Data Recovery Blog

Data Clinic remotely recover Data... from China !

This internet's a marvellous thing isn't it.... As I write this our chief technical guy Zi is working to recover data across international boundaries... A difference of some 5000 or so miles and +8 hours for the timezone is not a problem it seems these days. All you need is a net connection and something like TeamViewer to allow remote access to the failed system.

So, next time you have a RAID problem it's quite possible that we can sort it out for your remotely.

Data Clinic successfully tackle data recovery for the SRU

With the 2011 IRB Rugby World Cup currently underway in New Zealand, 2011 is a massive year for rugby.

Running from the 9th September until the final in Auckland on 23rd October, 20 national teams are competing to become the rugby World Champions and lift the World Cup. The competition is held every 4 years and it's the hosts New Zealand who are favourites to win this time...

However, as anyone who knows a bit about Rugby Union will tell you, New Zealand are always favourites - but they've only ever won the competition once - back in 1987. Rugby is a religion in New Zealand, and is played massively throughout the country. These days, training regimes are developed scientifically but there's a great story from way back when involving the former All Black Colin Meads, who as a sheep farmer by trade, would develop his strength and stamina by running uphill with a sheep tucked under each arm.

We received a call from the Scottish Rugby Union in Murrayfield who contacted us shortly before their squad flew out to New Zealand, as one of their RAID servers holding their team data had crashed and the information was no longer accessible. We arranged to have the system collected the same day and it arrived safely in our Manchester offices the following morning. Our analysis revealed damage to the system areas of the drives and with some careful attention to detail and some deft reprogramming we were able to piece the data structures across the disks back together and successfully recover the data. This was returned to them on a new external hard disk shortly before their flight.

This World Cup, Scotland are drawn in Group B, along with Argentina, Georgia, Romania, and their bitter rivals England. England should qualify top of the group, and second place will be a tustle between Scotland and Argentina. That's my prediction, but this is the World Cup and experience shows that anything can happen...

With total match attendences expected to be around 2.5 million, and worldwide viewing figures expected to be over 5 billion, the 2011 Rugby World Cup promises to be a grand spectacle and a showcase for what truly is a beautiful country.

2011 Rugby World Cup - Groups
Group A: New Zealand, France, Tonga, Canada, Japan
Group B: Argentina, England, Scotland, Georgia, Romania
Group C: Australia, Ireland, Italy, Russia, USA
Group D: South Africa, Wales, Fiji, Samoa, Namibia

Past Winners of the Rugby World Cup
1987 - New Zealand
1991 - Australia
1995 - South Africa
1999 - Australia
2003 - England
2007 - South Africa

Data Clinic have a data recovery centre in Glasgow -
Data Clinic Glasgow, 20-23 Woodside Place, Glasgow, G3 7QF, Scotland

http://www.scottishrugby.org/

http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/

There are many, many weird and wonderful things on the internet...

In data recovery land, one of the weirdest data recovery ideas is to put a faulty hard drive in a freezer for several hours, in the belief that when the drive is later removed, access to the data is temporarily restored and the data can be retrieved.

This story is exactly that - a story. Putting a faulty hard drive in a freezer will not make the fault go away, or allow you to recover the data.

The internet is full of stories on forums from people who have got faulty hard drives and want to recover their data, and someone will usually reply recommending the hard drive should be put in a freezer and justify this by saying they had a friend of a friend who tried it and it worked.

An internet search about freezing hard drives to recover data brings back lots of hits with lots of explanations as to why this technique works. One of the reasons I found was:
"By freezing the hard drive, you're hopefully shrinking the platters enough that they're no longer rubbing up against the head"

This is utter rubbish. Hard drives are very complex pieces of equipment. If you value the data that is on a faulty hard drive please don't put it in the freezer.

Get the hard drive looked at professionally.

What exactly is a 'rugged' hard disk drive ?

