Hard Drive Failure Types and Solution

Hard drive is the most important part of a computer system, which stores all your data, applications and operating system. Because it has moving internal parts, it may fail at any point of time and may result into critical data loss situations. Such situations can be taken care of by deploying Data Recovery procedures.

Hard drives can fail in four different ways:

1 Damage to firmware zone/ firmware corruption

2 Mechanical failure

3 Electrical failure

4 Logical damage

Whether the lost data and information on the drive is retrievable or not depends upon the extent of the damage and exact cause of the data loss situation.

Firmware Corruption

Firmware means software embedded on hardware. It lies in physical hard disk hardware. It is a program which controls the hard drive. When firmware corruption occurs, operating system can not interact with the drive and thus cause data loss. After repairing the firmware, your data can be easily recovered.

Mechanical Failure

Mechanical hard drive failure occurs due to damage to internal hard drive components such as read/write head, actuator arm, spindle motor, disk platters etc. When any internal component goes faulty, data from the hard drive can not be accessed. You can identify it by clicking and scrapping noise of hard drive internals.

Electrical Failure

Electrical failure generally relates to the issue with hard drive circuit board. Your computer system may face power failure that can damage the logic board on the drive making it undetectable in BIOS. When it occurs, the drive may not spin up when it is powered on. So, it cannot get recognized by the operating system.

Logical Damage

Logical damage takes place due to errors with the logical hard drive components. It may range from simple ones like an invalid file allocation table entry to the more complex ones like file system corruption. It is totally different from the above three hard drive failure types. It can be recognized by the inaccessibility of data, invisible hard drive partitions/volumes and error messages while accessing data.

All these data loss problems can be handled easily by using appropriate Hard Drive Recovery solution. In case of firmware corruption, electrical failure and mechanical failure, you are recommended to take service from recovery experts. On the other hand, logical data loss situations can easily be handled on your own using Data Recovery software.

Hard Drive Recovery Service: Key Factors

Computer hard disk drives are made up of various components with complex interoperability in place. They have a number of internal moving parts and a logic board. All these parts are fragile and when they stop working properly, hard drive may crash and your precious data becomes inaccessible. Hard Drive Recovery service becomes essential to overcome such situations.

In terms of Data Recovery service, the most important thing that you need to check on is whether the problem is hardware-related or not. If your data has become inaccessible due to damaged hardware components, then Hard Drive Recovery service is suitable for you to opt.

Common computer hard drive issues include bad sectors, actuator arm problems, read/write head crash, spindle motor stop, faulty logic board etc. These problems may occur due to power failures, fatigue, erroneous handling of hard drive and other similar causes.

(1)Faulty Circuit Board: When the circuit board of hard drive gets damaged, your drive won’t be able to spin. It means that the platters aren’t moving beneath copper wire.

(2)Damaged Actuator Arm: In this case, the head can not move over the surface of disk platters and thus could not retrieve data from it.

(3)Read/Write Head Crash: This problem occurs when the head touches the disk platters and thus may cause scratches over them and can make all your data inaccessible.

(4)Hard Drive Recovery service can effectively handle all of the above issues. It is personalize assistance delivered by highly experienced Data Recovery professionals in safe environment of sterilized Clean Rooms.

Hard Drive Recovery service could be time consuming and expensive as it requires disassembling of the hard drive to resolve the problem. The tools and techniques needed to carry out Data Recovery service are very advanced and powerful.

Not all Hard Drive Recovery companies can provide you assured Data Recovery service. The company should have all the facilities with software utilities and hardware that are required for Hard Drive Recovery.

Before sending your hard drive to a Data Recovery specialist, it is highly recommended to perform complete analysis. You should always choose a Hard Drive Recovery company that has vast industrial experience in Data Recovery Industry.

How to Handle the situation When Data Loss from Hard Drive

Every computer, whether a desktop, or a server, contains one or more hard disk drives. And every mainframe computer and supercomputer is connected to a large number of these hard disk drives. A large number of manufacturers make hard disk drives, including Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu, and many more.

These huge number of hard drives have one thing in common, they store a huge amount of data, including digital data in a relatively simple manner. They are the heart and soul of the computer, and enable it to the efficient machine that a computer has become today. That is why they need to be safeguarded, otherwise, a user has to opt for hard drive data recovery methods.

A hard drive is the storage area of the system and stores all programs and applications. It may have any interface, or any operating system, but nothing can prevent data loss from it when a problem comes.

These problems include, but are not limited to, corruption of file system, cross linking of files, improper shut down of the system, corruption of the master boot sector, and corruption of boot sector. In such situations the only thing that can save the work of a user is a valid and updated backup.

A backup can be taken on any device, including, tapes, USB drives, external devices, or even in the same hard drive. It is also possible to keep a backup online. A backup can be used to recover hard drive data, irrespective of the reason of data loss. But for all those who have either not maintained a backup, or have a backup, which is not valid or updated, there is still some help available.

With the advancement of technology, it has become possible to perform hard drive recovery after data loss owing to the above mentioned reasons. It is also possible to recover data that has been lost due to different reasons, including, files lost due to emptying of recycle bin or due to pressing of the ‘Delete’ button while ‘Shift’ key was pressed, data lost due to formatting or resizing of a particular drive, or due to formatting of the whole disk. There are reliable third party hard drive recovery software that are available in the market today.

Easy Ways On How To Backup Files On Your Computer

Data loss is a big labored for anyone who uses a computer to work. Fires happen, computers crash (hold back alarming frequency), and virus programmers swallow become more advanced than ever before. Each of these situations presents its own uniques threat, but there is one avenue to deal with the emphatically devastating outcome- echelon backup.Some operating systems come with a backup utility that allows you to create backup copies of your entire hard invasion (or folders that you select) automatically. The two conspicuously popular operating systems, Windows Vista and Mac OS X both come harbour backup utilities.

After a singular point, though, reinforcement upping files on the equable computer that has the potential for crash trust end up devastating your system.Backing up files on CD or DVD is a viable option thanks to anyone who has that capability besides backs up once clout a span. The one fundamental ice to this comp is that the disc or DVD is an external storage media, and it can be kept safe face of the computer, or even the room the computer is leverage. Many large companies do routine backups of central data and keep those disks in a fire-proof safe off site.This can still be a time consuming method, and each disk contract only hold a fraction of the entire contents of a hard drive.

External hard drives advance the easiest and most trustworthy method of marked backup storage, as they are available in very large capacities, connect easily, further culpability copy physically empty from the computer at factor time. Unless you maintenance your external hard drive locked up in a safe over well, perceptible too power mean destroyed by fire, flood, or gall should a disaster direct. They are also disposed to the plain failure problems that plague internal drives.

