Data Recovery, recovering Hard Drive data, RAID data recovery

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WARNING - WARNING - WARNING

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In my last blog I recounted how we managed to recover the data from a multiple hard drive RAID array AFTER two different European data recovery companies had failed. In that situation, we were the white knight, coming in to save the data where others had failed. But recently, we were painted as the villain for performing similar data recovery magic right here in Toronto. In fact, the title of this blog came from our 1st ever negative Google review as a result of this recent case.

To summarize, we received a 2.5” Western Digital WD hard drive for data recovery. The particular model drive sent in, has a USB3 interface built onto its PCB (printed circuit board) and it does not have typical SATA connections. From experience, we have found that data recovery imaging utilities (both in-house written and commercial) work terribly with USB interfaced hard drives. As a result, we don’t attempt to access or image USB3 type WD drives using their native USB PCB. Instead, we have learned how to convert a particular standard WD SATA PCB to work with these native USB drives.

So when we received this case, we immediately converted one of SATA PCBs to work with this drive. The conversion process required us to remove one small 8 pin programmable chip from the client’s original USB3 PCB and transfer it onto our SATA PCB. Once we did this, we were able to evaluate the drive fully and concluded that the drive had bad heads and likely minor disk damage. We contacted the client and quoted them $1300, which they declined. We transferred the client’s 8 pin chip back to their original PCB and returned the drive to the client.

The client then took it to another data recovery company who claimed it was unrecoverable because we had damaged the PCB and furthermore we left solder paste around the 8 pin chip and were thus “VERY AMATEURISH”. Ok we forgot some totally inconsequential solder paste on the PCB. But we never once applied power to the PCB so the claim we damaged it seemed unfounded. Of course there was a chance we damaged the small 8 pin chip so we suggested the client bring it back to us. They did; we removed the chip and verified it’s functionality using a chip reader. While it was here, we re-established the fact that we could still recover the data, but again the client did not want to pay us anything and left with their drive intact but with no solder paste residue to complain about.

Apparently, the client then went to KROLL ONTRACK, “the industry leader and the largest data recovery provider in Canada and in the world”. The client claims they also declared the drive unrecoverable due to the same “damaged” PCB.

The client then came back to us, and we again re-iterated that we had not damaged anything, and we could still recover the data for him. In fact, just to keep our good guy image alive, we offered to reduce the cost by $300. At 1st the client accepted thinking we offered the recovery at $300. But when he realized we weren’t giving it away and still required $1000 to complete the recovery he declined and created his mean spirited Google complaint.

Whether this client was trying to get a free recovery or not, I don’t know, or care, but in the end I am aghast that 2 other professional data recovery companies in Toronto cannot recover the data from a situation where we regularly do.

It helps to realize, that the world wide data recovery industry has no standards, no way of knowing a company’s competency, or a company’s integrity. There are lots of bad guys waiting to take your money for very little in return and many posers issuing inaccurate statements about what is recoverable and what is not. The damage they can cause is inexcusable. I have heard it said that something like 70% of small companies that lose their data permanently are out of business within 6 months. Don’t be one of them!

If your data is important, don’t believe the 1st “It’s UNRECOVERABLE” that you hear. Data recovery companies and technicians are not created equal. Please seek a 2nd or 3rd or 4th opinion, or maybe you should just come to Memofix Data Recovery Services first.

 

 

Hard Drive ECC Errors!

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Recovering data, whether it’s important engineering data for a Hydro Electric company or the family pictures for a young family, is very rewarding on a personal level. Of course there is the enjoyment of helping someone in need. But the real reward for a good data recovery technician comes from the satisfaction of solving problems others can’t.

However, not all data recovery cases are solvable and that’s hard for my techs and our clients to hear. One of the most frustrating data recovery scenarios involves uncorrectable read errors. We see a lot of these cases.

