Recently we received into our Chatsworth, California Data Recovery Lab an HP Storage Server for Data Recovery. This came from one of our very large clients in the Los Angeles area.

 The server was an HP320S 8 terabyte NAS RAID server with12, 750GB SATA Hard Drives installed. The first 2 drives were stand alone volumes while the other 10 drives were configured in a RAID 5 configuration.  The difficult problem with this File Data Recovery is that for some reason 2 of the hard drives had gone down.
To make matters worse it appears that 1 drive had a physical problem while the other one was logical.

 This Data Recovery Disaster was devastating for this customer because they had database software that supported 50 users. Needless to say this RAID problem had a major impact on their operations.

 The first and foremost thing of importance was that ITS - Data Recovery had to guarantee them that in the event we were not successful we would not compromise this storage server and make it worse. This is an important and cautious step that needs to be taken in all Data Recovery jobs but it is even more critical when trying to perform Data File Recovery from a RAID server. Any Professional Data Recovery Specialist knows that you can't hand the customer back a bad of parts and say "sorry folks."

 After repairing the defective hard disk drive and correcting the logical problem the other one had we were finally able to get the RAID volumes on line and proceeded with our Data Recovery process. NTFS Data Recovery is even more difficult on RAID 5 Server's. To the customer's  great relief we were able to recover all 3 terabytes of data that was on the server.

It is utterly important to choose the right Data Recovery company the first time.

It may be your last chance to recover your data.

 I was thinking about a time long ago when Pertec Computer Corp was here in Chatsworth California. In 1977 I moved here and became a technician with that company and it was a great time. I learned how to repair the reel to reel 9 track tape drives. The Data Recovery or File Recovery industry did not even exist and the state of the art Disk Drives used 14" inch disks and held about 5 megabytes of data. 

 Boy those were great times to be young though with all of the new emerging technology coming out. I was only 20 years old then, fresh out of college and eager to learn about computers and their technology. I never realized I would be running a Data Recovery Specialist Company 

 Pertec Computer Corp. had it all. It was a company known for its ability to innovate and execute. It was well managed and listened to what their customers wanted. In the end though it was another statistic and considered by some accounts to just be another 14" Disk Drive Company who didn't change fast enough.

 In my search to find out why great companies fail I found a book called "The Innovators Dilemma" by Clayton M. Christensen. Although I was very dissapointed to know that the book only mentioned Pertec once when he referred to them as just "A 14" Disk Drive Maker". There is far more to Pertec's history and the impact they had on the Computer Peripheral Industry but that's really not the point.

 The point of the matter is that great companies fail all of the time when they listen only to their customers and not to the future. Pertec didn't transition to newer technology (8" Hard Disk Drives) fast enough because their customers didn't want it. The customer (Main Frame Companies) only cared about cost per megabyte at the time. There was no customer base for the newer technology so the company fell behind the times. Ouch!

 It turns out Pertec wasn't the only one to make this fatal mistake. That's why the book is such a great source to understand the History of the Hard Disk Drive and why Data Recovery is no easy task when done properly.

Dan Strizich of Ananconda Montana founded Independent Technology Service in 1980.

I think the decision falls back to how much you value your data. In fact, the more valuable your data is, the more qualifications you should make in order to ensure that your data recovery does not fall into the wrong hands. Most of the time, you only have one chance of a successful data recovery and the value of the data could be more than just saving a few hundred dollars.

You could ask if the data recovery specialist vendor has the capability to open up the disk in a class 100 clean room. If the answer is yes, do not stop your probe here because interestingly, you will always be told that they indeed have the clean room, just that the clean room is located some where and it is not accessible to the public.

Ask for a list of testimonials on their service credential. Such testimonials should bear the names of companies and customers. Look closely if such testimonials are fabricated because it is rather easy to say that "XYZ company is our customer and is happy with our service". If the testimonials goes with proper company and user names, it is likely to be authentic.