A solution for how to backup files is development direction popularity among central users as well as posting IT managers and that pattern is online backup. This relatively else outline of file backup is done online with a company that is physically miles away, yet the data is always available at the move of a few keystrokes. for a nominal fee, well-qualified are several companies that will store your data in heavily protected servers, often automatically as well.Choosing a backup map is simply a matter of determining how much capacity further promised land you need. glaringly people find that external galling drives further online services offer the best refuge for the cost.

Solution for Hard Drive Recovery

We have various brands of hard disk that provides a variety of capacities required by the computer user. One brand of hard disk that is very good to use is western digital. This brand of hard disk is an option for some computer users. But there is time for us as users make a mistake that is fatal to a computer, especially the hard disk. Errors that make data stored on the hard disk are lost either because of the threat threatened viruses and so on. You do not need to worry because the San Diego PC Help provides services such as western digital data recovery.

It’s a service that will help computer users who are using hard disk with a brand western digital. San Diego PC Help can help overcome the problem of data recovery western digital. There are various causes which may disturb or destroy your hard disk, you have to anticipate it. San Diego PC Help has had much experience of computer hardware including western digital hard drive recovery.

San Diego PC Help is highly recommended for you as computer users who did not know everything about hardware or software. The advantage held by San Diego PC Help is receiving all the service with mail. So you can send your hard disks that have problems and let their technicians working. The prices offered by them are also very affordable with your needs. So if you have trouble with your hard disk problems, please contact San Diego PC Help.

Outdated Drivers Could Cause PC Crashes. Update Your PC Drivers Now

If your Mac is starting or running slower than it used to, gives you error messages during boot, or takes longer and longer to boot, you might have a pending hard drive failure. While you can still access your hard disk, you need to run a hard drive utility program. If your situation is worse than that, such as the hard drive won’t start or mount, you may need help from a third-party Mac hard drive recovery program.

While your hard disk is still working

You can perform Mac hard drive recovery operations while your computer is still running in single-user, normal session, or boot-up (but no desktop displays) modes. In fact, it is a good idea to get familiar with the use of hard drive recovery operations, so that you are familiar with how they work. When the time comes to really make use of them, you’ll be ready.

Your Mac comes with a couple of utilities that you can access either using the installation disk or the command line – Disk Utility and fsck. The utility fsck is used at the command line and should not be used first if you are running Mac OS x 10.4 or later. Disk Utility is accessed from the command line using the command diskutil or hdiutil.

The graphical version of Disk Utility is accessed from your installation disk. The utility gives you broad support for hard disk and data issues on your drive. The hard drive recovery features of disk utility include:

• Verification and reparation of disk integrity compromises
• Verification and reparation of corrupted permissions
• Reconciliation of the Apple partition table with the GUID partition table and the Master Boot Record
• Reparation of mount, unmount and ejection of disks for all media
• Restoration of volumes from Apple Software Restore (ASR) images
• Running the Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) tool (which can direct you to return the drive to the manufacturer for an applicable warranty replacement)
• Additional functions related to hard disk and CD images and more

All hard disk recovery options on the disk utility should be used to confirm that the disk is properly maintained and restored. See Apple’s support page on Disk Utility.

For the fsck command line utility, use this only when your ability to start a normal session is compromised. While your disk is healthy, look up the limitations and use of fsck or use another computer system to do so to understand the command line use needed to determine how your drive is configured prior to using this utility.

When you cannot boot

A power loss event, an improper shutdown, or a forced restart of your Mac can result in an inability to start a session. When that happens, or when your computer partially boots, cannot get to the login screen or cannot display the desktop, you might try a safe boot.

Safe boot is an option at startup shown for Mac OS x 10.2 or later. This mode includes automatic disk checking and repair. You might find your computer is fully restored after the safe boot when you shut down and restart normally. If your Mac OS x is earlier than 10.2, you should use Disk Utility instead.

Overview of the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0

There is no getting around the fact the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 (1TB tested) is a veritable giant of an external storage unit. The actual specifications of 7.1" x 11" x 5" don't even do it justice and the best way to describe this single hard drive based external storage solution is: BIG. How big you may ask? Think Belkin "bulldog" 750VA Battery Backed Uninterruptable Power Supply (a.k.a. UPS) big. It is also not only large but also heavy weighing in at an official 15 lbs.

The reason the ioSafe SoloPRO is so large is the chassis is made from thick steel with no plastic anywhere in sight! The reason for this "overkill" is this unit is not your typical external storage solution. This unit is barely backpack portable (no way is it fitting in your pockets!) and trades portability for durability. You can literally burn and / or drown this beast and it is guaranteed to keep on ticking like a real world version of the Energizer battery bunny! I will be putting these boasts to the test later.

The front of the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 is fairly bare yet not overly plain looking. You have some small nicely styled exhaust slits for internal airflow, some nicely painted information detailing the name and model and that is about it; though the these slits to emits a solid pale blue when the unit is powered on and blinks when the drive is being accessed which is kind of cool in a geeky sort of way!

The back of the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 has much more in the way of connectors and areas of interest than the front. At the bottom is the external power supply connector, ON/OFF switch and the USB 3.0 port. Above these ports is a small fan for active cooling. There is also a Kensington lock port to further make stealing it difficult (lets face it no one is "sneaking off" with this bad boy under their shirt!). If the idea of a "mere" Kensington lock is not enough security for you the back lip of the unit has been extended and has two large holes drilled into the metal. You literally can bolt this sucker to something even BIGGER and HEAVIER than itself, or go old school and pad lock the son of a gun in place. Needless to say you have OPTIONS!

Seagate GoFlex Desk on the left, Belkin UPS on the right. The rest of the back, both sides and top are slab sided with no distinguishing features. The ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 really does look a lot like the Monolith from 2010: A Space Odyssey; though to be fair the front has been nicely sculpted with a curvaceous look to it so on than its massive size it should actually blend seamlessly into most computer environment. Heck, stick it next to your UPS and no one will be the wiser!

Me being me, after all the testing was over the very first thing I did was tear down this sucker. Its fireproofing comes from two large form fitting pieces of ceramic in which the hard drive is cocooned. Since the ceramic composite material can absorb copious amounts of heat before transferring it on to its precious contents these two pieces really are the secret to its success (think of the Space Shuttle and its belly of ceramic tiles). How ioSafe was able to make it water proof is because the drive is housed in your typical electrostatic shock bag which has been sealed at the end. There is a small central hole where the necessary cables come out of it but to ensure no water leaks in ioSafe has used copious amounts of silicon to seal the only weak link.

The hard drive ioSafe has opted for is a 3.5" 7200rpm Hitachi 71000.c 1TB model which is the newest 2 platter revision of that particular model. Since I already have all the USB 3.0 numbers and testing completed, I will be including the SATA performance of this drive as well as the USB 3.0. As an aside, the SATA to USB 3.0 bridge/controller is the JMicron JMS539.

