According to Murphy's Law of Data Loss, The probabilities of a hard disk drive crash increase with the number of days since the drive was last backed up. No hard disk drive is ever completely safe from crashing, and losing all the important data on it.
A hard disk drive can be damaged due to a number of causes such as virus attack, voltage glitches, software malfunction, hard disk format, accidental file/directory deletion, human error or even sabotage. Such events can cause data corruption or damage to the hard disk drive, and make the data completely inaccessible to the user.
There aren’t too many people out there that take the time to backup their files like they should. Of course that doesn’t mean you didn’t intend to do it but that stack of blank CD’s and DVD’s just isn’t something you have had time for yet. Many people regret putting this off though when their hard disk drive or their server crashes and their data is lost.
Although this can be very frustrating a data recovery specialist can normally bring your information back. All you need to do is take the hard drive to a local specialist, then let them work their magic and show you the power of data recovery.
Our services include Data Recovery on Hard Drives, Laptops, RAID Systems, Floppies, Zipp, Tapes, Digital Camera Media, USB Sticks, PDA's, IPOD's and all other types of media. There are many data recovery providers but you should be very careful about who you send your precious data to.
I.T.S. Data Recovery Specialist has been providing professional data recovery services, data repair and file recovery services since 1980. We are located in metro Los Angeles in the north San Fernando Valley city of Chatsworth and serve customers in California and across the United States.
Data loss is something that can be very traumatic. Whether it's a business with important files and documents, or an individual with precious pictures and videos, losing data can be a very traumatic and stressful situation. If you've never experienced hard drive failure or losing data before, it can indeed be a situation where you find yourself wondering what to do.
In most cases, your data can be recovered, which is always good news. When your hard drive first crashes or you notice that your data is missing, you should immediately take it to a local specialist. The specialist will be able to evaluate your hard drive, find out what the problem is, and then tell you. The data recovery evaluation process could take anywhere from 1 day to a couple of weeks, so you should always prepare yourself for anything.
It does take time for the data to be recovered though so don’t expect it to happen instantly. The data recovery specialist has to take the hard drive apart and then start collecting any files they can from it. If you get the right data recovery specialist they can recover data from most any type of computer. This includes those that have been submerged in water or severely damaged.
As most people already know, almost all hard drives fail due to normal use and conditions. Although it can happen at anytime, hard drive failure normally takes several years to occur, due to normal wear and tear. No matter what the case may be, you should always be fully aware of the options that are available to you, and what you should do if your hard drive fails.
ITS - Chatsworth Data Recovery Lab sees many different types of media come in and one is complete MAC Computers. Apparently Apple Computer does not make it very easy to get the hard drive out of their computers so we get the whole system in for Data File Recovery.
One problem the I hear complaints about is that Apple will not remove the hard drive for the customer and give it to them so they can get Data Recovery done. They want you to send it to their authorized Data Recovery house and that is to expensive for most end users and companies for that matter.
Usually the customer can just bring ITS - Data Recovery the whole computer and we will get the Hard Disk Drive out without voiding the warranty. IMAC, MAC-BOOK and TITANIUM'S are usually the most difficult computers to get the hard drive out of.
Since we are on the subject of Apple / MAC laptops I should note that recently Apple has started using Seagate Laptop Hard Drives and they are a bad Laptop Hard Drive that is highly prone to severe head crash. In fact our most recent statistics show that overall the recovery rate of these hard drives is low.
The point is that if you have a chance to replace the Hard Drive in your MAC Laptop use Toshiba not Seagate Hard Drives and if you can't get the bad Hard Drive out of your Laptop bring it to us and we will remove it for you. To this day we have never voided a warranty. If Apple won't cooperate with you and remove the Hard Drive for you then just buy a replacement drive yourself. Drives are cheap.
ITS - Data Recovery servers customers all across California including such cities as Chatsworth, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Thousand Oaks, Hollywood, Palmdale, Camarillo and many more.