How about data confidentiality? Look around the place. Do you feel that your recovered data or your original data media is going to be kept safely? Are they going to pass the job to another service provider and increase the chance of data leak? How secure is the working environment?

If your hard disk drive failure is one not associated with physical failure, your risk is lower. However, it is still possible that an inexperienced service vendor could inadvertently write back the data into the same data space and permanently destroy the original data, hence rendering the job unrecoverable.

So be very carful when choosing the place for your hard drive data recovery. Please visit this link https://www.ratepoint.com/tellus/2345 and read what some of our customers had to say about their experience at ITS - Data Recovery.

 Recently a customer sent us a large quantity of Hard Disk Drives, Tapes and USB devices to our California Data Recovery Lab for possible Data Recovery. The unusual thing about this Data File Recovery job is that all the media was in a fire. The picture above illistrates ahard drive that has smoke on the platters.

 Well we all know that smoke and fire is bad enough but the worst part of the job can be over coming the water damage. Hard Disk Drives for example all have a small hole to allow air to flow inside through a filter. This is how water and smoke can get inside a Hard Disk Drive.

 Data Disaster Recovery can be successfully performed on Hard Disk Drives with smoke, fire and water damage but the success of a Data Recovery Service can be determined by what you do to the device before you send them in for Data Recovery. 

1. Don't try to power up your hard drive or other media after a fire or flood.
2. Never open the cover of a hard disk drive.
3. Don't remove the electronics's board from the drive.
4. If the drive is not easily removable then send the whole computer in for recovery.
5. Package the media properly before shipping it in.
6. Send your media only to a qualified Data Disaster Recovery Center.

 Following these few tips will help assure a successful Data Recovery of your Hard Disk Drive or other media. Check out ITS - Data Recovery listing in the 13Th annual Disaster Resource Guide.

 

 We continue to see alot of camera cards come in to our Chatsworth, California Data Recovery Lab. We are getting cards in that have been stepped on, ran over, bitten by the dog, dropped in the pool and more. It amazes me that we can even recover the data from some of these camera cards because of the condition they come in.

 I play the guitar and piano and I use a ZOOM H4 digital recorder to record my music and turn them into MP3's. The H4 records on to Secure Digital (SD) media, a 512MB SD card is included with the unit. With a 16GB SD memory card, the H4 provides up to 24 hours of stereo WAV file recording in 44.1kHz/16-bit mode (CD Quality), or as many as 280 hours in MP3 stereo mode. And to move your recordings to a PC or Mac, the H4 includes a USB mass-storage interface

 I purchased a 2gb SD card for it since the one that came with it was only 512mb.
I was shocked to see how low in price a really good SD media card is these days.
I paid $6.00 for a Kingston from http://www.newegg.com. The point of the matter is you don't need to buy "off brand" camera cards these days because the high quality ones are low in price. 

 Your photo's or in my case music is very valuable and should you need Data File Recovery your chances of success are better with a high quality SD card.

 Independent Technology Service Inc. ITS - Data Recovery is one of the world's first disk drive companies to start performing hard drive data recovery.

We have been providing  professional data recovery, data repair,  computer forensics and evidence recovery services since 1980. Our services include data recovery on Hard Drives, RAID Systems, Floppies, Tapes, Camera Media, USB Sticks, PDA's, I Pod's and all other types of media. We are located in Chatsworth, California. Our walk-in services, are available to all southern California, businesses and residents.

Data Recovery Service on all types of Desktop, Server and External Hard Disk Drives. Includes IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, ESDI, MFM, RLL and more. We support all MFG. including Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, Samsung, Hitachi and all legacy disk drives. No drive is too small or too large.

Raid Data Recovery from all, NAS and SAN systems including RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5 systems. Manufacturers include HP, IBM, Sun, Gateway and Dell. Dell PowerEdge Servers are our speciality.