When it comes to the warranty side of things, ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 offers a standard 3 year warranty with an included 1 year of free Data Recovery Service. If this combination does not meet your needs they offer two extended warranty options. The first costs $50 and upgrades you to three years of Data Recovery Service but does not extended the "typical" portion of the warranty beyond the standard 3 years coverage. The second option, which goes for $100, no only gives you FIVE years of DRS but also extends your normal "it died, please send me a new one" warranty to FIVE years. This is bloody awesome as you need not worry about either your data or drive going south on you as ioSafe has you covered!

ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 Performance

In these tests, a single ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 drive (1TB reviewed) was connected to an Asus U3S6 USB 3.0 x4 adapter card plugged into the secondary X16 slot (running in x8 mode) which conforms to the PCI-E 2.0 standard. The motherboard was a Gigabyte EP45 Extreme with an Intel Q9550 quad CPU with 4GB of Ram. Running Windows 7. All tests were run 4 times only best results are shown. Main OS drive is a VelociRaptor 300GB, secondary data transfer drive was a Seagate 2TB XT drive plugged in to a free ICH 10 port on the motherboard. To get the SATA results the Hitachi hard drive was removed from the ioSafe and is labeled as "ioSafe SoloPRO SATA".

HDTach Read Performance
As is our want lets look at the various sequential read performance characteristics of the these high performance drives and by extension see what the USB 3.0 controller card and interface does it. To test this, I used the venerable HDTach benchmarking program.

For a 1TB drive, the Hitachi is a little on the low end of the spectrum; so the USB 3.0 numbers can be forgiven to a certain extenet. With that being said there is still a performance penalty associated with using this particual drive inside the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 enclosure. Please don't get me wrong, its not earth shatteringly huge but the JMicron controller is to blame.

HDTune Write Performance
Next up is sequential write speed. For this test, I used HDTune Pro.

As feared the USB 3.0 numbers are lower than what this particular Hitachi 1TB drive is capable of delivering. It still is much faster than what you would get over USB 2.0 but it still doesn't live up to its potential.

Crystal DiskMark Performance Results
While sequential tests are all well and fine they do not even tell half the story. For a more rounded look, let's look at one of my perennial favourites CDM. All tests were 100MB in size, 5 runs per test.

We can see an across the board performance hit with this enclosure and it appears that you are going to have to live with slightly lowered performance if you want as much protection as this beast of an enclosure can provide.

ATTO Performance
Besides Crystal DiskMark another great tool for seeing the power curve of a given storage item (or in this case the effects the controller board has on it) is ATTO. This is especially true when you line graph the results as I have done so for you. All settings were left at their defaults.

The power curve certainly does suffer because if ioSafe's choice of USB 3.0 controller chip; but once again the numbers are certainly NOT terrible and if this enclosure can live up to its claims in the rugedness department I will actually be fairly impressed with the "full package" this enclosure offers.

Real World Performance
While synthetics are great for showing the performance in theorical terms, nothing beat good old fashioned empirical data. For this, I used RichCopy and have broken this test up into two separate and distinct subtests: large file and small file and each test consisting of two parts. Part "A" was copying data to the drive and Part "B" was copying from the drive to a secondary internally attached drive. For large file testing stage, two 4.00GB contiguous RAR files was used for a total of 8GB being move to and from the drive. For the small file test a folder containing 245 subfolders with a total 10540 files varying in length from 20mb to 1kb for a total of 5.00GB being moved to and from the drive.

As with the synthetic tests there is certainly a performance hit to using the drive inside this enclosure. Lets put those rugged boasts to the test and see what this enclosure can REALLY do!

Water immersion Test
This one is a simple test. I simple took the unit, unplugged it and dunked it into a cooler of water overnight. This is what I found out.

While yes this unit is technically waterproof it really isn't. To be more precise the hard drive inside it is water proof but the USB to SATA JMicron controller chip, its PCB the fan and even the blue front LED are not. The magic smoke will and DOES escape after an extended water dunk. This makes sense as only the hard drive is sealed against the elements. However, yanking the waterproof baggy with its hard drive inside and plugging it into free SATA port on my motherboard shows that your DATA is safe and sound. That is all that really matters after all!

Fire test
This test is a bit more complicated. Sure I could simply have built a roaring wood fire around it and cooked it for a half an hour, but that isn't all that fun! Instead of doing that, I simply made a batch of "homemade napalm". In layman terms it is a mixture of benzene, naphthalene, low octane gasoline and a touch of citronella (for the smell) all of which has been jellied with my own secret recipe of goodies (which does included polystyrene).

I have left out the magnesium and aluminum powder which helped later "improved Napalm" (aka Super Napalm) to continue burning even under water for extended periods of time. Hell if I wanted that I would have just whipped up a batch of Thermite as the end result would have been the same: dead ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 and an unfair test. This test will last 30 minutes and while the SoloPRO is already dead from its dunking it will be interesting to see if it can withstand a moderately intense fire like it is rated for!

Please note: this is NOT something you should try at home. I and Everything USB take no responsibility if you are foolish enough to try this. Only trained personnel should play with this stuff and finding a recipe on the Internet does NOT count as training.

All in all, I used well over 2 Gallons of napalm on this enclosure during its 30 minute roast and got flames easily 8 feet high. Smelt like freedom. Good times. As for the unit itself, the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 1TB got nice and toasty, to the point the FAN inside it burned and popped, the drive and its contents are perfectly fine. Bloody awesome!

Recap

While the ioSafe SoloPro USB 3.0 (1TB reviewed) is not the fastest enclosure we have ever seen, and to be fair, this is partially due to the choice of hard drive ioSafe has made, it is still much faster than what you will get with a USB 2.0 unit! When you add in the fact that your house could probably be deluged with a Noah's Ark level flood, or burn down around the SoloPro and your precious data would be safe the end result is awfully darn impressive!

With that being said not all is perfect with this external storage solution and there is one glaring flaw we can see with the ioSafe's marketing: the SoloPRO USB 3.0 is NOT waterproof and is sure as heck NOT fireproof! The hard drive inside it maybe but the enlcousre is far from being all that durable. When I see words like "waterproof" or "fireproof" I expect it to be just that. I don't expect to have to look for a little hidden * stating it is referring to the hard drive house within in it!

Taken as a whole this is a minor annoyance at best as your data is safe and sound. Everything else is just minor compared nit picking compared to THAT. For this reason, I have no troubles recommending the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 to anyone who prizes durability over everything else in an external storage unit! If you fall into this category, then the ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 should be on your short list!

