Data Recovery | DataRecoveryUnion.com

What happens when you are working on a special document or project on the computer and your screen goes blank! Panic? No – get help!

The good news about a crash is that most data, in most situations, can be recovered. Some projects may require several days, or even weeks, but about 75 per cent of all assignments can be turned around in less than 48 hours and the average data recovery success rate is 85 per cent.

The bad news is that organizations can sometimes make matters worse by delaying their response in a crisis situation, or taking action that makes their data harder, or in a bad case, impossible to retrieve.

Sometimes people fail to recognize that any loss of data is an immediate and urgent problem. What if the hard drives on all the new computers start to fail or all the new software is corrupt?

But denial can carry a much higher price than inconvenience. The McGladrey and Pullen accounting firm says 43 per cent of those companies that experience a disaster in their data center never reopen and 29 per cent close within two years. The company estimates that this year, one out of every 500 data centers will have a severe disaster. Together, hardware or system malfunctions and human error account for three out of four outage incidents. The rest are due to software corruption, computer viruses and ‘physical’ disasters like fire and water damage.

Background On Backups

There would be less work for data recovery companies if existing backup technology and practices protected data adequately. Backups and redundant storage technologies can be a successful backup strategy for many companies. But unfortunately, of those who do back up their data, they could not restore the data from backups.

There is a long chain of assumptions in a backup procedure: the hardware is working properly; users know how to perform the backup; the backup software works; the media is actually capturing the data; and, the data being backed up is the right information. Any break in the chain creates a dangerous vulnerability.

When systems do break down, clients can turn to a data recovery solution. One of the most important tasks is creating a climate of trust. By the time we are called in, the seriousness of the situation can no longer be denied and relieving the psychological pressure is crucial. In some situations, the client has to make some choices. ‘Which data do you need first? Are you willing to sacrifice some data, or receive it a different file format from the original?’

Environmental Controls

Companies can reduce the risk by controlling three environments.

In the hardware environment, the organization should keep computers in clean, temperature-controlled, low-traffic areas to reduce accidents and equipment failures. Computers must be protected from power surges and backups stored in a safe, off-site location. Today’s magnetic storage media is becoming more vulnerable to Extraneous Static Discharge (ESD) damage so protect your system from static.

Check hard drives at least once a month, with software that alerts you to any problems. “New” noises like scraping and grinding noises are a signal to shut down the system immediately and call in an expert. They can mean serious damage. Running the drive could not only destroy it but all the data as well. Never use a hard drive or storage device that has been physically damaged in any way, or exposed to a harmful environment.

Control the software environment with regular, verified backups to make sure the right data is actually being stored. Scan for viruses with software updated at least four times a year and screen all incoming data. Always create “undo” disks when new software offers that choice, so you can reverse any changes. In the case of suspected electrical or mechanical drive failure, never use file recovery software, because it can make things worse.

Most importantly, create a human environment that creates awareness and responsibility. If data is critical to the success or even survival of your organization, make sure those directly responsible have the right tools and training, and make sure all your employees how important the data protection procedures and policies are to the business. They will be motivated to follow them.

Finally, when disaster does strike, recognize it, be decisive and get help quickly. The faster a data recovery service gets the assignment, the better you chances of getting back in business quickly

Data Recovery

Today’s Hard Disk Drive & Computer Repair Shop

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago012 mins

Every manager knows that protecting computer data is important, but how many can be completely confident that their backup systems will work when needed?

At CBL Data Recovery, we see some of the most extreme examples of data loss. In recent years, our assignments have ranged from recovering the entire welfare system of a European country to a UFO enthusiast’s tape cartridges, from a rural school board that thought it lost pupils’ marks to an international freight company’s $700 million billing records. Our work spans an incredible range of challenges. Fortunately, many of them are avoidable.

HOW DATA GETS LOST
The two largest contributing factors in data loss are hardware or system malfunctions and human error. Together, they account for almost 75 per cent of all incidents. Software corruption, computer viruses and ‘physical’ disasters like fire and water damage make up the rest.

There are three major trends in data loss today, representing industry-wide shifts in technology and market behavior.

First, because we are storing more data in smaller spaces, the impact of a data loss incident is magnified. Ironically, the very same technological advances that allow us to do ‘more with less’ contributes directly to the increasing severity of data loss.