Data Recovery from USB Sticks and Camera Cards of all types. We recover data from USB Flash Drives, Compact Flash, Type I&II(CF), IBM Micro Drive, Memory Stick (MS), Memory Stick Pro, Smart Media (SM), Secure Digital (SD), Multimedia Card (MMC), Mini SD, and EXtreme Digital (xD) and more.

 Many times customer's walk into our Chatsworth California lab in the Los Angeles area and request us to perform Data Recovery on a DVD for them.

First, I'll cut to the chase: Your DVD's will not last 100 years, contrary to popular belief. Disk life expectancy is the period of time in which information recorded can be retrieved without loss. A recent study by IBM suggests that DVD's last far less than we think.

 So, how does it all work? How is Data File Recovery related? Why is the life expectancy of DVD's not as long as we may have thought? Recordable optical disc media contains an organic dye layer. This layer can be altered to absorb a laser beam or to allow the beam to pass through to a reflective layer. The dye is of course, organic, so it naturally breaks down over time. Humidity, high temperatures and even exposure to light can escalate this process. The fact is that most people don't have their DVD's in a climate controlled environment. How many of us leave our DVD's in our briefcase or even in our car.

 Many times no Data Recovery Tool can help if a DVD is neglected. Successful Computer file Recovery from a bad DVD is not always possible.

 In recent studies, dye type was seen as a big factor in overall stability of the CD-R and DVD-R media. CD-R samples that contained phthalocyanine performed better than other dye types. The most stable were the ones that used this substance with a gold-silver alloy reflective layer. Dye type information is harder to determine for DVD recordable media, which uses a form of stabilized cyanine dye for its recording layer.

 There were no conclusive results seen in this regard for DVD's. In terms of light exposure, studies have shown that a disc may fail in just a few weeks when exposed to direct sunlight. Mix it with heat, and it becomes even more of a factor. In addition, "jitter" is a key indicator of media quality in both CD and DVD recordable media.

The good thing to know is that the government is currently working with the private sector to come out with a high standard of quality discs that will last a very long time. It's uncertain when these discs will come to market, but they will be labeled as such, so that those looking to fulfill archival needs will have a plain and simple choice. Hopefully, Data File Recovery may be a thing of the past for CD and DVD users.

 Another problem that comes up is when CD's and DVD's are produced using older equipment or processes that are out of tolerance. This happened when many Taiwanese media manufacturers moved production to China , relocated their older equipment there and hired staff for on the job training. This has resulted in a flood of low cost, no name media coming on the market that is of very low quality. This is the reason it pays to buy name brand media especially if it is used for valuable data and personal memories. Check the disc you made to make sure it works and then make a second copy. If you have a fire proof safe put a copy in there.

So what is the lifespan of CD's and DVD's? There is no easy answer. According to the National Media Lab at www.dml.org CD's should last 50 years and DVD's should last up to 25 years It is interesting to note that they claim microfilm will last for 200 years and print media on acid free paper for 500 years. The lifspan of all media is greatly dertermined by the quality of product purchased and the condition it is stored in.

 Take care of your media and you can avoid a visit to
 ITS - Data Recovery in Los California.

If you experience a hard drive crash, it doesn’t take much to make a bad situation even worse. In the event of a hard drive crash, in most instances, the data is completely recoverable at first. However, some people  try to avoid the costs associated with hard drive data recovery in order to find some sort of quick fix to a very serious problem.

If you are facing data loss? What not to do is important! Never run a program that writes to or alters the problem drive in question. Do not power up a drive that has physical damage or drives that are making a grinding or clicking noise. Do not attemp to open up a crashed hard disk drive as you can do more damage than there already is.



Don't run the hard disk drive anymore, or use the device. Don't use data recovery tools that may reside on your computer, such as Scandisk, or a boot record utility, or other file recovery software as these will probably overwrite the files you're seeking to get back. Be careful! Your data may very well be recoverable, as long as you don't do something to erase it forever!