Backup and Restore Your Hard Disk Drive Contents Using DriveImage XML V2.14

If you want to know how to backup and restore your hard drive’s contents and restore it at will, then we can recommend you use a free software like DriveImage XML V2.14. Our review of this free software boldly claims that this backup software application is better than Norton Ghost. DriveImage XML V2.14, a cost-free alternative that I find much more competent than Norton Ghost is our best choice to backup videos, installers, photos and other important documents.

You don’t have to spend $69.99 to purchase Norton Ghost v15 to safeguard your computer system. I love the internet; the best things are truly free! DriveImage XML is a small full version download (only 1.78mb), you can get it from http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm. It saddens me that this good superior freeware program is not very well known. Norton Ghost is an over-rated bloatware that eats up a lot of memory and is super slow compared to DriveImage XML v2.14 in our tests using Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 OSes.

DriveImage XML v2.14 is Free to Download

Not only is DriveImage free for non-commercial use but I find it much easier to use. The interface is laid out in a colorful format that states clearly what buttons to click to do backups or restore a save image. This is how utilities should be done, programmers needs to understand the beauty of simple program User Interface! Not all computer users have computer diplomas!

While at the office we do use Norton Ghost for mission-critical backups, I am now fully convinced that DriveImage XML is a worthy costless replacement. I have tried this freeware at my internet café and so far, 2 months of using it to backup 8 desktops and 4 laptops have proven to be quick and reliable. People are scared that using freeware backup softwares will compromise their valuable data should not feel so with DriveImage XML. It is enterprise worthy and a commercial version is available if you use it outside of your house.

Unlike Norton Ghost who uses a proprietary backup file format, DriveImage does backups using standard XML files which permits users to use other 3rd party backup softwares to restore with should they choose to do so.

Please review these feature highlights of DriveImage and you will be extremely delighted with it too.

DriveImage XML V2.14 Product Highlights

1. Backup logical drives and partitions to image files
2. Browse images, view and extract files
3. Restore images to the same or a different drive
4. Copy directly from drive to drive
5. Schedule automatic backups
6. Run DriveImage from WinPE boot CD-ROM

It offers the same features of Norton Ghost but, believe me, it implements backups and restorations almost twice as fast. DriveImage XML deserves more people using it. I am publishing this as public service. Download it now if you want an excellent but free backup utility. If you have some money to spare, you can also buy the commercial version to unlock more advanced features of this backup software application.

Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore Utilities

Areca Backup

Areca Backup is an open source backup program that lets you back up a set of files and directories (folders). It can also perform post-backup actions, like send you an email backup report, run custom scripts (batch files), etc. Your backups can be a zip file, a standard directory containing your a copy of your original files or delta backups (where only modified portions of your files are stored), etc. The software also supports encryption (AES128 and AES256), compression (zip and zip64), incremental, differential and full backups, the ability to recover archives from a specific date, the use of source file filters (to back up according to extension, subdirectory, size, date, status, etc), file version tracking, a command line interface as well as a graphical user interface, etc. Windows and Linux versions are available.

Bacula - The Open Source Network Backup Solution

Bacula is able to backup, verify your backups and restore (recover from backups) across a network of computers. The site says that the program is an "enterprise-ready, network-based backup program" meaning that it is designed so that an administrator can easily manage the backups of multiple computers on a corporate network. (Note though that it can also be used on a single computer system.) Besides being able to back up to a hard disk, it can also backup to a tape drive (a list of supported tape drives is given on their site). This tool works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-type systems (including FreeBSD), although precompiled versions (that is, ready-to-run packages) appear to be available only for Windows and Linux. (If you have the know-how, you can of course download the source code and compile them into executables for your system yourself.)

BackupPC Open Source Backup

BackupPC allows you to back up your Windows, Linux and Mac OS X PCs, desktops and laptops to a server's disk. It either uses SMB, tar over SSH/RSH/NFS or rsync. The program is written in Perl and is open source.

Amanda Backup and Recovery Software Community Edition

The Amanda Community Edition is an open source backup and recovery software for Linux. Administrators can set up a backup server to back up mulitiple host computers to a single tape drive, tape changer or hard disk via the network.

Microsoft SyncToy

Microsoft SyncToy allows you to synchronize your data between two storage locations, so that you can keep the latest version of your files in both locations. The tool is also able to track situations when you rename a file, and it makes sure that the file in the other storage area is also renamed. The tool only works under Windows XP SP 2 and requires the .NET framework.

Back4Win

Back4Win allows home users the ability to backup and restore your data to ZIP and self-extracting EXE files. You can control the level of compression of your data files, span disks, predefine the disk size (to suit CD-Rs and CD-RWs), password-lock your backups, burn to CD-R/W, restore from damaged backups, etc.

Cobian Backup

Cobian Backup is a backup and restore utility that can backup your files and directories to another directory or drive on the same computer or to another computer on your network. It also supports FTP backup. You can compress and encrypt your backups. Standalone decompression and decryption utilities are also available so that if you wish, you can recover your files without having to use the backup program. Included with the backup program is a scheduler, so that you can schedule your backups to occur, say, every night when you are not using the computer. The program also supports remote backups. This is a Windows program.

FreeByte Backup

Freebyte Backup is a Windows program that supports the backing up files and directories to a backup directory. It also handles incremental backups, where only files not already in the backup set is saved, scheduled backups and profiles.

Unison File Synchronizer

Unison synchronizes files and directories stored on different hosts on the Internet. It can handle changes made to either replica of a distributed directory structure, and hence is more than just a mirroring utility. It is open source, distributed under the GNU GPL, and works on Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X, etc.

Free Hard Disk / Partition Imaging and Cloning Software

Macrium Reflect Free

This software is able to image your currently running system (using a facility known as Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service) to another local hard disk, to the Network, a USB or Firewire drive, and DVD. It has a built-in scheduler, so that you can schedule it to back up your system at a convenient time by itself, has 32 bit and 64 bit versions, comes with a Linux-based bootable rescue CD as well as a BartPE plugin, etc. (The commercial full version includes the ability to automatically verify images made, password protection of your images, a Windows PE 2.0 rescue CD with RAID support, etc.)

Clonezilla

This backup and image software is provided in the form of an ISO file, which you have to write to a CD or DVD. You then boot from it and use it to back up or restore your hard disk to another hard disk or the network. At the time of this writing, it looks like the software requires you to have a fair bit of knowledge of computers. For example, you are given menus that say "Mount local device, mount SSH server, Mount NFS server" (etc), and terms like "mount", "remote resource", "server" are used freely in the interface. As such, if you are just an average end-user of Windows and Mac computers, you may find the interface somewhat intimidating. It supports Windows (FAT, NTFS), Mac OS (HFS+), and Linux file systems (ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs) and only backs up the used sectors/blocks in the hard disk partition. There is also a server edition that is suitable for cloning multiple machines simultaneously. The server edition requires that you to set up a "DRBL server" (where DRBL stands for "Diskless Remote Boot in Linux"). The program is released under the GNU General Public License and is thus open source.