In this typical scenario we receive a small 2.5” laptop hard drive for data recovery. We evaluate the hard drive and deem it functional enough to start creating a sector by sector image. But as we image off the drive it encounters more and more Error Check & Correction or ECC errors; to the point that there is at least one unreadable sector for every 5000 sectors we read. When a disk drive encounters a read error it will attempt to read the same sector at least 10 times. This slows the imaging process to a crawl and as a result it’s not uncommon for the imaging to take months to complete. Besides the time delay, the image is also riddled with unreadable sectors located randomly across the entire data area and in close proximity to each other, making it difficult to find large contiguous blocks of error free data. This means many larger files may be damaged beyond being use-able and often the majority of the good data will be restricted to smaller sized files. Depending on the size of the files the client needs, this may be acceptable or not.

What is most frustrating is the fact that there is little that can be done. These errors are the result of data not being written properly to the drive in the first place. Bad in equals bad out!

It helps to understand where these errors are triggered. When a hard drive reads a sector of data, it also reads a 50 byte ECC code that resides just after the real data. When the data was 1st written to the sector it ran a sophisticated algorithm on the 512 bytes of sector data and this resulted in a unique ECC code which can only be replicated by reading the exact same data. When a sector is read later, the drive attempts to validate the data by running the same algorithm on the data and comparing it to the previously stored ECC code. If the code doesn’t match, the disk drive produces an error code and prevents the transfer of the data. The hard drive will normally attempt to re-read the data up to 10 times as it tries to match the ECC code and this process slows the drive down considerably.

With our hard drive expertise we are able to disable the retries and other housekeeping chores that slow the drive down. But even with these shortcuts, it is not uncommon for hard drives with this problem to take weeks or even 2-3 months to completely read off every readable sector, especially if the drive is 1TB or larger.

We do have the capability to use special read commands to bypass the ECC error checking but the data is usually garbage or at the very least, it can never be trusted 100%. We will do this for a few key sectors of data if the situation warrants it.

So what cause these ECC errors to proliferate? ECC errors can be the result of many different causes.

If a weak head is having problems writing data, ECC errors can often be created. The head appears to be stable when it writes the data and even passes the ECC check initially. But when it attempts to read the same sector later the ECC check fails and the request is aborted.

lf a hard drive is running under extreme heat conditions, for example if a laptop gets extremely hot while you are working from home by the swimming pool, the hard drive which is a mechanical device made of many sorts of metals will expand. Writing data while the drive is in this state may cause problems later when trying to read the drive in a cooled down state as the positioning will affected ever so slightly. This shouldn’t normally cause problems but extremes of operability are always unpredictable.

BUT the number one reason for the proliferation of ECC errors in our opinion is a bad memory chip whether on the hard drive or more likely inside the desktop or laptop.

If your storage device is riddled in read errors, we can help and are usually successful in recovering the majority of a user’s data. Costs for these types of cases are typically in the $400-700 range depending on the severity of the errors and the capacity of your hard drive. Please give us a call today to discuss your data loss situation.

Choosing a Data Recovery Service Before You Need Them

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Today’s blog features a guest post from Larry Shulman, our Business Development Manager and a veteran of the Canadian computer industry.

IT managers have a tough job today. Most are dealing with demand for expanding data storage capacity, keeping a complex computing infrastructure running with less dollars and planning for disaster recovery and business continuity. Memofix, drawing on our experience as an extension of our customer’s IT department, has some suggestions on what to look for when choosing service partners for specific challenges.

Too often our clients come to us in the midst of an emergency. They may have a hardware failure and require an immediate turnaround on a repair or replacement unit. Perhaps a hard drive or RAID system has crashed and the data is critical to their operation. At that point in the crisis customers may not have the luxury of worrying about the security of the data contained on those devices or about how to solve a complex technical issue. Memofix is known for their responsiveness in these situations but we can’t help think that a small amount of research would also give our customers added confidence that they are not put at undue risk.