Data recovery success is possible from a damaged hard disk drive or other kind of media. However, there are several things that can go wrong without your knowing it. Simple things that you do to recover your data can in fact turn out to be the worst things you could do if you want your data back.

We specialize in data recovery on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and other operating systems with FAT32, NTFS, We also recover data from old hard drives, SCSI drives, RAIDs, laptop drives, external drives, CDs, DVDs, floppies and even zip disks and flash drives as long as they aren't physically damaged.

It is very important to try to recover lost information as soon as possible and to use the computer as little as possible until the file is recovered. For more information regarding our data recovery services, please give us a call at 800-342-DISK.

 As any good Data Recovery Specialist knows the process to recover data from disk drives that have internal damage is no simple task. Serious Data Recovery Professionals spend a great deal of money on Data Recovery Tool's. I don't mean Data Recovery Software that anyone can buy off the shelf.

 There is a great deal of mis-information on the Internet about what can and cannot be done to a hard disk drive in the clean room. I noticed a competitor the other day who had a post on their blog about the replacement of platters from a damaged hard disk drive to a donor drive.They said they do it all the time and in fact they didn't even know it was an issue for other Data Recovery Professionals.

 I am certain the author of that post was either a "Ghost Writer" or a very mis-informed lay person who really has no technical knowledge of hard disk drives.
Either way the statement is completely false and very mis-leading.

 There are some Data Recovery Companies with extremely skilled Data Recovery Engineers that can perform tasks on hard drives that most Technicians will fail at.
For instance they can replace heads in high capacity hard disk drives without the drive losing its servo or causing a head crash. Replacing platters however usually is not an option for this class of hard drive. There are some cases where it can be accomplished and even then it is not an easy task.

 As anyone who has taken a hard drive apart knows, the platters are held together by physical force of a top mount clamp held by tor-ex. There is no key to keep the platters aligned if you remove them. If one platter is out of alignment with the others then the servo will be lost and furthermore the platter’s sector location information will not be in alignment with each other, and all of the platters with sector alignment data will be unreadable. There is no way to take all the platters out as a single unit. This is the easiest way to explain it in layman's terms although it is more complicated than that.

 That said I will say that platter replacement can be done on single platter drives and in particular single platter drives with only one head. Also on some laptop drives it can be done but these cases are the exception not the rule. These are not even easy cases to accomplish.

 The point is this kind of misinformation is all over the Internet. If and when you do need to hire a Data Recovery Professional just use common sense and check the company out. Ignore all the smoke and mirrors and big promises. If it sounds too good to be true it is.

 ITS - Data Recovery uses Rate Point so customers can leave feedback about their experiences  with the company. Check it out.

Dan Strizich
ITS - Data Recovery
1-800-342-DISK

Here at our california data recovery office in Chatsworth California we see a lot of people come in with digital camera memory cards for data recovery. Some are professional and some are just regular people that are in need of our services here at ITS Data Recovery.

But what happens when we lose the data, the data gets erased, corrupted or somehow is missing? Perhaps you have accidentally deleted pictures or have a damaged media card?

Maybe your dog chewed on your camera card or maybe you ran over it with your car. When this occurs, it can be the height of frustration. Entire projects can be lost, family vacation photos gone - all in the blink of an eye. How could this happen? These are things we didn't have to worry about before everything went digital!  

ITS - Data Recovery has recovered hundreds of thousands of pictures from digital camera cards and thousands of gigabytes of data from USB sticks. In fact they have recovered data from just about every type of USB flash drive or memory card that was ever made.

So, never fear! All those treasured images and files can be recovered. Restoring your precious memories and putting them back in a safe location on your hard drive is not only possible - it happens every day for many people.

   A clean room or a clean bench is a necessary tool in the data recovery industry. All legitimate data recovery companies have at least a clean bench. Many companies claim they have a clean room to justify charging more. At our Data Recovery Lab in Chatsworth California located in Los Angles County we have a Clean Room as well as Clean Benches.
 