Clone Maxx

Clone Maxx copies the contents of one hard disk to another. It is run from a bootable diskette, and is useful when you want to transfer everything from one hard disk to another as you might want to do when you buy a new hard drive to replace an existing one. It supports DMA transfer, which speeds up the rate at which your data is transferred. It works independently of the existing file system or the number of partitions the drive has.

PING - PartImage Is Not Ghost

PartImage, or Partition Image, is a Linux/UNIX utility to make an image of your partitions in a file. It is able to image only used portions of the partitions saving time and space. The images are compressed. The utility supports the ext2fs, ext3fs, ReiserFS, FAT16, FAT32, HPFS, JFS, XFS, UFS, HFS, and NTFS file systems. This is a live ISO that you can burn onto a CD so that you can use it on any computer regardless of the operating system that is running.

Dubaron DiskImage

Dubaron DiskImage backs up and restores partitions, hard disks, USB keys, floppy drives and even optical media (like CDROMs and DVDs). The image it makes may be compressed. It is for personal use only. Supported platforms: Windows 2000 and XP.

Forensic Acquisition Utilities

This is basically the Windows version of the well-known (and versatile) Unix "dd" utility, which allows you to copy every sector from a device to a file (or vice versa, or from one device to another, etc). It requires Windows 2000 or XP. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This is a command line program.

NFGDump

nfgdump (NTFS-FAT-Generic dump) is a Windows and Linux tool that dumps (images) and restores NTFS, compressed NTFS, FAT16, FAT32 and any generic partition. Dump files (that is, the backup image) can be compressed, encrypted or split. The page file can also be omitted from the dump file / backup image. The software is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It runs under Windows 2000, XP and Linux. This is a command line program.

WinDD

This is a Windows version of the well-known (and versatile) Unix "dd" utility. It runs on Windows XP and is released under the GNU General Public License. This is a command line program.

DriveImage XML

DriveImage XML is a hard disk imaging utility that allows you to backup a PC's hard disk or partition from within Windows XP (XP Home and/or XP Professional only). It can image a partition that is currently in use (such as the system drive), compress the image while backing up, restore an image to another partition/drive and clone a drive. Note that although it is able to image the system drive while you're working in it, it cannot restore the image to the system drive if it is currently in use (obviously). The solution is to use their BartPE plugin (what they call the "WinPE boot CD-ROM") to create a BartPE CDROM. You can then restore your system partition after booting from the CDROM. See my tutorial on How to Create a Bootable "Live" Windows Rescue CD for more information on how to create such a CD.

g4u - Harddisk Image Cloning for PCs

g4u is a bootable CDROM, or if you prefer, floppy, that allows you to clone an image of a PC's hard disk for deployment on other PCs using FTP. The bootable floppy and CDROM supports both the cloning and restoration process. g4u supports any operating system on any filesystem. All you need are two floppy disks or one CD-R/RW, an FTP server and a DHCP server. The bootable disk uses a NetBSD system.

Partition Saving

Partition Saving is an MSDOS hard disk imaging utility. Place it on an MSDOS boot disk and use it to image your Windows, MSDOS and Linux partitions. It supports the imaging of NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, FAT12, ext2 (and possibly other) partitions. It can do a sector-by-sector copy or (for the partition-types listed here) copy only the occupied sectors thereby saving space and time in your backups. It is able to automatically split the backup file into smaller files of a size you specify (useful if you plan to burn the backup to a CDR(W) or DVD+/-R(W) later). The backup file may be compressed with a compression level you select. Updated: starting from version 3.50, Partition Saving now works in Windows and can be placed on a BartPE Rescue CD.

PartImage

PartImage, or Partition Image, is a Linux/UNIX utility to make an image of your partitions in a file. It is able to image only used portions of the partitions saving time and space. The images are compressed. The utility supports the ext2fs, ext3fs, ReiserFS, FAT16, FAT32, HPFS, JFS, XFS, UFS, HFS, and NTFS file systems. Note that if you are not using Linux, and want to use Parition Image on a PC, look at the other entries on this page for PING.

SystemRescueCD

SystemRescueCD is a bootable system rescue CD-ROM for PCs containing utilities that allow you to manage and edit your hard disk partitions (GNU Parted and QTParted), image your hard disk partitions (Partimage), a partition table backup and restore utility (Sfdisk), various file system tools that allow you to format, resize and edit existing partitions on your hard disk. It does not depend on the operating system you have installed on your hard disk - the CDROM is self-contained and is designed to serve as a rescue disk. There is also a version for the blind (it incorporates a speech reader).

Ultimate Boot CD

Ultimate Boot CD is a bootable CDROM for PCs that contain a variety of software for diagnosing and fixing problems on your computer, managing your hard disk partitions, imaging or cloning your hard disk partitions (it includes Partition Saving, see elsewhere on this page), resetting your (forgotten) password on NT, Win2k, or XP, scanning your hard disks for viruses (it includes some free antivirus utilities), etc.

DiscWizard for Windows

If you are moving your system from an old hard disk to a Seagate disk, you can download this free software from Seagate make a clone of your existing hard disk on your new Seagate hard disk. The version, at the time this was written, also allows you to make a backup image of your hard disk and restore it. Besides running from your Windows system, you can also create a bootable rescue CD from which you can image, clone and restore your hard disk.

MaxBlast

Seagate/Maxtor MaxBlast is free for those who have bought Maxtor hard disks on PCs. One of its features is that it can make an exact duplicate (clone) of your existing drive onto your new hard disk. The cloning facility supports FAT32 and NTFS partitions, among others. Besides cloning your hard disk, you can also make a backup image of the disk onto another hard disk, and restore it. This is a Windows program. It also allows you to create a bootable CD from which you can image, clone and restore your fixed disks.

HDClone Free Edition

HDClone allows you to copy the contents of an IDE hard disk onto a larger capacity hard disk (SCSI drives are not supported). It is useful when you upgrade or change your hard disk and don't want to reinstall your system again. It creates a bootable floppy disk and allows you to clone your disk when you boot from it. It cannot copy to another disk of the same size, nor does it support the Ultra-DMA of modern computers (it uses the old and slower PIO modes).

Data recovery software

Most data recovery program search for deleted MFT entries to undelete files. These programs usually give a give a probability of recovery rating of 'good', 'medium' or 'poor'. What they are actually doing is locating the MFT record for a deleted file and then checking the rest of the MFT records to determine if the clusters that the deleted file occupied are being used by any other file stored on the computer. As only one file can occupy any one cluster on a hard drive, if other files are using your deleted files storage space then it is likely that the original data has been overwritten and permanently destroyed.

