Virus Attacks. These are only too easy to pick up from the internet. Change your Windows settings so that you can see the true file extensions. Never click on a file that ends in .exe or .pif or .vbs as these are files that launch programs and do not open any file attachments from people you don’t know. This could result in the complete loss of data and the need to perform a data recovery.
Protect your System from E-Crime!
April 24th, 2009Diagnosing Hard Drive Problems
April 24th, 2009In this article we examine typical symptoms of hard drive failure and possible causes. We will identify issues that will prevent you from having to perform a hard drive data recovery.
What are the signs to look out for? While there are few sure-fire signs of impending disk failure there are some warning signals that give us the hint. Watch out for: disappearing files, very long wait while accessing files, files/folders whose contents appear to be strangely scrambled; reoccurring error messages while moving/copying/ deleting/creating files, and strange but frequent crashes of your OS.
My Book is Not Being Seen by Windows
April 16th, 2009
My Book is Not Being Seen by Windows
OK, so the most popular external drives on the market have to be the My Book and The Passport. I get a ton of calls every week about them, and I don’t believe it is because it is not a good product but more because they are being SO widely used. So lets start with the main problem I get called about which is that Windows is not seeing the drive at all when it is plugged in. The customer does not even receive the BONG noise that a USB drive has been hooked up. Now in most cases the device seems to still be getting power.
WD external hard drives growing up!
April 15th, 2009
western digital external hard drives
WESTERN Digital has upgraded its My Book Studio Edition, My Book Home Edition and My Book Essential Edition 2TB external hard drives, and the My Book Mac Edition 2TB drive series of external hard drive to 2TB of storage. The new external hard drives will cost around £375 and are available to consumers now.
Early Diagnostics and warning signs
March 19th, 2009Early Diagnostics and warning signs
How do we know that a hard drive is having problems and could fail soon?
Is it possible to diagnose a failing drive or data recovery before its too late?
Hard Drive Physical Components
March 19th, 2009Hard Drive Physical Components
The hard drive itself consists of two main parts.
The mechanical part including the heads and disk assembly.
The PCB electronic board.
As these parts are physical they can be subject to failure and result in the need for hard drive data recovery.
The PCB is made from different components, each chip, resistor, fuse etc all have their own tasks and duties. Later in the week we will discuss the PCB more in depth. At this stage you should be aware that as this is the electronic circuitry of the hard drive it is subject to electrical failures.
Inside the hard drive we can see many more physical components. See fig 1 for the view inside a hard drive.
Firmware what is it?
March 19th, 2009Firmware what is it?
Lets take a look at the PCB there are often several chips on a PCB but what do they do? Do they contain the firmware or is that resident on the hard drive? The IC chips on the logic card are nothing more than empty chips, they have to be programmed to deliver their functions and complete the circuit. Originally all hard drives stored firmware in the ROM, unfortunately this limited the code and functions of the hard drive. Currently the firmware is stored in the SA Service Area of the hard drive known to the manufacturer as a reserved area. The firmware is organized into modules and controlled by the manufacturers own operating system. The ROM chip nowadays contains minimal amount of code, some companies now have nothing more than the loader on the ROM chip.
Problems and Diagnostics of Seagate Drives
March 18th, 2009Common Problems and Diagnostics of Seagate data recovery.
U Series 5
Typical problems with this drive family are diode failures which affect the voice coil and spindle, and failure of the read/write channel.
Barracuda ATA II
This family tends to suffer from problems with the stabilizers of the spindle motor circuit either by burning or shorting out. The latching transistors of the read/write channel circuitry, the symptoms of which are the drive produces knocking at a frequency of 5Hz.
SP1654N Dead Drive
March 18th, 2009I got a Samsung SP1654N IDE drive in today which at first glance looks like any other IDE hard drive. The biggest head scratch is that when slaved into a secondary system, the system powers up normally, all looks good. On closer inspection of our slaved drive reveals that the disk is not spinning, not even a brrrrr or click. Someone call a external drive data recovery specialist!
The drive came from a external hard drive casing. This was tested and we found it to be faulty as well. We can say that the drive suffered from a intense power spike. This spike has caused damage to the external hard drive casing, the PCB of the hard drive and also the spindle motor of the hard disk drive.
Data Recovery Climates
March 12th, 2009Geographic 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.
We cover all of the UK including London, South West London, Kingston, Teddington, New Malden, Surbiton, Twickenham, Wimbledon, Barnes, Chessington and Morden
We Specialise in the following brands:
