Geographic Based Data Recovery
There are many differences around the world in the data recovery field, they vary from manufacturer, distribution, problems and solutions.
As hard drives are manufactured the manufacturers need licenses to distribute and ship them overseas. Some countries may be ignored if there is no requirement for those models, if problems occur in those countries or maybe the cost of export is too high to make a good profit. As we travel around the world we will find that some countries do not have certain brands of hard drives (this is usually the case for many products not technology related too). In the UK the trade of hard drives is quite an open market we receive hard drives from all over the world, however in India they do not see many Hitachi drives. The exact reason for this is unknown, maybe they are out there but not many fail and arrive in the lab for recovery.
Across the world there are many hot continents and out there is the companies and individuals using desktop pc, laptops and servers. Heat is known to cause expansion so it is not unusual to see drives from hotter climates with temperatures exceeding 50° C tend to overheat and suffer problems. One such solution (sometimes referred to as a myth) is to cool the drive with dry ice, dry ice is at a temperature of negative 109.3° F (-78.5° C). It isn’t too hard to find a supplier and distributor but you will need somewhere to store it and must handle it with great care. Because of its properties (Dry Ice is frozen carbon dioxide) which evaporates into the air. At room temperature it evaporates as a gas and has no wet stage during its conversion, therefore Dry Ice produces no moisture.
An overheating drive from a warmer climate can cause many problems, the head-stack or platters could expand and the heads could stick to the surface. The platters could expand and give us many headaches when recovering the data. The platters expand and when the heads are requested to get the data or write data they cannot recalibrate and locate where they should be working. How do we deal with the drives like this, do we do what people post on the internet and freeze the drive? The answer is an absolute *NO* if you place a hard drive in a freezer then as the drive cools the drive will begin to produce moisture as it builds up to room temperature. The solution is to build something in your lab that will regulate the temperature of dry ice, with dry ice you can cool the drive and have it operate at a regulated temperature. You then stand a chance of recovering the data. A hard drive will not operate in temperatures between -5° C and -8° C. The same is true if we reverse the scenario, in a cooler climate the hard drives will suffer from problems and moisture can damage electronics on the PCB. We must dry out the hard drive and repair any circuitry before bringing the drive to room temperature where it should operate.
The solutions are true in reverse I mentioned that hard drives are distributed differently across the world. Due to this some vendors price their data recovery tools based on geographical location. If a data recovery company is only receiving two to three different drive manufacturers then the software/hardware solutions are priced based on this. They also base their price structure on how long it would take for the company based in that location to recover the costs of the tool.
Tags: Data Recovery