This recovery technique is usually relatively fast way to get data back, as all the recovery program has to do is find the deleted file entries in the MFT and then go directly to that location of the hard disk to perform the data recovery. You will see an MFT search when you execute a "Fast Search" using Recover My Files Data Recovery Software.

However, if your MFT is corrupt, defective or has itself been overwritten, this method isn't going to help you even though the file data still remains out on the disk waiting to be found. What you need to do is search unallocated clusters.

File Allocation Table (FAT) or Master File Table (MFT): NTFS recovery and FAT recovery

On older Operating Systems such as Windows 98 there is a storage area known as the 'Root Directory'. This is the place which stores the name of a file, the location of its starting cluster, and the size of the file. In order to find a file the Operating System uses this information to get to the first storage cluster of a file. It then uses a special table at the start of the disk know as the File Allocation Table or FAT to identify the remaining clusters that are used to store the file. It is important to realize that this information is stored completely separate from your file data and is why FAT data recovery is possible.

In newer Operating Systems the FAT and Directory Entry method has been merged and replaced by a single table known as the Master File Table or MFT. Whilst an MFT is more complex, the principal of locating the start of a file and its subsequent storage clusters is essentially the same.

What happens when I delete a file?

Lets look to see what happens when you intentionally delete a file and why it may be possible to bring that file back. When you select a file and press the delete key on a Windows computer the file is sent to the Recycle Bin. You may think of the Windows Recycle Bin as just another fancy storage folder on your hard drive. The 'real' deletion (at least as far as this article is concerned) is what happens when the Recycle Bin is emptied or the deletion bypasses the Windows Recycle Bin altogether.

When a file is deleted the Operating System marks the file name in the MFT with a special character that signifies to the computer that the file has been deleted. The computer now looks at the clusters occupied by that file as being empty and therefore available space to store a new file. What the Windows Operating System does NOT do is go out to the clusters on the hard disk where the files data is actually stored and wipe the contents of these clusters. The deleted file data is still there, but the Computer Operating System no longer knows it exists.

This in fact is the underlying principal of data recovery. It is about finding data that still exists on the hard drive but which currently can't be located by the Operating System. If the clusters containing the data have are, corrupted or physically damaged, then recovering the data they once contained is impossible.

Ok, so my data is still there, but for how long? The answer to this question is completely up to you. The only way that your deleted MFT record or your file data itself will permanently be destroyed is if it is overwritten by other data. This means that any computer activity after the deletion has the potential to permanently erase otherwise recoverable files.

If you are attempting data recovery from your hard drive, if possible connect it to another computer as the slave drive so that the operating system wont be doing a merry dance over you deleted files when you attempt the recovery process. If you use data recovery software, don't install it on the drive on which the files were lost. Better yet, use a floppy disk or CD version if available. If you send your hard drive to a professional data recovery service they should not be working on the original hard drive. They should take a sector copy (an exact copy including all deleted information) of your hard drive and work on this. You may consider doing this yourself. There are a number of programs that will do this, the most common being Norton GHOST. But remember, you must make a complete sector copy of your hard drive to make sure the image includes all the deleted areas of the drive.

Data Recovery by Searching for Deleted MFT Records

Most data recovery programs search for deleted MFT entries to undelete files or unformat drives. These programs usually give a give a probability or hard drive data recovery rating of 'good', 'medium' or 'poor'. What they are actually doing is locating the MFT record for a deleted file and then checking the rest of the MFT records to determine if the clusters that the deleted file occupied are being used by any other file stored on the computer. As only one file can occupy any one cluster on a hard drive, if other files are using your deleted files storage space then it is likely that the original data has been overwritten and permanently destroyed. This recovery technique is usually relatively fast, as all the recovery program has to do is find the deleted file entries in the MFT and then go directly to that location of the hard disk to perform the data recovery. You will see an MFT search when you execute a "Fast Search" using Recover My Files Data Recovery Software.

However, if your MFT is corrupt, defective or has itself been overwritten, this method isn't going to help you get data back even though the file data still remains out on the disk waiting to be found. What you need to do is search unallocated clusters.

File Storage: Sectors and Clusters: File Recovery

When you purchase a new hard drive and before it has any data on it, it is has usually already undergone a 'low level format'. The purpose of a low level format is to divide all the magnetic space on the hard drive into small storage areas. These storage areas are known as 'sectors', however for efficiency purposes the Operating System (e.g. Windows XP) groups sectors together into 'clusters'.

A cluster is the smallest unit of storage space with which the Operating System (e.g. Windows XP) will deal. If you save a very small file to your computer it will all fit within 1 storage cluster on the hard drive. If you save a very large file it may fill up many clusters, that is, as many clusters as it takes to hold all the content of the file.

Things get a bit more complicated by the fact that a single file does not have to reside within contiguous clusters. It may be that the Operating System stores a single file in clusters on different parts of the hard disk. This is called a 'fragmented' file. The problem with a fragmented files is that it can slow your computer down as it needs to spend time and resources sending the actuator arm to different parts of the hard disk to read the complete file. This is why many people regularly use a defragmentation program. The amount of fragmentation in a file can also reduce your ability to recover deleted files as we will explain later in this article.

So we can now think of our hard drive as being broken down into many clusters which hold the contents of our files. A cluster that is being used to store a file is called an 'allocated cluster', and if it is not being used to store a file an 'unallocated cluster'.

The next question is, 'how does the computer know where to look when it wants to find a specific file?'. Well, if you wanted to find a specific chapter in a book the best thing to do would be to go and look up the Table of Contents. A computer does much the same thing, which is also important if you want to recover data, recover a file, or undelete.

Learn About Hard drive data recovery

Hard drives are complex. They have a circuit board and a number of moving parts. In terms of hard drive data recovery, the first thing that you must evaluate is whether it is a hardware problem that is stopping you from accessing your data. Common hardware problems include a faulty circuit board or problems with the actuator arm.

A faulty circuit board is characterize by a drive that does not 'spin up', meaning that platters are not turning underneath the copper wire. A faulty actuator arm or more serious mechanical error is characterize by an abnormal clicking noise or a grinding noise. The best advise in determining whether you have a hardware problem is to listen to the sound of your hard drive. If you cannot hear the platters spinning (i.e. it is quiet when it is turned on) or you hear more serious noises then you should stop using the drive immediately and you will need to send your drive to a hardware data recovery service.

Hardware data recovery can be expensive because technicians may need to disassemble your hard drive to fix the problem. Hard drive data recovery is usually done in a 'clean room' as hard drives are sealed to avoid errors caused by dust or other particles. Also hard drives are finely tuned machinery and it takes specialist equipment to read the platters from a physically damaged drive.