 The function of the clean room is to keep environmental pollutants such as dust, airborne microbes, and chemical vapors at a bare minimum so the hard disk drive does not become contaminated and put in a worse state then when it came in.  Because sometimes disk drives are prone to internal failure, these rooms need to be used to open up the disk drive and replace parts or do an inspection. 

 Although class 100 clean rooms can be expensive to maintain some companies use this Data Recovery Tool to justify charging exorbitant rates. Some Data Recovery Companies advertise that they have "No Evaluation Charge" and end up charging you later for a "Clean Room Evaluation". Once they get your drive they can tell you that the drive has to go in the clean room and it will cost extra. Ouch!

Although we charge a Data Recovery Evaluation fee we disclose it upfront and never add on charges during the process. Our Data Recovery prices are based on a flat rate pricing structure. Our pricing is fair and in fact sometimes I think too low.  Data Recovery is not cheap and you should never hire the cheapest company you can find. We just think its fair to disclose the fees and prices upfront.

 Worse yet is the unscrupulous Data Recovery Company out there who will try to take advantage of you when you are distraught over a data loss situation. In this case the company already knows your data is unrecoverable but would still like to make a quick $200.00 or $300.00 out of the deal by selling you on a clean room inspection.  Nothing like kicking the customer when they are down.

 There are many ways to charge for Data Recovery Services and none of them are easy. One thing customers should realize is that 90% of the work has to be done just to determine if the data is recoverable so don't send in your drive if you really don't want the data recovered. That's a big expense for the Data recovery Specialist. It's no wonder they sometimes think of other ways to offset expenses.

 In future posts I will talk about what can and cannot be done in a clean room to repair the hard disk drive enough to recover the data from it. This is a topic that needs to be clarified so the consumer can understand what they are up against in data loss situations.

Dan Strizich
President
ITS Data Recovery
1-800-342-DISK
Los Angeles, California

  Some people who use many different computers, computer applications, and hard disk drives over many years never have a Data Recovery situation to deal with. They seem to fly above the radar of computer meltdown. They may not even be computer or hard disk drive experts. So how is this possible?

 What are they doing that the rest of us aren't? How can we prevent expensive, time consuming and emotionally draining File Recovery and computer data problems? How can we avoid visits to your Data Recovery Service? Here are 12 basic tips:

1.  Make sure your computer is located in safe, dry and dust-free area. Responsible computer owners place their work stations in low-traffic, climate controlled areas which prevent physical damage and heat related issues.

2.  Back up your data regularly to an external hard drive if possible. If you backup to tape then be sure to verify that the backup actually happened by restoring the data off the tape and checking it. A recent study concluded that only 12% of the population backs up their data on a weekly basis.

3.  Take advantage of installation and diagnostic programs that offer "undo" disks. These can restore systems to their original configuration when you have a problem.

4. Prevent power surges from destroying your computer! And be careful with this one - even low-level power bursts can erase hard drive data. Uninterrupted power supplies give some of the best protection from data hard drive recovery situations. So use a UPS on your computer but make sure to test it.

5. Don't let static electricity erase data or damage hard drives. Extraneous Static Discharge (ESD) is becoming more and more of a factor with storage media. If you have a lot of static in your carpet try spraying some fabric softener on it

6. If your disk drives makes any strange noises, skips a beat, hiccups or does anything out of the ordinary then backup it up immediately and have it checked. Everyone will have a hard drive failure at some point in time.

7. Use virus, spy ware and malware detection programs and keep them updated frequently. Viruses are still deadly to data. We use and recommend Panda Software for anti virus protection or the free version of AVG Anti-Virus.

8. Always store your documents in more than one place. Most word processors save your files in the My Documents folder, which is OK as long as you have a copy somewhere else. Most virus or software failures affect the operating system, which causes everything on the drive to be inaccessible. Using an external hard drive for backup is the solution. It will not be affected if the operating system is corrupted. You won't need Data File Recovery if you follow this advice.