ITS - Data Recovery has many customers referred to our Chatsworth California lab from Computer Stores and Consultants. The result is we see quite a few end users come in
for data recovery services that have no clue what data recovery and file recovery services cost.
The price can vary greatly from company to company and the customer should be prepared to pay the price quoted to them. Its all a matter of how important your data is to you. The idea of taking a hard disk drive or even camera card to different places for a free evaluations is the worst thing you can do if you really want your data back.
We recently had a hard drive come in for data recovery that was in a laptop and had been dropped. The recovery rate is usually pretty low for these type of problems since the head smashes on the platter and destroys it. In any event we were able to extract the data sector by sector with our special data recovery tools just in time before it finally crashed and died.
This particular data recovery customer decided they didn't want to pay the price we had quoted upfront and wanted to get a second opinion. In a situation like this there is only one chance to recover the data since the drive completed crashed in the lab. This is one reason ITS - Data Recovery does not do second opinions on the retrieval of data from any type of media.
The other problem faced by all Data Recovery Companies is that in order to determine if your data is recoverable 80% to 90% of the work has to be done just to know if the data is recoverable and then it has to be checked to make sure it is not corrupted.
When your hard drive crashes (and it will) and you need your data back do your research, pick a company you like and stick with them because usually you only get one chance. When you try to game the system you usually end up without your data.
ITS - Independent Technology Service has been back in Chatsworth Califonia now for going on 5 years. During that time we have performed data recovery services for 100's of people and companies.
Before that ITS - Data Recovery was in Simi Valley for over 12 years performing data file recovery and RAID data recovery. Founded in 1980 ITS - Data Recovery was in Chatsworth originally repairing tape and disk drives. That means for going on 30 years ITS - Data Recovery has been in business helping people recover data from USB, Camera Cards, hard drives, laptops and more.
There are two other companies in Chatsworth that know how to perform data recovery but it is worth noting that both companies are spin-offs of ITS - Data Recovery. One is too expensive and the other is too inexperienced. In all of the San Fernando Valley there are no other companies worth mentioning since they don't even have a clean room.
The disk drive industry owes alot to Chatsworth California since it was the disk drive capital of the world at one time. For anyone interested come by our data recovery lab in Chatworth and we will show you a bunch of different really cool old hard drives, computers and other stuff from the 70's and 80's. Call us anytime at 1-800-342-DISK or come and visit our Chatsworth California Data Recovery Lab.
Since we have been talking about all the places our data recovery customers come from to get their data back or get data file recovery performed I thought I better mention some very important cities in Ventura County.
ITS - Data Recovery spent over 12 years in Simi Valley and developed quite a following of Ventura County Data Recovery Customers from places like Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Newbury Park and Oxnard. Most computer stores from these area's have used ITS - Data Recovery Services at some time or other.
In 1994, 30 days after the Northridge earthquake ITS - Data Recovery experienced a fire at our Easy St. facility. Our in depth plans for Data Disaster Recovery went into effect immediately assuring a smooth transition to our new facility at 4495 Runway St. in June of 1994.
We stayed in that building until March of 2004 at which time we moved to our building that we purchased in Chatsworth California. ITS - Data Recovery is now one of the largest Data Recovery Centers in Southern California and is by far the largest facility in the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles Data Recovery customers call us all the time asking to see our state of the art class 100 clean room and labs.
We also have many customers from area's like Riverside, San Bernandino, Pasadena, Santa Clarita, Palmdale, Littlerock and more.
When you are in Chatsworth stop by and see our data recovery facility at 9182 Independence Ave. or visit us on-line here.
From the desert to the sea to all of southern california ITS Data Recovery is the place to recover your lost data files. No matter what your data is on be it a laptop data recovery or a desk top computer data recovery, flash data recovery or USB data recovery or camera data recovery.
