Data Retrieval from External Hard Drive
August 12, 2009 by Data Recovery and Data Backup Tips
Filed under About Data Recovery
Even though there are various methods which you could use to store your data, at some point of time the electronic or mechanical storage devices are bound to break down or fail, resulting in the nightmare of data loss.
Even if the hard drive might work well for a number of years, but it could always fail when you least expect it, without any way for avoiding it.
Hard drives are the most usual ways of storing data, though they are mechanical devices and could crash or break down at any time. When the hard drives crash, you will generally lose all of your precious data, which could put you in a pretty bind. To be safe and keep yourself secluded, you must always have a good backup media, like an external hard dive.
An external hard drive is extremely handy to have. You could store all kind of files on it including music, documents, pictures, videos application files and many others. You may have an external hard drive up to the size of 1 TB.
On the data restoration side of things, external drives are great solution. You could back up your whole hard drive data on them and in case of any mishappening can restore data very easily. External hard drives work on most of the computers.
Though external hard drives are very useful for making backup and storing your precious data but eventually these too are the mechanical drives and could also fail. In case of backup failure, you may fall in grave situations of data loss and it could possibly put you out of the business.
The crash to the external hard drive could be of two types- Logical and Physical. The logical crash occurs due to file system corruption, accidental formatting of the hard drive, virus attack etc. reasons, whereas the physicl crash happens due to the physical damage to the hard drive components.
In such catastrophic situations, it becomes very important to perform hard drive data recovery to get the data back and save your business. Data recovery in these cases is feasible through the data recovery solutions available in two different forms- data recovery software and data recovery service.
The data recovery software are valuable in case of logical crash to the hard drive. These are Do It Yourself data recovery solutions, can be used very easily for effective data recovery. On the other hand, data recovery New Jersey service is the personalized data recovery help provided by the data recovery experts in the controlled environment of Clean Room.
Stellar Information Systems Ltd, a well known name in the area of data recovery, provides you both of the data recovery solutions. The data recovery software of the company are highly developed and are aailable for all computer operating systems. An extensive scan of the affected external hard drive is performed by these data recovery software to ensure absolute data recovery.
The data recovery services of Stellar is the best of the data recovery industry and is provided in safe and clean surroundings of Class 100 Clean Rooms. The data recovery experts of the company are highly qualified and experience. They know all ins and outs of the hard drive and end up with ideal data recovery.
Thanks to shally spears for contributing this article to our Data Recovery blog:
Shally Spears has 6 Years of Experience in the Software Technology field working as a freelancer with Stellar which offers ipod recovery , sun solaris data recovery and BSD data recovery software for more than 10 years.
Why Data Loss ?!===> Hw or System Malfunction
July 13, 2009 by Data Recovery and Data Backup Tips
Filed under Data Backup, Lost Data, Hard Drive Crash & FDE
When you lose the information, which was once accessible is referred as data loss.
The threats to data loss may come in many different forms, from a simple mistake to a massive natural disaster
Since, we now know what data loss is; let us read on to find out as to what causes data loss to occur and what measures do we need to follow in order to prevent that from happening.
Hardware or System Malfunction
The biggest factor leading to data loss is hardware malfunction or hard disks failure. It is known that 44% of all data losses are an outcome of hardware or system malfunction. Hard disks are mechanical devices and therefore are more prone to wear and tear. It is believed that the estimated average life of a hard disk is 3 years. Hardware fails to function properly due to one of the following reasons:
(a) Head/Media Crash: Head/media collisions account for a large percentage of hardware malfunctions.
Picture this: a series of hard disk platters rotating at the rate of 150 times per second with heads being separated (at submicron distances), moving over them. Even the slightest of disturbance inside the disk could cause the entire disk to stop functioning properly. When the read/write head touches the rotating platter of a hard disk, it leads to head crash.
When even the smallest bit of dust enters the sealed drive unit and settles on magnetic surfaces, it gets stuck in the thin gap between the head and the disk.
Dropping a disk to the floor may also cause hard disk malfunction. Not only this, even the slight jerk or vibration can unsettle alignments and lead to hardware malfunction.
(b) Sudden catastrophic failure: When you cannot detect the presence of the hard drive in the CMOS setup or when the operating system doesn’t locate the hard drive, it’s logical to think that the data loss has occurred. This POST failure results in hard drive to become inactive. This is when you hear the clicking noise from the hard drive. Sudden temperature variations may directly influence the data loss to occur.
(c) Electrical Failure: Another issue ultimately resulting in the loss of information is electrical failure, which can occur any time. Electrical failure is the direct effect of the circuit board failure, which is located on the bottom of the hard drive. A faulty component, electro-static discharge, damaging circuitry during installation are some of the various causes leading to electrical failure. It is important to keep the system clean and well ventilated; otherwise, it may cause electrical components to fail functioning properly. Hence, it is recommended to keep the system in cool conditions.
(d) Controller Failure: When you try to boot the system but instead receive an error message displaying “HDD Controller Failure”, then be prepared for the loss of your precious data. Yes, this is another reason for data loss to have occurred.
Hard disk controller failure occurs due to one of the following reasons:
• When the adapter is not firmly seated in the slot.
• Failing CMOS battery or accidental user intervention resulting in incorrect data in CMOS setup.
• When IRQ conflicts with other devices.
• When the IDE drives are not mastered/slaved properly.
• MBR (Master Boot Record) or the partition table is distorted.
• When the IDE drives (installed with master and slave) are incompatible.
• When Hard disk drive is not connected or set up properly.
• When the hard drive cable has gone bad (loose, twisted or has a broken wire).
• When the hard drive or the motherboard has gone bad.
When you notice the following changes taking place with your system, prepare yourself for the attack called “data loss”.
• Hard drive stops spinning.
• You receive an error message stating that the device is not being recognized by the system.
• You are unable to access the information, which you could previously.
• When you hear the scraping or rattling sound from the system.
• You system or the hard drive suddenly stop functioning.
This is what you could do in order to avoid the above-mentioned changes taking place:
• Connect your system to a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply), in order to protect your system against power surges, which is the main cause of electrical failures.
• Keep your computer in a dry and shaded room, which is clean and free of dust.
• Head crash is one of the most common hardware failures resulting in data loss. It is recommended not to shake the hard drive or avoid giving jerks to the computer, since the slightest of the jerk may result in a head crash or misalignment of platters. It is strictly advised not to remove the casing on the hard drive.
However if Data Loss occurs, Don’t Panic. Call [url=spam.spam]Data Recovery Specialist for the Data Recovery Service[/url].
Stellar Information Systems Ltd., a company with over a decade of experience in [url=spam.spam]data recovery software[/url] & services, has an ultra-modern Class-100 clean room facility in Gurgaon. Stellar’s Data Recovery Services (DRS) division operates from this environmentally controlled dust-free area to ensure safe and effective recovery from damaged hard disks.
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Thanks to Dr.Wael Al Bayaydh for contributing this article to our Data Recovery blog:
Dr.Wael AlBayaydh has a PhD degree in computer engineering. He has been working in information technology for several years, concentrating on areas such as operating system, networking, network security, electronic commerce, Internet services, LDAP and Web servers. AlBayaydh has authored a number of articles for trade publications, and he presents his own papers at industry conferences. He can be reached at wr_y@hotmail.com




