Our Data Recovery Lab

The most publicized part of a data recovery lab is the clean room. Basically, a mechanic's shop where the internal components of a hard drive can be worked on in a particle free environment. While this is a very important piece of the data recovery puzzle, it is a small fraction of the lab itself.

The best way to describe a lab is to follow the path of a device through the data recovery process.

Receiving the device

Most of the drives we work on are received via FedEx. In all our years of doing data recovery, we have never lost a failed drive in transit. The drive is received and unpacked by trained technicians. Drives are either bare, in some kind of bracket, or in an enclosure. On rare occasions, the drive is still in the computer. The device is removed from any enclosure or bracket and given to an engineer for evaluation.

The Evaluation

The evaluation takes place using very sophisticated equipment and, more importantly, the eyes, ears, and experience of the engineer. Once the evaluation is complete, a diagnosis is given and a firm price is provided. If the choice is made to move forward with the recovery, the device moves into the data recovery lab.

The Lab

Parts

Some drives have components that have failed beyond repair. These parts must be replaced, whether it be the read/write heads, the circuit board, or the spindle motor. Fusion Data Recovery has a supply of drives that can be used as parts sources. However, hard drive parts are similar to auto parts in that we must have the correct model and manufacture date to get compatible parts. Sometimes we do not have the correct drive and need to order from suppliers. Prices for these parts range from $25 - $300 or more.

Clean room

The clean room is used when the read/write heads need to be replaced or if we need to transplant the platters from the failed drive with a seized motor. Alignment is critical as well as a particle free environment. While this is a delicate procedure, it is only a step to data recovery.

Imaging

The real magic of data recovery lies in the imaging of a failed device to a working device. Every drive will go through this part of the process. This is the most difficult part of the recovery. In order to do this in the safest way possible, our engineers use very sophisticated equipment to fix hard drive firmware problems, reconstruct damaged file systems, disable weak or bad heads inside the hard drive, and even change the direction and speed of reading the data. This gives us the best possible clone of the failed drive.

Checking Data Integrity

This is where we actually start looking at the data itself. We use advanced data recovery software to scan the clone for all possible recoverable data. Once the scanning is done, our technicians check data to make sure it works the way it should. We have dozens of programs and versions of those programs to make sure we have data that actually works. Most encryption is taken care of at this point in the process. The data is saved to a target media and now is ready to get back in the hands of the user.