From San Diego to San Francisco and all points inbetween we are the leader in california data recovery services. We have all the data recovery tools needed to get your important data files and get you back on the road to happiness.
We gladly accept walk in's with no appointment needed form all over Los Angeles and surrounding area's such as Pasadena, Burbank, Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley, Palmdale, Simi Valley, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, Ventura and Santa Barbara.
So if you need mac data recovery, windows data recovery or raid data recovery ITS Data Recovery is the place. Please give us a call at (800) 342-DISK (3475) or visit our web site to get more information about our data recovery services.
ITS - Data Recovery has been doing data recovery and computer file recovery for many companies and individuals in and around Orange County California for many years.
Located in Chatsworth California ITS - Data Recovery has done RAID Data Recovery, Hard Drive Data Recovery and Laptop Data Recovery for many of the largest companies in Orange County California including Cox Communications and The Orange County Government. Another company who has sent us many data recovery jobs from Orange County is Broadcom.
Other ITS - Data Recovery customers include many end users and computer consultants. Since we are located only 60 miles north of San Ana, Calif., many clients drive up to our Data Recovery Lab in Chatsworth Calif. for a free evaluation of their hard drive, camera card or USB stick. It's worth the drive up to Chatsworth to save 100's and perhaps 1000's of dollars on their data recovery job.
ITS is a full service Data Recovery Lab with state of the art equipment utilizing Data Recovery Tools from DeepSpar as well as other high tech equipment vendors. We also have developed many Data Recovery Tools in house. This is what separates a Professional Data Recovery house from a Computer Repair or Third Tier, Low Cost Data Recovery Company that just runs software on your media.
For more information on our data recovery services visit us at www.datarecoveryspecialist.com
When people in Ventura County need help with their computer's for things such as PC Repair & Maintenance, Upgrades or Virus & Security Protection and Data Recovery they go to a company called All-City Computers in Camarillo California.
People from all over Ventura County take their computers to them from city's such as Ventura, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Moorpark and of course Camarillo. They are real good at what they do and provide excellent customer service to their customers.
And some of the time when they get a data recovery that they cannot get the data from they refure them to us here at ITS Data Recovery. They have been doing this since 2001 and we also refure customers to them for computer help other than data recovery.
So if you need hard drive data recovery just bring your hard drive by our Chatsworth California office and we will do our best to recovery your important data files as fast as we can at a price you can afford.
California Data Recovery companies invented the data recovery and computer file recovery industry. ITS - Data Recovery started back in 1980 repairing disk and tape drives before computer data recovery or hard drive data recovery even existed.
Today there are many Data Recovery Companies in California that claim they have the technical experience, data recovery tools and the knowledge to recover data. Most companies have not been in the data recovery business long enough to have gained the experience.
Data Recovery for California customers can be very challenging. If you find a local company first go visit them. You can usually tell if they are "fly by night" Here's a few things to look out for.
1. Do they have a lab on the premises?
2. Is the building they are in clean and organized?
3. Are they asking for big upfront fee's just to look at your drive?
4. Is the location just a drop off of your drive?
5. Do they have references?
6. Will they try to charge you a clean room fee or other junk fee?
When you come to ITS - Data Recovery in Chatsworth California you will know from the instant you walk in the door that you are at the right place.
Come and visit us in person and see for yourself or visit us on-line.
ITS - Data Recovery has a long history of dealing with movie stars, musicians, companies and plain regular folks from Hollywood and the surrounding area's. Many of these data recovery customers bring their hard drives in for a free data recovery and file recovery evaluation since we are only 30 to 40 minutes away here in Chatsworth California situated in the NW San Fernando Valley.
Many of the disk data recovery jobs that we do involve the music industry in Hollywood and Burbank. I can't you how many bands that were getting ready to cut an album down in Hollywood or go on tour when they suffered a hard drive failure that contained all of their Pro Tools music files.
