Daily.

To make Backing up the boot sectors and other directory information is always a wise Methode for securing your data. The different areas on your drive should be backed up on different time intervals. A complete backup program consists of the following things:

1. Make a emergency boot disk for each system.
2. Make the back up of the MBR once, after the Fdisk command of DOS.
3. Make the back up the DBR’s for each logical drive once, after FORMAT command of DOS.
4. Make the back up of the FAT or NTFS or HFS and root directories regularly.
5. Make a back up of important user data regularly.

Perform Surface scanning on monthly base:

Perform a surface scan monthly to test the media on your device. By doing this you can fox the errors in the very initial stages. Even if the scanning program is not capable of fixing the disk, it may at least provide the information about the physical and logical status of your storage media. With this information you can get the help to back up your data and to find the solutions for the problems.

De-Fragment of data weekly is also good..

With the creation of new files and deletion of older ones, the data on the disk becomes more and more fragmented. The fragmentation makes the accessibility of data slow and complicated. I will discuss the disk fragmentation and de-fragmentation later on in my posts. The utilities for DE-fragmentation of the data are available in the operating system.. By maintaining the DE-fragmented data, you can improve the performance of the system. De fragmented data is easy to recover if there is a disk crash.

Use good Anti Virus Software is recommonded.

Viruses are a big cause for data loss these days. To avoid the virus infection in your data and to protect your data, you must use a good anti virus software. I can recommend using Avast Anti virus or Microsoft One Care. When using the internet, always enable your email protection and internet security from the options of your anti virus software.

Do not use pirated games or software or applications.

The pirated games and software are usually prepared by some hacking or cracking, or other illegal procedures to run even after pirated. The procedures may not be compatible and suitable for the software and hardware configuration of every computer and may destroy your data. There is a significant number of software, especially games which have been used as a medium to spread viruses. Therefore using the pirated software may infect your system with some serious system viruses and may cause severe data loss.

EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional v4.3.6 retail

EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional is the professional level, most cost-effective and ease-to-use software available for data recovery. It is unmatched in its ability to recover almost total logic data loss situations - covering servers, desktops or laptops for many media, Windows Operating Systems and file types.

New Features!

– Enhanced support Windows Vista.
– Recovers compressed and encrypted files on NTFS volume.
– Creates a Disk Image file for data recovery.
– Intelligent search all possible file systems on hard drive.
– Ability to resume the last recovery result.
– High quality of file recovery.
– Succinct and user friendly interface.
– Recover a specific file by right-click.

When to use?

– Hard Drives that have been formatted.
– Corrupt or missing critical file system structures.
– Accidental file deletion.
– File loss without reason.
– Unexpected system shutdown or application failure.
– Computer viruses and worms infection or corruption.
– Boot-up problems.
– Partition structures are damaged or deleted.
– Damage due to a power failure or surge.
– Various kinds of file system corruption.
– Recover files from devices with unknown file systems including Hard Disk, external ZIP/USB drive, removable SmartMedia, MemoryStick, SD cards, etc..

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Simply Recovery of Data from a Dead Hard Drive

Actually, first of all what to do is determine if it really is a hard disk drive failure you’re confronting, and not one of the countless other equipment glitches that can cause a boot failure. If you have access to another computer, remove the failed hard drive from your sick PC, and hook it up as a secondary drive to the alternate computer.

On a Mac, the process is so simpler. Use a FireWire cable for hooking your nonworking Mac to a working Mac, then, “target boot” the nonworking machine by holding down the T key as you power it on. With either method, it’s possible that your failed hard drive will show up on your healthy computer and reveal its files, in which case your hard drive is probably fine, but your operating system needs to be reinstalled. (Don’t forget to offload your files before you do that.)

If your files don’t show up on the secondary computer, then you are at one of those pivotal moments in life when you find out how much your hard work and treasured memories are really worth to you. Depending on how your drive is damaged, an attempt to salvage your data can cost anywhere from a hundred dollars to several thousand. What’s more, the process can take days—and there is no guarantee that the money and time you invest will produce any results whatsoever.

Now that we’ve gone through the depressing task of properly setting your expectations, here’s the good news: Very often, the data on failed drives is recoverable. In fact, it’s surprising how resilient that information can be—just ask any corporate embezzler who thought he had deleted all the evidence from his PC, only to have it show up later in court. The comparison is apt, since the very same computer forensic tools that uncover digital misdeeds are the ones that can find your treasured family photos.

There are two ways that drives crash: Logical failure and mechanical failure. In a logical failure, the drive’s components are physically undamaged, but because of either accidental formatting or a corrupt file system, the drive is not able to find and navigate its own data. However, unless it has been overwritten, that data still exists on your drive.

A mechanical failure means that your drive has broken parts that are preventing it from working busted drives often make a telltale clicking sound as they futilely attempt to access their files. If you hear that, your data may still be there, but you’re not getting it back without calling in the experts (see “Worst-Case Scenario,” next page). And those experts make good money. Data recovery services from Kroll Ontrack, Seagate’s i365 and Iomega charge between $500 and $2500 to attempt to salvage data from either logical or mechanical disasters, depending on the severity of the situation. But if you are just dealing with a logical failure, you can get your files back on your own for far less.

Recovering a hard drive is a bit like getting back a stolen car—you’ll be happy to have your files back, but the results could be messy. No data recovery program will return your files to you in exactly the condition you originally kept them. These programs are designed to essentially do a data dump from your problem drive to a new drive. Files will be organized by type (JPEG images will be in one folder, Word documents in some other folder, MPEG movies in another) and your songs and photos will be mixed with random sound and image files from your computer’s system folder.

Additionally, the names of all your files will have been changed to various alphanumeric sequences, such as IMG1039.jpg or MOV2010.mov. So be prepared to settle in for a long weekend of sifting through and renaming your files. Oh, and while you’re at it, now’s a good time to buy that backup drive.