If you are sending your hard drive to a data recovery specialist then you should attempt to obtain an upfront estimate of fees (although you will rarely get one), ask that if you send your hard drive for quotation purposes will they send it back to you in the same condition if you choose not to use the service, and make sure you send it to a reputable company as you may only get one chance at hard drive data recovery.

Learn About Hard Drives

Whether you store files on a hard drive, floppy disk, or other external storage device like a Zip Drive, USB drive, compact flash card, or other media, the way in which the computer stores your data is essentially the same. For the purpose of this article will talk about data recovery for hard drives but the principals can be applied to most storage media.

A hard drive contains a number of disks called 'platters'. These platters are coated with a magnetic substance. The platters spin at high speed under an mechanical arm (the 'actuator' arm) that moves backwards and forwards over the surface of each platter. On the end of this metallic arm is a small copper wire. The computer sends a pulse through this wire which changes the state of the magnetic surface of a platter as it passes underneath. In this way the files that you store on your computer are encoded into the magnetic substance.

External Hard Drive Repair

External hard drive repair has become increasingly important given the volume of critical data we backup and save to these disks. An external hard disk is more likely to experience physical damage due to it being so portable. And software/file system faults can easily occur, just as with internal hard drives. However it should still be possible to recover hard disk data and restore the drive to working order in most cases. Here, we’ll show how to repair external hard drive issues relating to mechanical and software faults.

How To Repair External Hard Drive Mechanical Issues

Start by working out if you have a mechanical / component fault or if there is a software issue.

Hardware damage is often identified by abnormal noises from the hard drive. The sounds of scratching may mean the spindles/heads are seizing up. Likewise, a clicking sound may mean the spindle motors have a problem. A rattling noise could mean a component has come loose.

Investigate as follows:

1. Do not continue to use/run the external drive (this could cause more damage).
2. Unplug the device and open up the casing.
3. Check for loose components to be tightened. Check the platters & arms are not bent. If the drive appears scratched then seek professional help as the read/write heads could be misaligned (and further use or alterations could make this worse).
4. Close up the casing and retest.

Some additional hardware considerations:

* Check the USB cable/USB port is not damaged. Try running the device on a different port/second PC/using a different USB cable.

External Hard Drive Repair Software

The most severe fault you may experience is when the entire disk contents cannot be seen. In this case, use the options in the external hard drive recovery section below. Do not run the Check Disk utility first as this may reorganise data making data recovery less successful.

The more common software faults you may experience are (a) file system faults and (b) bad sectors. These result in partial loss of directories/files. Windows provides its own external hard drive repair software for scanning and repairing these types of faults.

Run an external drive check as follows:

1. Connect the external hard drive and computer via a USB cable.
2. Open Windows Explorer. Right-click the external drive and select “Properties”.
3. In the Properties window, select the Tools tab.
4. In the Tools tab choose “Check Now” in the error checking section.
5. Options can vary at this point depending on OS. If available, select “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”. Alternatively, select “Thorough” if present.
6. Click “Start” to begin the repairs.


If you fear that your data may be lost then data recovery software such as Remo Undelete and Restore My Files Data Recovery can help retrieve lost data.

1. Install and run a recovery tool.
2. Select the external hard drive to scan for lost data clusters (including those in bad sectors).
3. The program returns a list of found files. Copy the files you need to a new directory/location.

Recovery tools only work on mechanically fit drives (e.g. they won’t work if the heads are misaligned). They will have a better chance of finding more files if the disk check utility has not been run (this may jumble up data clusters on disk memory).

Hard Disk Recovery Services- Recover Your Precious Data

It is hard to believe that the hard drive on which you have saved all your personal and official documents and files is suddenly become inaccessible! And when you land up in this situation, when you badly need some of the files which are saved into your hard drive it feels worse. Apart from this, you have also not updated your backup which you were thinking to update from so long but because of your laziness you keep on postponing it, until now when nothing is left to update. Now surely one question is arising in your mind.
What to do next? How to get back all those important documents? Is there any way available through which you can get back your data?

To recover your data you need to consult to data recovery expert. They will properly inspect your hard drive and provide proper data recovery service.

As we all know hard drives are prone to failures. And hard drive experts will provide you data recovery services accordingly. There are n number reasons behind hard drive crash. Some of them are listed here:

1. Accidental deletion of files.
2. Formatting of hard drive.
3. Loss of partition
4. Malfunctioning of operating system.
5. Virus attack
6. Natural disaster like flood, fire etc.

A disk with any Operating system , Windows (Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP), Apple Macintosh, Novell, Linux, Unix and any file system installed FAT, NTFS, NTFS5, HFS, HFS+, NWFS, EXT2 and EXT3 hard disk recovery services can easily recover all your data.

Data recovery experts carry out whole hard drive recovery process in sterile dust free Class 100 Clean room so that your hard drive will not encounter further damage while recovering your data. And your data will be recovered safely.

Stellar information systems Ltd. is one of the trusted data recovery company which is providing flawless hard disk recovery services from last 17 years. With expert data recovery experts, Class 100 clean room and exclusive data recovery tools and software it can recover data in all data loss situations.

Hard Drive Recovery - Great Hard Disk Data Recovery Software Reference

Always keep your System backed up. Software tools can not always recover lost data. Please read our post on how to backup your computer (disks). You can even take a backup on a cloud storage which is reliable too. Read How to backup your files using online backup services.

Bootable Live Disks

Linux Live CD/DVD (such as Knoppix/Ubuntu Live) – When the Hard Drive is non functioning, your system will not boot. If you have stored or want to access files that are there on the drive, the first thing to do is, boot your computer using Live CD/DVD distributed by Linux (Knoppix or any other Live OS CD). Live CD/DVD can boot your computer via CD/DVD and installing RAMDISK image (on RAM of course). Advantage here is, Live CD/DVD can mount your internal Hard Drive and you could explore files that are recoverable. This is really helpful and we have used this technique in the past with great success.

Hard Drive Consistency Checkers

If your Hard Drive is able to boot but you feel or see some disk related errors, it would be worthwhile to run Disk consistency checking software such as;

CHKDSK – A DOS/Windows utility that can find disk errors and fix.

Disk Utility – A Disk related tool for MAC OS X that can verify the integrity of the Disk.

fsck – a Disk consistency checker for the UNIX.

These software tools are capable of finding disk errors and possibly fix them. But, it should be noted that not all errors can be fixed by these tools, they are not miracle tools anyways

Data Files Recovery

Sometimes we accidentally delete important files only to regret later. Fortunately there are some free data recovery tools that can just undo deleted files.

Recuva recovers files deleted from your Windows computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player.

