Hard Disk Data Recovery Solutions

By Sunil Punjabi

Data stored in a computer may be lost due to mechanical reasons like a head crash where the read-write head of the disk collides with its recording surface, a power surge, failure of the disk controller device, or due to a defective air filter. It may also be due to software-connected problems like virus problem, file corruption, problems in the operating system, or accidental erasure. In all these cases recovery and backup services are an absolute must.

Once any of these eventualities occur, access to data will be denied to the user in the normal way through the computer. In some cases data will be irretrievably lost as well. But in most cases, data is not lost. It is only access to it through the normal path that is denied and data can be retrieved through various other means. This process is known as hard disk data recovery.

One way of reducing the possibilities of disk failure and the resultant need for hard disk data recovery is using the technology of Redundant Array of Independent Disks, which is better known by its acronym RAID. In this process data is replicated and stored in different hard drives. The computer senses these small hard drives as a single storage unit. The arrangement provides more storage space and speeds up the computer, and gives the machine more fault tolerance.

The use of RAID is no foolproof solution for data loss. The advantage of RAID from a data recovery and backup services requirement perspective is that the data will be pretty much intact even if one of the drives fails. However, more than one hard disk from the group may fail and in such cases the process of hard disk recovery will become a must.

The word RAID was originally expanded as Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks though later the word inexpensive was changed into independent. There are different RAID levels and some of the levels use striping, which is an interleaving process whereby multiple disks are reading and writing at the same time. This arrangement makes hard disk data recovery process from a RAID group a little more complicated than that from a single large disk. Data is retrieved in almost all cases even though RAID data recovery may turn out to be more expensive for the customer.

Where disk damage is limited, connecting the damaged disk to another hard disk as a slave can retrieve data. There is also data recovery software used by data recovery and backup services providers, which is highly effective in most cases of data recovery. There are slight differences in the recovery software used for different operating systems like Linux, Windows, UNIX, etc. Some of these software are available online.

When hard disk failure is due to mechanical reasons like a head crash,recovery using software may not always be possible. The damaged parts of the drive will have to be replaced in such instances and data will have to be retrieved from the reconstructed drive. This is a slightly complicated procedure but many recovery and backup services provide the necessary help, thereby saving most of the data.

PCSoft is a Sydney based hard disk data recovery expert. Providing computer repairs, maintenance and computer support same day onsite support anywhere in Sydney. We can send a computer technician to your home or office for onsite assistance and data recovery and backup services today.

Linux and Unix Data Recovery

By Nahar Dijla

Forty years ago there was only one type of computer system. Today, the variety of computer systems has grown into its own world of complexities. Technological advances have been extraordinary in the hardware side of the industry. Yet while we marvel at ever-faster storage devices and greater processing power, it’s good to remind ourselves that we also need amazing new operating systems and file systems to manage the hardware and data.

True, there are many machines using Microsoft file systems, but it is a widely accepted fact that UNIX file systems survived stronger and much longer. UNIX operating systems have definitely established itself as a stable environment for most companies. In fact, most of the servers that are part of the infrastructure of the Internet are running a variant of the UNIX operating system. Recently, Linux has proved to be a stable alternative for companies running database servers or other business applications.

The Linux operating system placed great emphasis and focus towards the server environment, and increasingly the environment that is crucial to every professional, namely the desktop environment. Linux remained constant and been true to its UNIX roots. No wonder, it continues to grow by virtue of its ‘Open-Source’ status. The good thing about being Open-Source is that no single company gets to control the operating system. Some of the smartest minds in computer science established and devoted their careers to developing the operating system and file systems for the UNIX and Linux platforms.

Before the Seventies, the custom designed operating system was meant for for the hardware of the machine. The UNIX operating system had been designed in the late Sixties and was implemented in the early Seventies.

The amazing thing about UNIX was that it allowed hardware companies to concentrate design efforts on hardware without having to design a custom operating system to go with it. When UNIX started out, it wasn’t even marketed as a new operating system yet UNIX emerged further as an operating system and a strong alternative to mainframes.

With great focus on the file system point of view, UNIX brought a number of improvements to the design of file systems.

Most professionals for data recovery focus on the evaluation and recovery of one of these types of file systems. The stages of recovery are partition and volume verification, logical file system scan, error investigation, and repair, and volume reports.

However, there are situations where the quality of the recovery cannot be verified. One of these situations is when a file system repair utility has made permanent changes to the file system. When the tools of professionals fail to undo these changes because specific data has been changed, it is a difficult situation. Most of the UNIX file system variants also permanently remove inode entries when data is deleted.

Situations where files have been overwritten present the same problem; specific information that points to the data has been overwritten. All is not lost in circumstances like this. There are professional data recover engineers who have tools that will bypass the file system and look for specific file types – sometimes known as the magic number or unique identifier of a file. In these cases, the file names may be unrecoverable, however the file data may be readable.

No doubt, data recovery is a science-a great, emerging discipline that requires the best of trained experts. By opting for a company that claims to specialize in data recovery yet uses off-the-shelf recovery tools doesn’t guarantee efficient data recovery success.

You must opt for a company or a professional that researches and studies these file systems and then designs a suite of tools to facilitate Linux and Unix data recovery. Remember, automated tools provided by several data recovery companies don’t provide a good answer to complete the data recovery process/ This requires the professional services of experienced data recovery engineers who work till data is recovered. So remember to opt for the best solution providers so that quality is never compromised.

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From PCWorld: Failing Hard Drive: Linux to the Rescue

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