The media that stores data is fragile, whether it is tape, diskette or hard drive. Even ‘hard’ surfaces like CDs can be physically damaged. The mechanical components in a hard drive must work with greater precision. The distance between the read/write head and the platter where data is stored is steadily decreasing. Today, that distance is 1-2 microinches (one millionth of an inch). A speck of dust is 4-8 microinches and a human hair 10 microinches. Even a slight nudge, a power surge or a contaminant introduced into the drive may cause the head to touch the platter and cause a head crash. Data in the contact area may be permanently destroyed.

Second, data is more mission-critical. Users are storing greater amounts of critical personal and commercial data like bank accounts, hospital patient records and tax records on their desktops and networks.

By definition, loss of mission-critical data brings major business processes to a halt. In the worst case, that can mean bankruptcy.

Finally, most of the backup technology and practices are failing to protect data adequately. Most computer users rely on backups and redundant storage technologies, and for many users, this is a successful backup strategy. Others are not so lucky.

HOW DATA IS RECOVERED
Data recovery is more than pulling strings of bits from mangled disk drives or tangled file systems. There are large elements of problem solving and crisis management. Clients bring a diverse and vast array of technology problems to data recovery companies, looking for cost effective and, above all, timely solutions. How corporations and individual people respond to a data crisis is often a revealing look at how they conduct their day-to-day business. Typically, the ones that confront a challenge directly are the most successful.

First of all, users and managers must recognize that any loss of data is an immediate and urgent problem. It may not be confined to one system or network and its impacts could reach beyond a single branch or department. For example, an entire organization may have purchased machines that all have faulty hard drives or installed corrupted software.
Denial is dangerous and costly. Escalate the situation promptly. By far the majority of situations are successfully handled in-house. The customer should only ‘surrender’ immediately and call for outside assistance when there is a ‘new’ noise coming from the hard drive or when the data is so valuable as to be priceless. In most cases, working through a planned recovery checklist will bring back the data. If it does not return when reasonable measures have been tried, then the organization has to accept that the data is really not coming back. At this point, decisive action can literally mean corporate survival.

Data recovery is the last resort when everything else, including commercial software, fails. When customers need data recovery, they need it fast. In three cases out of four, we can recover all the data within 24 hours or receiving the media, so reducing the time in transit is important. Over the years, Michigan Data Recovery has become adept at the logistics of getting clients’ drives and media into our laboratories from anywhere in the world. The Internet may be creating a world without borders but the word has not reached the world’s major airports. As well, technicians have often become skilled at finding the parts necessary to rebuild rare or obsolete equipment.

Data recovery typically occurs in an emotional climate of great distress. Personally and professionally, a great deal is riding on a successful outcome. Dealing with a client’s psychological state, as individuals and organizations, is a large part of a successful data recovery project. While a project may literally call on the talents of every member of a team, clients should only deal with one person, to facilitate the creation of a bond. That relationship is designed to be an immediate and continuing comfort to the client, but it also ensures that there is clear communication, built on shared experience and a common vocabulary.

Clients are almost invariably reassured to learn that while some damage to data is permanent, it is rare case that absolutely no data all is retrieved. In most cases, some of the data can be recovered, even in extreme conditions.

Data recovery companies should provide a report within one business day after receiving damaged media, outlining how it plans to perform the data recovery. Some projects may require several days, or even weeks, but about 75 per cent of all assignments should be turned around in less than 48 hours.

Close communication and understanding can be critical in those unfortunate situations where choices have to be made about the data. Which files do you need first? Which ones are you willing to sacrifice? Do you want the data in text format now or would you prefer to wait to see it we can recover it in the original format?

There are no manuals for data recovery. There is no one set way to retrieve data. Each project should be analyzed on an individual basis and only then an action plan be developed.

It is best never to work on original media. Data should be duplicated bit by bit to reduce the risk of causing further damage to the data.

SUCCESSFUL DATA RECOVERY OUTCOMES
For most projects, success comes from a combination of innovative logistics, applied problem solving and what can be called ‘technology triage’, where answers are looked for from within the issues.

Projects always pick up where others have left off. As the ‘repair shop of last resort’, data recovery experts do nothing but provide solutions.

Our business is all about restoring order in chaotic circumstances. We force rebellious technology to fulfill its promise to our clients by making everything right again. And it is kind of fun to do the impossible.

