External Drive Data Recovery

External hard drives have become incredibly popular because of their versatility and portability. External drives are perfect for backing up data or for storing pictures, music, documents, and business data for better mobility. However, this mobility makes external hard drives very susceptible to being dropped or jarred. This can cause mechanical damage. The constant, and often necessary, connecting and disconnecting of external drives also makes them prone to electrical damage and logical failures that can result in data loss. There is also the added component of an external casing. Electrical failure of the enclosure is also possible.

Aside from the enclosure, external drives are generally identical to internal drives. We are very skilled in recovering data from any external hard drive, no matter the make, model, or damage suffered.

After recovering the data from your device, we will save your data to a brand new USB external hard drive or USB flash drive, depending on how much data is recovered. One of our data recovery technicians will then check and verify the integrity of the recovered data before we return it. We will keep a copy of your hard drive for about two weeks from the time we return your new storage device. This should give you enough time to go through the recovered data to verify the quality of the recovery. After the two week time period, we will wipe your data and close your case.

Enclosure Failed Hard Drive Recovery

External hard drives have an adapter to interface with a computer through a USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt, E-SATA or network cable. Physically larger drives also contain a power supply. Both the adapter and the power supply are susceptible to electronic failures which will leave you with a dead or unrecognized hard drive and no access to your data.

If you are comfortable taking the drive out of the enclosure, you might be able to get the data yourself using a data recovery software, such as Data Rescue. Just a few things to consider. First, how important is the data. Do you want to risk losing it forever? Second, what make is it? If it is WD (Western Digital), then it is natively encrypted and over the counter software will not be able to get your data. Third, DO NOT open the hard drive itself. If you are in doubt, CALL US!

Logically Failed Hard Drive Recovery

A logically failed drive is generally in good condition mechanically. However, there has been an accidental or involuntary change or corruption to the boot sector, master file table, file system or operating system. In other words, the hard drive is not able to communicate with either the computer or the platters where the data is located. This type of failure prevents a computer from booting properly, accessing data as intended, or recognizing as a storage device within Windows, Mac or Linux. This type of failure is typically does not require a clean room to successfully recover your data. Instead, our trained engineers use specialized software tools in combination with our hardware based equipment to safely recover data from logically failed devices.

Using these tools, our engineers and technicians bypass the logical damage and recover the data from your logically failed hard drive safely. This advanced hardware based data recovery equipment allows us to make a sector by sector copy of your logically failed hard drive. This is a safety precaution we take to protect against additional problems, accidents, or failures during the recovery attempt. We will then work with the sector by sector copy of your hard drive to recover your data. Using specialized software tools, we bypass the logical hard drive failure, gain access to the data, and repair any file structure damage, if possible.

Mechanically Failed Hard Drive Recovery

Hard drives are mechanical devices. They have a motor that spins disks similar to a dvd called platters that store your data, read/write heads glide over one or both sides of each platter surface using electromagnetic technology, firmware that controls how and where the data is stored on the platters and a circuit board (PCB) that provides the interface to the computer.

Due to the multiple mechanical and non mechanical parts in a hard drive, they can fail in a number of ways. The motor can fail, the heads can fail, the firmware can become corrupted or damaged, the PCB can fail, the platters can wear out, and..well...the list goes on.

A mechanically failed hard drive is first opened in we our ISO 5 Class 100 clean room. A full, microscopic examination of the platters and read/write heads is performed. Our microscopes help us determine the specific damage that has made your data inaccessible. Next, we formulate a plan to deal with the specific failure and damage. Based on your type of hard drive, its unique failure, and our experience in dealing with similar situations, we devise a strategy to give the best chance for a full recovery of your data. With skilled hands and/or transplanted donor parts our technicians bring your failed hard drive back into a working condition. Finally, our engineers us state-of-the-art hard drive recovery devices to work with the hard drive to make necessary changes to the firmware and calibrate the new parts in order to gain access to your data. The cleanroom is an important and irreplaceable part of many data recovery issues. But the real magic happens with our engineers in the lab.

Once the initial mechanical damage has been bypassed, we make a sector by sector imaging clone of your drive using a tool specifically designed for this process. This equipment allows us to work with individual parts of the drive, specific zones on the platters, deal with additional firmware problems, and send specific commands to the HDD, thus overcoming and/or skipping damaged areas until we have worked through the problems to complete the best possible recovery of your data.

Using specialized software tools, we then bypass any latent logical hard drive failures, gain access to the data, and repair any file structure damage, if possible.

User Mistake Hard Drive Recovery

Sometimes people screw up, accidentally formatting their hard drive or unintentionally deleting wanted files. This creates a frustrating, often critical, situation when that data is vitally import for work or business. Or it could prove very painful if that data is personally invaluable and irreplaceable. In many cases, we can recover your data but you need to stop using your computer or hard drive IMMEDIATELY. When a file is deleted from a hard drive, the data is not immediately wiped from the drive. That space is just reallocated to be used when needed. Success or failure in recovery depends on what is done after the deletion or format. Unlike what is seen on sensationalized crime shows, once a file has been written over, it is just plain gone. That is why it is so important to STOP. Much like a logical failure, we will start by creating a sector by sector clone of the hard drive. We will then scan the image drive using our specialized software. A technician then sifts through the recovered data to find what you are looking for. Basically, we are looking through a brand new puzzle looking for the few pieces that you are missing. It can cost as much to recover deleted data as any other recovery due to the amount of time it takes to we get the specific data you want.