When it comes to data recovery we think our customers, both IT managers and technology resellers, need to look deeper at the service partner they are considering. A prospective data recovery partner will have access to sensitive data that only they can access. Therefore don’t just rely on technical ability to recovery data in a timely manner. You need to partner with someone who takes privacy and data security as seriously as you do. Therefore we think you should do the following:

  • If you’re looking for data services of any kind, do a back ground check. If you are sending storage devices or media to a supplier, for repair or data recovery services, can you trust them to ensure proper security measures are taken? Memofix recommends that you ask for references and check them out thoroughly. We regularly sign NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) for our customers and our technicians that work on any data device are subject to an extensive background check before they are hired.
  • Tour the supplier’s facilities and talk to their management and employees. You want to make sure that your potential partner has an efficient operation and that their staff is motivated to solve problems on behalf of the customer. Memofix has an open door policy for potential new clients or existing customers and we’re more than happy to let you visit.
  • Ask for a demonstration of the services you are looking for. For data recovery it’s easy to demonstrate how to solve simple problems but the supplier should be able to walk you through the process of rebuilding a drive or extracting data from a failed RAID. Memofix can address any specific types of devices that you need to support and we’ll even provide some advice on how to avoid having to call us.
  • Make sure that a prospective partner has invested in areas that support your requirements. Memofix has made a significant investment in our data recovery lab, in our technicians and in stocking over 20,000 hard drives for spare parts.

Memofix has every confidence that we will meet or exceed the scrutiny that we recommend. We provide depot work for some of the largest storage OEMs in the industry which means we’ve passed stringent audits and assessments. Make sure that you put any prospective data recovery partner through a similar process before handing over any storage device or media. Or simply contact Memofix and come by for a visit.

Remote Data Recovery

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Toronto GTA, Ontario, Canada. Recovering data remotely is a service presently being offered by several of the larger data recovery companies. It sounds so convenient, no shipping, no computer disassembly, no risk, just call someone up and they remotely connect to my computer, and “poof” my data is restored. If only it were so simple. In reality it’s much more of a marketing ploy then a realistic recovery option. The complexities and dangers of offering remote service seem to counter the very pillars of data safety.

First you must consider that for a remote data recovery service to be successful the hard drive must be functioning properly; otherwise there is a serious risk of causing further damage. If the drive has physical problems and is beginning to fail, there may only a short window before the damage becomes insurmountable. As every data recovery company will advise, if the data is important, shut it off immediately and do nothing. So unless you’re knowledgeable enough to determine the condition of your hard drive or you don’t mind a 50/50 chance of doing further damage you may want to reconsider a remote data recovery service.

Furthermore, this service requires the user to have some technical computer skills as the original hard drive must be removed and installed in a second web attached computer along with possibly an additional hard drive to copy the recovered data to. Some assistance will also be required to setup and establish the remote link. And while some users may feel comfortable with these tasks, the real concern is with the increased risk of causing further damage whether due to physical handling, static shock, or the unintended running of automatic drive utilities like chkdsk.

It is our policy and that of most other professional data recovery services to create an exact image or mirror of the original drive. The original drive is then put away for safe keeping, while any alterations to the file system structures or running of utilities are completed on a copy of the copy. In a remote data recovery situation, you do not have the luxury of having a backup copy in case things go wrong.

We also see many cases of apparent file structure damage where the storage device or hard drive initially appears to be operating fine but as we attempt to image it we discover read errors or the drive starts failing in some other way. In instances like this there is a strong chance the file structure damage was actually caused by the physical issue. Attempting to recover data from a drive like this will just aggravate the situation and risk further damage to the storage device or filesystem.

In my past life, I worked for one of the larger data recovery companies that considered offering a remote recovery option. At the time we had multiple lab locations across the USA and we were already using remote connections to share the data recovery expertise spread throughout our different labs. Our more senior data recovery engineers essentially used remote access to evaluate and direct a more junior tech in how to proceed with a difficult data recovery. Prior to us offering the service to the general public, we investigated our competitors offering by conducting a secret shopper campaign where we attempted to engage their remote data recovery services. Surprisingly, we were repeatedly met with opposition when we requested a remote recovery. They tried to sell us data recovery software, followed by in-lab service before reluctantly agreeing to only attempt a remote recovery IF we approved a minimum of $1500 for the recovery if successful. And this was without ever looking at the media. It’s readily apparent that the entire concept was being used to get you to call them so they could then attempt to try and talk you into shipping the case to their lab.