Data Recovery

MAC Data Recovery Issues

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago02 mins

MAC Laptop’s present a special set of problems. One is how to get the hard disk drive out of the computer to perform a File Recovery Service or Computer Data Recovery Service.

A perfect example of these challenges can be found in Apple’s PowerBook G4 series of notebook computer. Attempted removal of the hard disk drive should only be done by an experienced professional. It is quite easy to damage the computer by taking it apart. The area above the DVD player where you right palm sits is very sensitive to damage. Also the hinges on the MAC Titanium are known to break easily.

MAC Data Recovery is different than NTFS or Windows Data Recovery and requires a completely different set of technical skills and for that matter Data Recovery Tools. It is not advised you even use the Data Recovery Company that the Apple store will recommend because they are way too expensive for most end users.

Data Recovery

The Status of Data Recovery

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago05 mins

For almost as long as people have been putting digital data on magnetic media, their precious information has been getting lost. In the good old days, perhaps 20 years ago, any company or institution that lost its data was on its own. Anyone with the expertise to help was probably already either on staff or employed by the equipment vendor.

Things started to change with the growth and development of the Information Technology industry, on both the hardware and software sides. As systems multiplied and became more complex, so did the various misfortunes that could be set an organization’s data.

Enter the data recovery specialist. About 15 years ago, the first outside consultants began to get frantic calls from clients to come in and rescue their information. At that time, much of the expertise was based on proprietary software tools, written to perform on hardware from specific vendors. It took some years before companies began to specialize in data recovery. Because many data loss situations call for a ‘physical’, hardware solution, the larger companies made the major investments necessary to offer ‘clean rooms’ – laboratories where malfunctioning or damaged disk drives can be disassembled or reconfigured to yield whatever data remains.

Today, the industry is crisis-driven. Depending on how well sprinkler systems or disk drive designers have done their jobs, we work or rest idle.

All the tools and techniques that any data recovery company has amassed over time have developed or acquired on an ‘as-needed’ basis. The range of possible challenges is so broad, and the IT industry releases new products so frequently, that it would be impossible to anticipate problems before they actually occur.

Perhaps a testament to the efficiency and reliability of the latest hardware and software today, the data recovery industry is not a large one. Worldwide, there are probably 20 companies with the staff and the facilities to tackle those data-loss situations that simply cannot be resolved in-house with commercially available software or with assistance from vendors.

We have seen some companies in the data recovery field to move away from the ‘physical’ side of the business, specializing in software-only solutions rather than grappling hands-on with the disk drives and magnetic media to recover data. On the other hand, companies cannot specialize completely in the hardware side, because there will always be a need to adapt or write software to help harvest the data.

What about the future of the industry? Ironically, in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized, we think the successful data recovery business will have an important local dimension. Even though we can, and do reach around the world electronically to recover data, we believe customers will still place a premium on dealing with someone in their own region. With almost 200 million disk drives shipping this year, and the risks they face out in the real world, we can confidently predict that the future holds unlimited challenge for the data recovery industry.

Data Recovery

Hard Drives And Flash Data Recovery

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago3 years ago02 mins

Today’s high capacity hard disk drives store its drive parameter and service information in flash memory on the circuit board that is specific to that disk drive. This makes disk data recovery all the more complicated since you cannot just swap the board out.

Flash Data Recovery has taken on a whole new meaning with the higher capacity hard disk drives on the market. If you have a hard disk drive that has a blown circuit board doesn’t try to swap it out in hopes of doing your own data recovery because it won’t work.

The only option in these cases is to find a donor circuit board, harvest the required parts and install them in the bad circuit board. This is just another reason you have to be careful when choosing a data recovery professional. It is difficult to perform this task without destroying the circuit board.

The latest hard disk drive circuit boards are highly complicated and employ “Surface Mount Technology” to install the components. When one of these components needs to be replaced it requires a highly skilled re-work technician otherwise the circuit board can be destroyed making data file recovery impossible.

Buyer Beware!

Data Recovery

The Science Behind Data Recovery

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago03 mins

The computer data that seems solid and reliable when you see it on a monitor or hard copy printout really exists only as minute electrical impulses crammed tightly on tape, diskettes or hard drives. Depending on how it is stored, that data will continue to exist until the medium is destroyed, scrambled by a virus or overwritten by other information. In other words, some ‘physical’ event prevents you from accessing your data. Data recovery companies work to reverse that process, any way they can.