9. Beware of email attachments - they can cause you to lose data and corrupt your .PST file. Set your email program to save attachments in a unique location so you don't over write something that is called the same thing.

10. User error: Utilize features such as "versioning" and "tracked changes" in your word processor program to avoid needing File Recovery.

11. Always keep hard copies of your documents: It won't prevent you from typing and formatting your document again, but it's better than nothing.

12. Never download Spy ware programs that offer a free 30 day trail. Usually it is counterfeit Mal ware. Only download from a trusted source like download.com.

When I got my first computer it had at the time a state of the art 20mb hard disk drive in it. Yes megabytes not gigabytes. It was a Seagate ST225 model 5 1/4" half height that ran Dos 5.0 operating system. At the time it was the best you could get. The most important thing on my hard drive was the games that I had installed on it. Backing up data or data recovery never crossed my mind.

Then I went to work at ITS Data Recovery and after a while Seagate came out with the ST251 40mb hard disk drive and the boss said go ahead and upgrade from the 20mb to the 40mb drive. With no back up of my games on the hard drive, I took the drive out of the computer and went into the lab and asked the tech to copy my data from the 20mb to the 40mb.

After some time passed I went in the lab to see how things were going and found out that the tech formatted my 20mb drive before he copied my data to the new 40mb hard disk drive and all my data was lost. I felt like the world had come to a end and my life was over. Now I needed some windows data recovery as I was running windows 95 at the time.

In my case at the time there was no getting my data back because they did a low level format on the drive and all my data was not recoverable because the software for what I needed was not available at the time. Today I have back up's of the back up's so all my important data is safe. You never know what's going to happen with hard disk drives so always keep a back up.

 We see many people come to our California Data Recovery Lab every day and It never ceases to amaze me how many people request Data Recovery Service from a Hard Disk Drive that has already been properly diagnosed by a qualified Data Recovery company. If a Hard Disk Drive suffers from a Head Crash (the head touches the platter and makes a racing stripe) then the data is not recoverable. It’s that simple and its time for you to move on.

 

 The picture above is a typical example of a drive that has suffered from a severe head crash and it doesn’t matter who is attempting the Data Recovery or how much money you have to spend on it. Your data simply is not going to be recoverable.

 

 Usually we don’t even do second opinions on Data Recovery jobs that have been to our competitor’s lab because often a client may refuse their service because of pricing issues and then try to secure our Data Recovery Service for a lower price. This is a bad idea that never works out favorable to the customer.

 

 People ask why is the data not recoverable if is there is only one racing stripe on my hard drive? Actually there are several reasons but the main reason is because of the "Embedded Servo". This is a grey code written on the platters at the factory that allows the drive to keep track of itself. It is also the reason you can’t take the platters out of a drive and put them into another drive. This is not true 100% of the time but it certainly is true 95% of the time. 

 

 If anyone tries to tell you otherwise regarding the facts of a Hard Drive Crash then you are being setup. Some unscrupulous Data Recovery Companies will tell you anything you want to hear just to get a Clean Room Fee or other junk charge out of you. It’s like kicking you when you are down so be calm and sensible and know when its time to move on. It is what it is.

 

All of a sudden your data is lost. You have a damaged digital camera flash
card and your digital images are gone. Most people think they've lost
their digital photos permanently. The process recovers lost images from
all corrupt, deleted, or damaged flash media storage devices.

As digital camera's become more popular we continue to see alot of people
bringing us their Camera Card's in for data recovery. Our success rate has
been very high and as usual our prices are very fair. We have saved
thousand's upon thousand's vacation, wedding and baby photo's.

ITS Data Recovery has the knowledge, experience and know how to recover
your precious memories whether it be your wedding or dream vacation or
your child's birth. Memory/Camera Card data loss situations happen to many
people. When it does happen, trust ITS Data Recovery to get the job done.
We have the people, the skills and the technical knowledge to solve any
data recovery situation. In fact, we have one of the best records in the
industry. We're proud of the work we have done for thousands of clients
over the years.