Remote data recovery has most of same limitations and capabilities as that of a good data recovery software program. The drive must be functional and it must be connected to a working computer system. In many situations a data recovery program will perform as good as a remote recovery service. In fact, the remote recovery tech is more then likely going to be running utilities as part of the effort to salvage your data. So why pay for someone to hook up remotely and run utilities on your system. You can do that yourself and with less complications and time wasted establishing a safe connection.

There are a few occasions where remote data recovery does makes sense, where due to the isolation of the location there is no other option, but for those cases that can be delivered to a full service data recovery lab you would be very unwise not to take advantage of the hands on experience of a data recovery specialist. https://www.memofixdatarecovery.com/ … David Foster

Data Recovery Insurance

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Hard drive manufactures provide a warranty on their disk drives that will provide you with a new drive should yours happen to fail within the warranty period. However, none of these warranties can protect or replace your data should it become inaccessible or lost as a result of a failing hard drive or accidental damage. And in fact, the drive manufactures go out of their way to distance themselves as far away as possible from any liability for the data that is stored on their product. So why hasn’t someone offered insurance on the data that resides on your hard drive or other digital storage device. Simply put, it isn’t possible! Data is not always recoverable, no matter how much money one is willing to pay.

A few companies have attempted to sell “data recovery” type insurance but none would ever be so bold as to guarantee your data. Instead the few twisted souls that have ventured into the data recovery insurance game have chosen to repackage a similar type of insurance under the name of a data protection service.

About 5 years ago one of the laptop hard drive manufactures partnered with a data recovery company in offering this type of insurance. In such a plan, you are charged a small premium to cover the cost of “attempting” to recover your data should such a disaster befall you. There are no guarantees they will recover your data, only a promise to give it their best efforts. And if they’re not successful, there are no pay outs or compensation of any sort, other than possibly offering to insure your new replacement drive for free. Personally, I fail to see any incentive for the underlying data recovery company to give it much of an effort or expend any serious resources.

Many of us already have a home owner’s insurance policy that may provide coverage for data recovery services should you lose the PERSONAL data on your home computer. I was surprised to see my policy covers such losses up to $1500. Unfortunately there was a $500 deductible but at least I am covered for a serious recovery attempt at a relatively low recovery cost. You may want to check your policy or ask your insurance agent if you have coverage.

There is one external hard drive manufacture that I don’t have much experience with, but who does offer data recovery insurance on their products as a standard offering. The company is ioSafe http://www.iosafe.com/ and they specialize in manufacturing disaster proof external hard drives. Protecting your data is what their products are all about and guaranteeing them with a warranty to cover up to a $1000 of data recovery services should make you take them seriously.

I also remember working at ActionFront Data Recovery Labs in the early 2000s and we provided the recovery services to support a data recovery warranty for Belkin surge suppressors. Basically if you lost your data as a result of their product failing to protect your hard drive they would pay for the cost of recovering your data. There were no limits as I recall and the plan was based on our best efforts. We didn’t get paid unless we were successful so the client really did get a 1st rate recovery attempt.

While any item can be insured for cash compensation should that item be destroyed or lost, there are some things that just can’t be replaced with cash and perhaps your data is one of them. There are no guarantees that your data can be recovered so do what you can to prevent a data disaster in the first place. Protecting your data isn’t expensive, it’s priceless! … David Foster

Tips for keeping your data safe

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If you’ve spent any time on the various data recovery websites you’ve no doubt come across lots of advice on what to do once you have a data loss situation. Our website also has a page on it https://www.memofixdatarecovery.com/protect-your-data. But I’ve always felt the best advice would be to avoid such an unpleasant experience in the 1st place. So after some interesting discussions with our data recovery technicians, we have created a list of useful tips and suggestions that may keep you from losing your data in the first place.