There's a Not The Nine O'Clock News comedy sketch commonly known as "The Gramophone" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSINO6MKtco) where Mel Smith is humiliated at the hands of Rowan Atkinson and Griff Rhys-Jones who play two roguish hi-fi salesmen that take advantage of him being rather old fashioned in the face of new technology.

I was reminded of this sketch when a "rugged" hard drive came in from a customer requiring data recovery. It got me thinking what, exactly, is a rugged hard drive, and what exactly makes it rugged ?

A rugged hard drive is an external hard disk with um, 'rugged' extras... These extras imply to the buyer that the drive is far more sturdy than normal external hard drives, and can therefore take more punishment - rugged hard drives are for people who carry their data around with them all day in a rucksack or similar. It may get banged and knocked about due to everyday life but the data is still ok as it's on a rugged hard drive... Wow, that sounds good - does it work ?

Erm, no. The three pictures (below left) are of a commonly available rugged hard drive. Further inspection shows that the only thing that makes this a rugged hard drive is the rubber sleeve that fits over the metal casing.

Um, Is that it ?!?!?

Yep - that's it…. Take the "rugged" cover (which probably cost about 5p to make) off the drive - and inside the metal casing is a standard 3.5" hard disk… there is nothing else at all - no extra padding or cushioning, no special contraptions that prevent or reduce any sudden jolts to the hard disk… Hmmm, so the manufacturer charges an extra £20 per drive for a plastic cover then?? Yes...

So to paraphrase the comedy sketch -
Customer: "What's the difference between a rugged hard drive and a normal external hard drive then ?"
Shop Assistant: "Erm about £20 and a rubber sleeve to you chief"

There is a serious point here though - Commonly available "rugged" hard drives appear to be a complete waste of money. The customer is being sold the notion that by buying a rugged hard drive their data will be much safer. Unfortunately the fact is that nearly all the external and rugged hard drives that come into us for data recovery have been either dropped onto the floor, or knocked over on a table etc. A rubber cover makes no difference in these situations.

Refracture (otherwise known as Paul Dobson) is one of the fastest rising talents in breaks and bass driven music. Renowned for his energetic and powerful dancefloor material, Refracture's unique sound and energy has won approval from the likes of The Crystal Method, Far Too Loud, Matt Darey, Beatman & Ludmilla, as well as on going support from the BBC, Ministry Of Sound and the national press. Also a talented remixer, Refracture has also produced remixes of Radiohead, Deadmau5, Lady Gaga tracks.

With an ever increasing amount of new and fresh material, Paul was, to put it mildly, extremely worried and anxious when he switched his computer on one day last week to find that the 750GB Western Digital hard disk containing all his latest music & projects was no longer accessible.

Paul phoned various data recovery companies for help and advice. One of that companies he called was Datlabs (a trading name of Data Clinic Ltd) , who were able to correctly diagnose what the problem was over the telephone, and advise the course of action necessary to take. Paul carefully packaged up his hard drive which was courier collected from his house and delivered to Datlabs the following day.

Paul's drive was examined in the data recovery lab and put onto specialist equipment that was able to successfully read the data from his damaged hard drive. The Datlabs lab technicians were then able to reconstruct this data back into the files and folders as they originally were before Paul's hard disk started having problems. This data was recovered to a new external hard drive and sent out by courier to arrive with Paul the following day.

On his Refracture Facebook page, Paul writes: "These guys saved my music and kept Refracture up and running! Last week my hard drive went down...I hadnt backed up some of my best and newest material. Needless to say I was devatated. Gave these guys a call, very friendly and kept me updated throughout. Whats more they were loving the breaks! If any of you guys have an hd problem I couldnt higher recommend datlabs.co.uk"

Tech Stuff: Paul's hard drive was suffering from degraded media - a very common problem. To explain further: All the data stored on a hard disk is held magnetically as a series of 0's and 1's. These 0's and 1's are grouped together in containers called sectors. There are literally hundreds of millions of sectors on a typical hard disk drive. Sometimes, sectors can become 'bad' and the hard disk loses the ability to read and write from them. This results in the data contained in these 'bad' sectors becoming inaccessible and effectively lost.