Data Recovery Blog

One in Sunderland...

> Data Recovery SUNDERLAND: 4 Admiral Way, Doxford International Business Park, Sunderland SR3 3XW

Our branch in Sunderland represents our first data recovery foray into the North of England. We already have a data recovery office in Glasgow but our Sunderland office is intended to focus on the Tyne and Wear region as a whole and include Newcastle, Middlesborough, Durham, Darlington, Hartlepool etc.

And another in Northampton...

> Data Recovery NORTHAMPTON: Victory House, 400 Pavilion Drive, Northampton Business Park, Northampton, NN4 7PA

Our new office in Northampton is intended to serve the general Northampton region - Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Leicester, Coventry, Leamington Spa, Cambridge etc.

I wanted to put an iconic image on this post for Northampton.... but could think of one... I was told that Northampton is 'good for shoe makers' but could find nothing image wise that would tie in with Northampton. There's the rugby, football and cricket teams too I guess. In the end I went for the 'Welcome to Northampton' sign - Easy!

So, that brings the total to 10 regional data recovery points of presence throughout the UK where you can take your faulty data storage equipment
- Whether it be from a PC, a Mac, a business server, or an external hard disk... Drop it into us if you want us to take a look at it.

Computer Science Labs provide world wide data recovery training, tools and support

Our sister company, Computer Science Labs is based in the UK and provides world wide data recovery training courses as well as hardware and software tools to the data recovery industry.

Our Clients Include

• Netherlands Forensics Institute
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police
• Various regional UK police forces
  • Greater Manchester
  • Merseyside
  • Metropolitan (London)
  • Northumberland
  • Staffordshire
• Forensics Institute - Finland
• German Police
• Swedish Forensic Police forces
• Singapore Government
• Various other data recovery companies (worldwide)
• IT departments of various companies
  

Data Recovery Training Courses

Computer Science Labs run several popular courses aimed at data recovery professionals. These range from a basic introductory into the world of data recovery right up to Advanced RAID data recovery techniques & procedures. Courses are often held in the UK, but we can also provide this training to you onsite and deliver it almost anywhere in the world.

> For more information: Data Recovery Training Courses

Data Recovery Hardware and Software

We produce our own data recovery equipment which has been developed over a number of years as part of our ongoing Research and Development programme.

• SERT - Spindle Extraction and Replacement tool (hardware)
• 520 Clone - Recovery software for DELL EMC RAIDs
• RAIDScope - Remote RAID data recovery service and software
• SQL Database recovery - Deleted SQL database recovery software

Additionally we supply equipment produced by other world wide manufactuerers.

> For more information: Data recovery hardware and software tools

PCB Swaps: Swapping the PCB Controller Board on a damaged hard drive - File Under Science Fiction

You know how it happens…. something is not right with your hard drive but you don't know what it is… you contact some data recovery companies but before you take the plunge and send your drive off you do a quick search on Google, just incase there is anything that you can do yourself… You view a few forums and one thing that keeps popping up is the idea that you should try and swap the controller board on the faulty hard drive.

You'll read something like: "So I went on Ebay and managed to find the same drive. I bought it and when I swapped the boards my broken hard drive burst back into life and I got all my data back".

Hmmmm…. well, 10 years ago this practice was only occasionally possible…. Now it is not possible, so much so that i'll write it again: swapping the PCB on a modern faulty drive will not work.

Ok so why not? It doesn't work because technology has moved on. These days the mapping and adaptive data that a hard drive uses is held on it's PCB. This adaptive data is unique to the individual drive. Fitting a new PCB on the faulty drive will result in different adaptive data being used and additional problems too - such as a high chance of firmware incompatibility.

Changing controller boards would occasionally work back in the early noughties (eg. 2000 - 2003) as drives back then were a lot smaller and a lot simpler. Even though the shape has not changed, the technology behind them has. Significantly.

So this is the reason the 'Try swapping the PCB' suggestion has now been filed under 'Data Recovery Myths'.

Data Recovery Partner / Reseller Programs and Data Recovery Training

When we made Data Clinic into a Ltd company back in 2002, we had already been providing a data recovery service for about 3 years. Personally, my background was IT support - specifically anti virus research, and how to reconstruct damaged data after a virus incident. Also back in the day there were only about another 2 or 3 data recovery companies in the entire country.... Now there are hundreds, most of which are not worthy of the label and whose capabilities are at best, limited.

So, how to make money in data recovery these days....

I suggest there are two main ways:

1. Become a Partner or Reseller of our services - You pass the data recovery work that comes your way onto us. For this we give you a cut of the profits on the data recovery we complete. There is a slight difference between our Partner and Reseller programmes - one caters for the smaller IT support person / company, while the other is aimed at larger organisations.

2. Train yourself in Data Recovery - Our sister company, Computer Science Labs offers a variety of data recovery training courses. These will enable you to understand the ins and outs of hard disk faults and problems, the steps to take in order to successfully recover data from these damaged drives, and also provide you with the hardware and software necessary to start a data recovery company yourself with 2nd line support from us.

Please contact us for further information.