1. Start by choosing the safest storage device you can. Here are some specific recommendations that may help …

  • Don’t buy the latest and greatest hard drive. Stick with a true and tested hard drive model that has been around a while. Not only will the bad models have been discontinued, but any bugs or known issues on seasoned models, will have been addressed. Search the web to discover problems other users may be having with a specific drive model. For example, don’t buy the first helium filled hard drives until time has tested them 1st.
  • Don’t use an old hard drive. If your drive is older than 5 years consider replacing it. And no matter how old your drive is, if it starts acting up in any way, whether making a strange noise once in a while or whether read errors keep popping up, make a copy of your data and get rid of it, before it fails.
  • Buy the lightest hard drive you can! Huh? Preferably one with a single disk. Sounds strange you say? Less mass requires less power = less heat & less stress combined with less parts = less crashes. When a hard drive requires 4 disks to keep up with the maximum capacity being offered by the competition, you know they’re likely stretching the design limitations.
  • Consider using a laptop drive in your desktop. Laptop drives by design are meant to take more physical abuse and are designed to be light in weight, low in power needs and quiet in operation.
  • If you’re using an SSD or Solid State Drive, ensure you regularly backup. SSD drives use extremely complicated and always proprietary methods of distributing the data across multiple memory chips. The point is, if your SSD becomes damaged, recovering your data may be very very very expensive … if it is even possible. I also wonder how an SSD will stand up to a power surge. If a hard drive gets a power surge the electronics get fried but the physically stored data remains intact. In an SSD, fried electronics could very well be your critical data disappearing into the cosmos.
  • Use USB Flash Sticks only for transferring data from one computer to another. Do not use them as temporary or permanent storage devices. They are very susceptible to both physical damage and ESD damage. Every few months a student walks in the door with the sole copy of their thesis on an inaccessible USB flash drive.

2. Then maintain and protect your storage device or hard drive with these suggestions

  • Connect your computer to a UPS or surge suppressor. This simple device can prevent electrical surge damage to your drive as well as preventing damage to any open files or the file system itself should your power source be interrupted.
  • Ensure your system has adequate ventilation. One of the most common causes of drive failure is overheating, so make sure your computer’s fans work or even consider adding an additional one.
  • Use an antivirus program and keep updated with the latest virus definitions.
  • Be gentle! A hard drive is a delicate device. Be sure it has a chance to stop spinning before attempting to move your desktop or laptop computer. And be extremely careful not to knock over any external hard drives you may have attached. Every week we see damaged external drives where the external case was merely tipped over while it was running.

 

3. And finally protect your data just in case bad things happen!

  • Backup the important stuff! Yeah, yeah … we all know this and yet few of us do it, me included. If it’s important to you, prove it and back it up.
  • Backup to the Cloud. While it may still be slow and cost a few bucks, a cloud backup service of at least your most critical stuff is an excellent idea. And most of us need not worry about the prying eyes of the United States NSA.
  • Don’t Backup Archival Data to USB Flash Sticks! The data is stored electronically and unless the device is re-charged periodically by plugging it into a powered computer, the data will start to leak away over time. If you put your data on a USB stick and throw it in a drawer for a year or two, odds are your data will be gone or seriously corrupted. Some authorities on the subject claim your data could be in jeopardy in as soon as 3 months if not re-charged.
  • Defrag often! If the data is contiguous (all stored sequentially together) there are ways to rip off data files even if the drive’s file system or “index of file locations” is totally missing. Be sure to use you computers defragmentation utility on a regular basis.
  • Don’t encrypt your data, unless absolutely necessary. Even if you never forget the password, a failing hard drive combined with encryption means the odds of getting your data back are slim. If you must use encryption, use it only on individual files that must be guarded at no cost.

While it’s virtually impossible to be 100% diligent in safeguarding our data at all times, hopefully a few of these tips will lower the chances of you losing your data. But if all else fails and you find yourself in a data loss predicament, please give us a call.

(this blog post while slightly modified, was originally published on January 25th, 2010)