PhotoRec is another such tool.

Data Forensics

After a break-in or seizure of computer systems or disks, forensic analysis can happen on the disk to understand the data or recover data from the disk. There are tools that can perform forensic analysis of the recovered disk from criminals etc.

The Coroner’s Toolkit (TCT) - TCT is a collection of programs by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema for a post-mortem analysis of a UNIX system.

Forensic Toolkit (Commercial) - Data forensic software created by AccessData.

EnCase (Commercial) – Disk security and recovery experts.

Mac Hard Drive Recovery

If your Mac is starting or running slower than it used to, gives you error messages during boot, or takes longer and longer to boot, you might have a pending hard drive failure. While you can still access your hard disk, you need to run a hard drive utility program. If your situation is worse than that, such as the hard drive won’t start or mount, you may need help from a third-party Mac hard drive recovery program.

While your hard disk is still working

You can perform Mac hard drive recovery operations while your computer is still running in single-user, normal session, or boot-up (but no desktop displays) modes. In fact, it is a good idea to get familiar with the use of hard drive recovery operations, so that you are familiar with how they work. When the time comes to really make use of them, you’ll be ready.

Your Mac comes with a couple of utilities that you can access either using the installation disk or the command line – Disk Utility and fsck. The utility fsck is used at the command line and should not be used first if you are running Mac OS x 10.4 or later. Disk Utility is accessed from the command line using the command diskutil or hdiutil.

The graphical version of Disk Utility is accessed from your installation disk. The utility gives you broad support for hard disk and data issues on your drive. The hard drive recovery features of disk utility include:

• Verification and reparation of disk integrity compromises
• Verification and reparation of corrupted permissions
• Reconciliation of the Apple partition table with the GUID partition table and the Master Boot Record
• Reparation of mount, unmount and ejection of disks for all media
• Restoration of volumes from Apple Software Restore (ASR) images
• Running the Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) tool (which can direct you to return the drive to the manufacturer for an applicable warranty replacement)
• Additional functions related to hard disk and CD images and more

All hard disk recovery options on the disk utility should be used to confirm that the disk is properly maintained and restored. See Apple’s support page on Disk Utility.

For the fsck command line utility, use this only when your ability to start a normal session is compromised. While your disk is healthy, look up the limitations and use of fsck or use another computer system to do so to understand the command line use needed to determine how your drive is configured prior to using this utility.

When you cannot boot

A power loss event, an improper shutdown, or a forced restart of your Mac can result in an inability to start a session. When that happens, or when your computer partially boots, cannot get to the login screen or cannot display the desktop, you might try a safe boot.

Safe boot is an option at startup shown for Mac OS x 10.2 or later. This mode includes automatic disk checking and repair. You might find your computer is fully restored after the safe boot when you shut down and restart normally. If your Mac OS x is earlier than 10.2, you should use Disk Utility instead.

Hdd repair and data recovery tips for seagate U6 hard drives

1. There are two kinds of CERT-ROM for U6 hard drives, which individually respond to two series of FW:

3.39(3.39 3.99 5.33 5.46 4.65 3.19 3.64)

3.33(3.34 3.60 3.31 3.33)

NOTE:

CERT-ROM means to perform ROM repair in factory-level mode when users is about to perform selfscan in Seagate HDD doctor program which is manufactured by SalvationDATA Technology from china.

AT-ROM is opposite to CERT-ROM, it means to perform ROM operation in normal working status.

2. Judging head number corresponding to series number of Seagate U6

FG: 1 head;

FB: 2 heads;

EX: 3 heads;

GC: 4 heads

3. The success rate of selfscan for ST U6 kind of depends on the PCB: PCBs with large main chip and small control chip have high success rate.

Note that before performing selfscan, you would better first to run I,,22 command order, which can help you repair some errors in firmware area and solve some malfunctions from head. After finishing it, you have to update the 0B model. After finishing the command orders, the program will report error in normal working status, however it will be okay after updating the 02 model. On the other hand, 08 and 0C model will also lost once finishing I,,22 command orders! If finally showing AGE=10 in terminal mode, it means the I,,22 command order worked, if AGE=4F, it means there is something wrong of the firmware area or heads.

4. Usually the selfscan for U6 will lead to the undetectable of the hdd; you may run N30(rebuild p-list) in normal working status, if it didn’t work, you may try NO 5 model(p list) or NO 7 model(related to p-list)

5. U6 hdd can be detected in COM port but not in ATA port： it is commonly the a result of the HDD working in 60-level, the trouble-shooting command order is: E50 T50

6. Command orders fro U series:

Clear P-list: 1>N4

Reset SMART: 1>N4 1>N1

Clear SMART: 1>N1

Head test: E1E T5

7. Search for U series HDD: Ctrl+R

8. Disabling head for U6: YE0 E50 T5 T50

T5 refers to adjusting head

T50 refers to put the adjustment in effect.

9. MHDD erasing will make the read-slow u6 hard drive work properly.

Hard Disk Data Recovery Solutions

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.

Data Disk Drive Recovery Seagate

If you have a Seagate hard disk drive you will want to know how it works and what can be done in order to restore your files in case there are any problems with it. When you need data disk drive recovery, Seagate has what you need to help you with a multitude of problems, one of which includes data recovery for all models of their hard disk drives.

Some of the symptoms that can help to identify a failing hard drive including a Seagate one are: clicking, scratching, ticking, grinding sounds and the drive not working. Other symptoms which can start occurring after some type of power surge are, not powering on, not having the ability to spin, freezing or locking the computer, corrupted segments, accidental reformatting, unable to access the drive, error reporting that the master disk failed, and the disk asking to be reformatted. These problems and more are usually fixable by a hard disk data recovery expert who knows how to recover data from all types of Seagate hard drive models.

Often times when you take your failed data disk drive to a computer expert, the quickest solution is to replace the failing hard drive. More likely, only the failed components of the disk drive will need to be replaced and in a clean environment. The most typical failed components in Seagate data disk drives are the drive motor and the read/write heads. These can be replaced quickly, sending you back on your way.

Data recovery does not work in all models of data disk drives, but depending on the severity of the problem, a hard disk data recovery expert will be able to recover your important data that you may have lost during the problem, or just did not have access to because of the problem with your data disk drive.

If you want to avoid further problems with your Seagate data disk drive you will want to put a backup system into your computer routine. You can always use the old standards of CDs or other rewritable storage, or you can use the services of an offsite data backup and recovery services. Either way, you will be able to prevent any further damage or loss to your data files if your disk drive happens to fail again.

And if your data disk drive does fail again, you may want to check with data disk drive recovery that Seagate will help you choose a different disk drive to replace your old one. Then you will see significantly less problems in your day to day usage of your computer and all of the components.