There is no single method to retrieve data. In fact, it is extremely rare to apply a solution more than once. To avoid damage from repeated scanning, a skilled data recovery company will find a way to duplicate client data, even if it must be done bit by bit.

Hard disk drives store data store data on metal oxide platters spinning as fast as 10,000 revolutions a minute while an actuator arm reads and writes magnetic charges one millionth of an inch above the surface. Even though any contact can and does destroy data, a great deal of information can still be harvested from physically damaged media. Because the manufacturers of storage media like hard drives are constantly striving to compress more data on to smaller surfaces, a data recovery specialist must have a ‘clean room’ to avoid dust or dirt causing more damage to the delicate magnetic media.

Data recovery requires not only specialized equipment but people with advanced skills and the creativity to apply them in unique and demanding situations.

Data Recovery

dentifying Vulnerabilities in Networked Systems

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM16 years ago12 years ago07 mins

Ghosts in the machine. Spooks in the hard drive. It’s natural to worry about everything that can go wrong with the computers we work with – all the more so if those computers are part of a networked system. The arrival of the Information Age means that increasing amounts of critical business information are stored in such systems.

Surprisingly, though, many otherwise technology-savvy organizations still have a long way to go on the road to implementing appropriate security measures. IBM Corp. studies have pointed out that, while 86 per cent of companies in a recent survey used firewalls, 85 per cent had deployed antivirus software, and 74 per cent employed authentication procedures. Only 63 per cent of those surveyed used encryption software, and fewer than 50 per cent used intrusion detection technologies.

Those statistics point to the reality of vulnerabilities in networked systems, and to the inevitability of serious data loss incidents. Since data is often mission-critical to the successful business organization, the consequences can be significant.

Regardless of the cause of a data loss incident, the common denominator to system downtime is the high cost incurred. A survey in 2000 of 450 Fortune 1000 companies by the consulting firm Find/SVP found that the average outage across industries lasted four hours, at a cost of (US)$330,000. According to the survey, a typical company experienced nine outages per year, resulting in annual losses of almost (US)$3 million (excluding the cost of lost employee productivity).

Clearly, identifying and dealing with vulnerabilities is of critical importance. The first step in preventing unauthorized access to the network is the use of intrusion-detection technology, which can be defined as applications which actively monitor operating systems and network traffic for attacks and security breaches.

Intrusion-detection technologies come in two flavours: host-based systems, which use agents, and network-based systems, which use passive monitors. Host-based systems, which take a proactive approach, are deployed in the same manner as virus scanners or network management solutions – an agent is installed on all the system’s servers and a management console is used for reporting. Network-based systems sniff incoming traffic, comparing live traffic patterns to internal lists of attack signatures. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses.

In most cases, the cost of an intrusion-detection system can be justified for its forensic value alone. If a system is compromised and the logs are tainted, intrusion-detection system logs may save administrators days of digging.

But there are important steps that should be taken even before network intrusion systems are put in place. They’re based on technologically-savvy preparedness and old-fashioned common sense. What’s required is a strong foundation that can realistically improve security without wasting resources on ineffective security measures.

An appropriate disaster recovery plan is a basic prerequisite – this should be an overall strategy that addresses the technical and organizational factors involving security. That plan should begin with a comprehensive risk assessment analysis of the network, so that acceptable risk levels to the system and the organization can be determined. The results of that risk assessment analysis can then be used to develop and implement a suitable set of security policies and procedures to be used in guiding individuals and workgroups in the organization in the event of a network disruption. That information will allow decisions to be made as to which products and tools will be required by the organization to implement its security policies and procedures.

It’s not enough to simply buy “off the shelf” security software and distribute it to the organization’s systems administrators. That software’s configuration and management need not be tied directly to the particular security policies and procedures of the organization.

Ensuring adequate and appropriate network security is a long-term investment. And it’s an ongoing process, because at no pint can an organization say that every network vulnerability has been dealt with. There’s simply no such thing as “100 per cent secure.” However, the use of suitable network intrusion technologies, built around a carefully thought out business and technical security policy, will do wonders to give peace of mind – and allow the organization to go on doing business as it should.