In the old days we repaired 8" floppy drives for many Hollywood TV Stations and now they too bring us their Computer Data Recovery issues.
The list of famous musicians and actor's who have come to us with data recovery issues is endless. Some I am sure would prefer we don't mention their names and that's fine. They know we will be here the next time they need us for data recovery.
ITS - Data Recovery has done many data recovery jobs for customers who live in Burbank and the surrounding area. One year we even did a data file recovery for the Police Chief in Burbank.
Anyway the other day I had a customer come in with a Lacie hard drive that was clicking. I told her to leave the drive so we could take it to the clean room and check it out since a clicking hard drive is usually a very bad sign.
The next day she called me and told me not to do anything with it because Lacie agreed to recover the data for free. Let me say first of all that when you buy an external hard drive it usually has someone else's drive inside. Lacie and I/O Mega and Buffalo for example put the hard drive inside their box that is best priced for them. It just depends who is giving them the best deal.
That is a very bad thing because you now have no control over what manufacturer hard drive you buy. When you buy an external drive buy one that is made from the manufacturer like Seagate, Samsung or Western Digital.
Now back to Lacie quickly! No one does data recovery for free and that poor lady from Burbank was grossly misinformed. They will replace your drive if its under warranty but no one will do data recovery for free.
For more information on our services and how we charge click here.
When I first came to work for ITS Data Recovery we were located in Chatsworth California. Then about two months later the company moved to the city of Simi Valley California and now were back in the city of Chatsworth and we could not be more happy with the current location.
Since we moved back to Chatsworth our walk in data recoveries have increased from one or two a week to three to five a week now. And a lot of these people are coming from Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Ventura and the greater Los Angeles area as well. We have company & private I.T. tech's as well as regular every day people with their home computers.
I was left dazed after this women brought in a hard drive for mac data recovery, and after the evaluation we could not recover the data she needed. She had over ten years worth of scriptwriting that she had no back up of. And when I told her the data was not recoverable she started to cry and get all upset about it and left me in a daze for a few days.
The only thing I can say is that you should back up your data every day to avoid what that woman went through. Back up you baby photo's, family photo's your music files and your financial data and word documents and spread sheets as well. But if you ever need data recovery be sure to call us here at ITS Data Recovery.
ITS - Data Recovery has had a presence in Ventura County for over 16 years. Many California Data Recovery customers from from various cities in Ventura County have been using our services for many years. We have many computer stores, endusers and consultants who bring in their hard drives, RAID's and camera cards from places like Camarillo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Thousand Okas and Simi Valley to just name a few.ITS - Data Recovery was in Simi Valley from 1992 to 2004. We originally were on Easy St. on the west end of the valley. One month after the 1994 earthquake we had a fire and moved to a building on Runway St. In 2004 we bought a building just over the hill in Chatsworth.
The fire in 1994 made us accutely aware of the problems companies face when there is "Dasta Disaster Recovery" to be dealt with.
Data Recovery jobs from Ventura County continues to be a big portion of our Data File Recovery and Computer File Recovery jobs.
Click here to see more information about California Data Recovery which shows a map to our facility.
One thing that manufacturers of hard drives do not tell us when we buy our brand new computers, is that hard drives are subject to fail, regardless of the amount of time they are used. With some systems it may take more than 10 years before the hard drive failure occurs, while others can fail within just a year of normal use. Because of this, failed hard drive data recovery is an important issue that needs some thought.
Basically, there are two main types of hard drive failure. The first is those hard drives that fail due to a software problem, and the second failed hard drive category applies in the case of a physical malfunction with the hard disk drive.
If you are unlucky enough to need a failed hard disk drive data recovery, bear in mind that a greater level of caution is needed so that your data recovery is successful. When you are considering using any of the failed hard disk drive data recovery software you need to be aware that there will be a risk of further data loss as the software gets to work on the hard drive.