  Disk Data Recovery is a very general term that means the Data Recovery of many different types of Disk Drives or other removable type devices. For example we have Floppy Disk Data Recovery services performed in our lab right along with many other type of Removable Media such as Zipp or Jazz Disks.

 ITS - Data Recovery has been around since 1980 and even today we even see 8" Floppy Disks come in for repair on a routine basis. We of course are the only company in Los Angeles, California or for that matter anywhere that can repair these old Floppy Disk Drives. We also stock them for sale.

 Also many times our Disk Data Recovery Services may involve very old Hard Disk Drives from the 1970's, 80's or 90's. Recent cases include a Quantum 210mb SCSI drive and a 20mb Seagate ST225 MFM drive.

 Quite often I find in these caes that the drives are on proprietary type systems and not only does the customer need Disk Data Recovery but they also need us to "Clone the Disk Drive" to another identical one since they don't have the software to reload onto another Hard Drive. This of course can be accomplished in many cases but if the drive has a severe head crash or othere serious problem it may not be possible. When that happens the customer will find themselves retiring the machine and buying the latest and greatest equipment.

 One of our biggest customers makes the machine that produces Hard Disk Drive Head Assemblies and many time we have had to perform this service for their customers. The main reason is the older technology many times did not take into consideration the Backup of Data.

I will be adding some future posts about the History of the Disk Drive and the important role Chatsworth, California played in it's development.

  Many times customers call or come into our Califrornia Data Recovery Lab with questions about the difference between File Data Recovery and Disk Data Recovery. Many times these cases may involve a computer that is not broken and therefore does not need a full Hard Disk Data Recovery Service.

 It may involve the accidential deletion of a Microsoft Office file or a data file that is corrupt. If the file was deleted then we have to search for deleted data only. We can use many types of Data Recovery Software Tools to accomplish this.

 If on the other hand the file is corrupted such as a garbled PST file then the customer really needs a File Repair Service. We can do this also and again we have many Data Recovery Tools to accomplish this. It is important to know which ones work and which ones don't.

 One of the reasons I point this out is because even though we charge a flat rate for our Data Recovery Services, many times we will charge only the minimum if it involves File Data Recovery or Data File Repair and not Data Recovery that involves a failed Hard disk Drive.

 Speaking of PST files let me point out a couple of things. First is if you delete the contacts and or emails inside the Outlook program they are gone so don't call in hopes of trying to get them back. This of course is why you should keep a backup of the file. The other thing  I wanted to point out is that many Data Recovery Tools will only handle PST files that are 2gb or less so be careful. For more information on PST files visit Microsoft.

For more information about Data Recovery Services visit our website.

    We see many Data Recovery jobs come into our Los Angeles area lab that do not involve a failed hard drive but rather involves a formatted drive or deleted partition. Usually it is not so bad when that happens. Many times though we see that Windows was reloaded onto the formatted drive after the formatting and that can make things more difficult. This frequently happens on the bad advice of many computer makers including Dell and HP.

 In cases such as these we can only attempt to run a software level Data Recovery and see what data comes up. Many times there will be partial corruption of the data.

 Usually when you re-format a hard disk drive the operating system of the Windows NT family never changes the file system type unless you specify it, so generally you could say that unintentional reformatting of an NTFS partition for FAT 16/32 is usually unlikely although we do see this problem now and then.
 
 Windows Data Recovery more often involves cases with windows 9x and MS-DOS because they tend to format every disk for FAT 16/32, without warning that the disk already contains something. What does this all mean?

 It means that the unintentional formatting of a partition when installing Windows 9x/MS-DOS over Windows NT happens all the time. This is an error that seems to be continuously repeated. The good news is that the strategy for a successful Data Recovery is similiar to the recovery of NTFS volumes formatted for NTFS.
 
 The only problem of course is that when the FAT was created many starting MFT file records could be irrecoverably lost if you use an Automated Data Recovery Tool to perform the recovery. If however the file record has survived formatting there are several  Data Recovery programs out there that will get your data back including  R-Studio or  Easy Recovery. Just make sure you make a sector by sector copy of your drive before attempting Data Recovery yourself.

 Disk partitions can become lost for many reasons and human error is at the top of the list. The following is a list of reasons we have found for the loss of NTFS partitions.

1. Human Error
2. Trojans, Viruses and Malware
3. Unexpected power failure when adding or removing files or directories.
4. System freeze when disk is doing an intense operation.
5. Bad RAM harming disk cache integrity.
 
For more information call us at 800-342-DISK 
or visit our website at ITS-Data Recovery

  As a lead Data Recovery Engineer for ITS I see many type USB/Flash devices come in for our USB Data Recovery or Flash Data Recovery Service. Over half the jobs assigned to me are USB Sticks that have physical damage. Many times the connector is broken off and our success rate of recovering these cases is very high provided the customer has not opened the device and tried to re-attach the connector themselves.

A USB Flash Drive is basically a NAND type Flash Memory device for storing data that has a USB interface attached to it. Many times it is the interface that has the problem and when that is the case we can usually perform a successful Data Recovery.

 As storage capacities for these devices continue to increase people will rely on them more and more to store valuable data. They are small, light weight and hold alot of data. Some USB/Flash Devices allow for 1 million write/erase cycles and have a ten year data retention.

 This is all fine but beware they fail all the time so if you use one make sure it is not holding the only copy of your data. Too often users save all of their work on the device and don't bother saving it on their computer. That is a big mistake that many people make.

The USB/Flash Drive consists of a small printed circuit board, USB connector, USB controller and of course the Flash memory itself. Now if this memory chip is broken or cracked or your dog has bitten it (happens alot) then guess what? Your Data is NOT recoverable. Many times the Flash memory simple burns up. In these cases there is no data to recover since the place the data was stored has been destroyed.

Data Recovery is possible if other components have failed provided it is sent to a professional that knows what they are doing . In future posts I will talk more about the technology and history of USB/Flash devices.

For more information on the USB Interface Click Here.

  Here at ITS Data Recovery we see many Data Recovery jobs that may or may not involve physical hard disk drive problems. Many times there are issues with the NTFS file system. Recently we received a job in to our Los Angeles lab that was an external Maxtor One Touch III 1.5TB that had spanned volumes. This is 2 750gb drives in an external box.

The customer was under the impression that since the External Hard Drive was not set up as a RAID 0 that if one hard drive failed he could still get his data back.

A Spanned Volume is a formatted partition in which there is data stored on more than one hard disk yet it appears as one volume. This can be considered a volume set in Windows NT. The customer was mistaken in believing that a Spanned volume has some type of fault tolerance. Although NTFS file systems may be used with up to 32 disks there is no fault tolerance like a RAID 1 or RAID 5 type systems. Furthermore a Spanned volume canot be mirrored or striped. One good thing though is that in Windows 2000/2003 users can combine SCSI and IDE Hard Drisk Drives by usinf a Spanned Volume

So the bottom line is if any one disk fails then the data on the whole volume may be lost.In this case the customer was fortunate since the Data Recovery job was successful. We were able to replace a bad head on the first drive and get his data back. Not everyone is that fortunate.

We have not seen a great deal of cases like this but we see many External Hard Drive Data Recovery jobs come in that are RAID 0. Although these devices are fast we don't recommend them unless they are backed up or mirrored to another set of hard disk drives. Too often one drive crashes and the data becomes unrecoverable. If you want to learn more about NTFS file systems go to www.ntfs.com. In future posts we will talk more about this.

For more information on Data Recovery visit ITS - Data Recovery Website.