You should never attempt to use a data recovery program if you suspect your drive is broken. If there are unusual noises coming from the drive, take it to a professional data recovery service. The more you use a malfunctioning drive, the more damage you can do to it.
There is perhaps no worse feeling in the world of technology than having your hard drive crash and realizing you have not made a backup of the valuable data it contains. These days most of us end up storing vast amounts of personal data on their computers, and data recovery services can be a godsend when the worst happens.
One of the most important points for any computer user to remember is to always back up your data. As much as personal computing has advanced over the past 20 years, hard drives still fail. Hard disk drives are an amazing piece of mechanical engineering, as then spin (sometimes continuously) at around 120 times per second (7200 rpm). These spinning platters are spinning at such high speeds that a small interference while in usage can damage the hard disk drive in a certain area. There are now fail safe mechanisms in place to prevent critical failures when there is a small amount of physical damage done to the drive, but accidents do happen.
When some areas of the disk fail, the hard drive is effectively useless. Cases like this usually require data recovery specialists to recover any data that might be left. If you have made routine backups of your important data, this would be a great inconvenience to restore and install all the applications and data once more, but still recoverable. If you were unfortunate enough not have any backups (or not recent ones), then you are in trouble. Data File Recovery can be a very time consuming process, and most often quite expensive.
If your hard drive makes ill-sounding mechanical failure noises (loud clicking, rattling, scratching), then back up your data as fast as possible and buy a new hard drive. If you fail to recover the data when the drive is on the brink of no return, you will often have to pay for a data recovery specialist to recover the data from the physically damaged drive. So to avoid having to go through a data disaster recovery always back up your data. If you have any questions about data recovery feel free to call us at ITS Data Recovery 800-342-DISK (3475).
ITS - Data Recovery has alway recommended Seagate Disk Drives. For desktop computers that is. We seem to see fewer of them come in for disk data recovery than their counterparts like Western Digital Disk Drives.
This certainly cannot be said however for Seagate Laptop Disk Drives.
Our Laptop Data Recovery Department has reported a very high rate of failure on Seagate Laptop Drives. Most of the ones we get in for data recovery have a severe head crash rendering the customer data files not recoverable.
More often than not when it comes to Seagate Laprtop Drives I find myself sending the following email to the customer. "Unfortunately your drive had a severe head crash and your data is unrecoverable. Please let me know if you'd like us to destroy your hard drive or return it. "
When you buy a laptop you don't get to choose the hard drive that goes in it but if you do find yourself buying a laptop hard drive for what ever reason make sure it is a Toshiba. They are by far the best laptop hard drive compared to all other brands.
For more information on Laptop Data Recovery visit our web page here.
ITS - Data Recovery has always favored Seagate hard disk drives over other brands such as Western Digital. One reason is we see fewer Seagate's come in for data recovery service on a regular basis.
We could see a huge influx of Seagate hard disk drives due to a recently discovered firmware problem with their 11 generation Barracuda 7200.11 hard disk drive. Below is information a customer emailed me today.
Complaints flood Seagate over hard drive problems
Seagate offers free firmware upgrade
By Lucas Mearian
Comments
January 17, 2009 (Computerworld)
Seagate Technologies' online support forum has been riddled this week with complaints from owners of the high-capacity Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive, which in recent months had already drawn some complaints that the drive has been freezing up during data transfers or failing all together.
The Barracuda 7200.11 is the eleventh generation of Seagate's flagship drive for desktop PCs and comes in capacities ranging from 160GB to 1.5TB. Complaints have not been limited to Seagate's online support site. They have also rained in on other forums. The complaints involve drives running Linux, Mac OS X and Windows Vista.
The company said in a statement Friday that indeed a problem has caused some drives to fail and it said it isolated the issue to a firmware bug affecting not only the 7200.11 but several other models manufactured through December 2008. Those include the DiamondMax 22, the Barracuda ES.2 SATA and the SV35.
Seagate is offering a firmware upgrade that it says will fix the issue.
"In some circumstances, the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on," the statement said. "If you have one of the affected products ... we recommend that you update the firmware on the disk drive."
According to users, the drives tend to freeze for about 30 seconds during I/O transfers of streaming video or when reading or writing files at low speeds. One law firm, Kabatek, Brown and Kellner LLP, even states on its Website that it is considering a class-action lawsuit against Seagate because of the number of complaints about the Barracuda 7100.11.
Seagate said users should visit its support Web site to determine if their model drive is affected by the bug.
Seagate also offers support by telephone: 1-800-SEAGATE (1 800 732-4283).
Seagate did not offer a link to the firmware upgrade, saying only that "customers can expedite assistance by sending an e-mail to Seagate. The e-mail should include the disk drive model number, serial number and current firmware revision.
"We will respond, promptly, to your e-mail request with appropriate instructions. There is no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive. But if you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services," the company said. "Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business."
Seagate released the four-platter drive, Barracuda, it's largest drive ever, in July. Seagate attributes the drive's extraordinary density to perpendicular magnetic recording technology, which stands bits upright instead of laying them flat on the surface of a platter, thereby taking up less space per bit.
Computerworld had no issues with the drive when it reviewed the hardware in October, but some reader comments indicated at the time there were issues with drives failing.
To read the actual article online click here.
So far this month my prediction has come true about the huge influx of data recovery jobs that has come into our Los Angeles California lab. It seems that after the holidays we always have a large amount of hard disk drives, flash data recovery, camera cards and even RAID data recovery jobs come in. We just got in a Lacie 1.2 terabyte RAID 0 that was completely full. On one single day this month we actually had 10 walk-in customers to our Chatsworth California lab.
This is a good time to remind Windows and Mac data recovery customers to choose a data recovery professional very carefully. We are now so busy that if you send your hard drive or other media to a competitor first and then try to send it to us for a second opinion we will not accept it. We have found these jobs to have a low recovery rate. We are too busy keeping up with customers who chose us first.
Today I got a request for a data recovery quote from someone just like that who said ... " My External Seagate hard drive is at another data recovery company right now. I have asked them to return the hard drive (which I believe they opened in a "clean room"). They couldn't tell me what files were recoverable, just that "all of them" were. They wanted $1700. So I declined and said to send back my hard drive. I simply cannot afford that much. Nearly all files are either videos or photos."
We declined to quote this because we have found that in most of these cases the data is not recoverable by the time it arrives at ITS - Data Recovery for whatever reason. You can draw your owe conclusions. I can preach until I'm blue in the face about the importance of choosing a data recovery company correctly the first time. If we hate doing second opinions you can imagine my reaction to the guy who wants a third opinion.
(mal´wãr) (n.) Short for malicious software, software designed specifically to damage or disrupt a system, such as a virus or a Trojan horse.
Every day, adversaries attempt to invade your networks and infect your systems with viruses, spy-ware and other malware. All too often, these attacks succeed, and frequently without you knowing about it. In other cases, employees can open the door to malware by visiting infected Web sites, opening e-mail attachments, or running macros that contain viruses that may led you to need some sort of computer file recovery.
Once inside a computer, a malware outbreak can spread with alarming speed via company networks to compromise or destroy mission-critical data or personal information, and leave vital infrastructure open to new attacks. Some of the stealthiest malware even allows intruders to secretly conduct their nefarious business over long periods using your computers!
After you have been exposed to malware, and have not been able to restore infected computers, what should you do? Do I need data recovery service? Is there a way to fix the problem without completely rebuilding the computers from scratch? You can use detection programs such as Ad Aware and others. Similar to anti-virus software, these programs compare a list of known spy-ware with files on your computer and can remove any that it detects.
The World Wide Web is a criminals' preferred pathway for spreading malware. Today's web threats use combinations of malware to create infection chains. About one in ten Web pages may contain malicious code.
