Data Recovery Myths

A look at common data recovery myths that could get you and your data into trouble.

Data Recovery Myths - The Self-Made Clean Room

04/21/2007

If you're starting to research data recovery, you'll notice that the phrase "clean room" recurs quite a bit.

A clean room is exactly what it sounds like: a specialized room designed to minimize a hard drive's chance of contamination by microscopic particles. This is important because the platters of a hard drive are delicate enough that even a single piece of dust can permanently damage information. By heavily filtering the air and carefully controlling what is allowed into the room, data recovery companies can ensure that a hard drive can be safely opened.

The big problem with clean rooms is that they're expensive. Ac certified class-100 clean-room can cost upwards of $200,000 to build, and must be constantly and carefully maintained. To get around this, some do-it-yourself data recovery gurus have suggested several ways that an at-home clean room can be built inexpensively.

The most popular theory on the Internet is that by filling a bathroom with steam (by running a hot shower for several minutes), the contaminants in the air will either dissipate or bind with water vapors and stick to a surface (the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room). Unfortunately, a clean room isn't quite so simple.

The filtering in a professional clean room targets minuscule particles that aren't affected by water vapor, particles small enough that they may not be visible (but still deadly to your drive). Pro clean rooms are also rated and measured--clean-rooms used for hard drive assembly and recovery have a minimum class 100 rating, meaning that there are less than 100 particles per square cubic liter of air. A steamed-up bathroom can contain thousands of particles per square foot, hardly an environment suitable for internal hard drive work.

And even if do-it-yourself clean rooms were appropriate for hard drive repair, hard drive specifications are so precise that data loss is extremely probably without special tools designed to manipulate hard drive parts without ruining their alignment. Steam can also damage the components of a hard drive, which are highly susceptible to excess moisture.

It's tempting to try at-home recovery methods, but if your data is important, it's not very wise--a professional data recovery is your only safe choice.

"Hitting It"

02/19/2007

Many people believe that hard drives are somehow similar to old televisions--if they're on the fritz, hitting them can somehow jar them enough to miraculously fix them, at least long enough for data to be pulled off. If that was the case, of course, data recovery engineers would be everywhere, and instead of a clean room, the most common data recovery tool would be a hammer.

The truth is that any sort of physical shock will almost certainly cause more damage to a hard drive than it will fix; as we've said before, the heads of a hard drive are extremely accurate, and precise internal calibration is required to reset them if they've somehow become offset. Hitting a hard drive isn't going to cause a miracle--it's more likely to send the read/write heads into the platters, damaging your data.

It is possible that the myth originated from the days of early Quantum hard drives and the "sticktion" problem (late 1980's), where hitting the drive may have been enough unidirectional force to free a sluggish spindle. Fortunately hard drives have become much more advanced since then, and are no longer subject to "sticktion."

Still, the "just hit it!" method of hard drive recovery is very popular. The lure of a quick fix is too enticing for many computer owners, even if the success of such a technique is near 0%. To maximize your chances of a recovery, don't try physically hitting a drive. Turn the drive off, safely remove it from your computer, and send it to a professional data recovery company as soon as it fails.

The Hard Drive Freeze Technique

01/02/2007

One of the more prevalent myths about data recovery is that there is a way to get a hard drive operational by putting the drive into a freezer or other extremely cold environment.

The "freeze technique" has been around for years, and is commonly listed in Internet forums and data recovery websites as a miracle cure for physical hard drive problems.

The idea is that freezing the drive shrinks the components enough so that when they expand again, they're in the proper orientation for the drive to operate normally, at least for long enough to make a copy of all of the data on the hard drive.

As with most myths, there is a small amount of truth to this concept; in certain cases where the spindle of a hard drive has locked up and is unable to correctly spin the platters of the drive, very occasionally freezing the spindle will allow it to get back into place and operate normally.

However, that doesn't necessarily lead to a data recovery, and the "freeze technique" can be a very unsafe procedure to attempt.

The plausibility of the freeze technique is questionable; while some drives with locked up spindles may just need a slight readjustment that freezing can provide, the chances of this occurring are very low. It's more likely that attempting to freeze a hard drive will actually make the spindle lockup worse, and trying to boot the drive up after the freeze could cause rotational damage to the platters that contain the hard drive's data.

What's more, freezing the drive may also cause damage to the platters; by shrinking and expanding the surface of the platters during the freeze, irreparable damage can occur, and usually does if extreme precaution isn't taken. Also, if a hard drive is frozen in a normal household freezer, condensation could build up on the drive, further damaging it.

Unfortunately, there is no miracle cure for physical hard drive issues; the reality is that if a drive could be fixed by being frozen, it probably didn't have a very bad problem to begin with.

Never try the "freezer technique" with a damaged hard drive; only about 5% of physically damaged hard drives even have the type of problem that the freezer technique might be able to treat, and in those cases, it's much more safe to send the drive to a professional data recovery facility.

Any physical hard drive issue needs to be treated professionally. A reputable data recovery company will be able to assess the extent of damage to a hard drive immediately when they receive the drive, and the price of data recovery probably won't be too high if it's a simple enough case that a household appliance could handle it.

Is Data Recovery Software The Answer?

12/02/2006

If you've got a failed hard drive, or if your files are inaccessible, one of the first things you may think of is the possibility of using data recovery software to get the files that you need.

Data recovery software is extremely popular for an obvious reason; for users with logical data recovery problems, it can provide a quick and simple way to get data back. However, a good amount of knowledge is necessary for users that intend to operate data recovery software; in many situations, in house data recovery is a safer and ultimately better option.

First of all, no software can perform a recovery on a physically damaged hard drive. All hard drives with any sort of sign of physical malfunction such as noise, heat, or inability to boot should immediately be turned off to avoid further damage. Physically damaged hard drives need to be treated in data recovery clean rooms.

Data recovery software is intended for bootable hard drives with deleted or corrupted files. You should never install software on the same drive as the missing files, as they may be overwritten; also, make sure the program you're using won't inadvertently write any information to the drive.

Don't even run your hard drive until you're very familiar with how the software you're using operates, and make sure you follow every word of the instructions. If data is inadvertently overwritten, it probably can't be recovered. Even trained data recovery engineers have a tough time retrieving overwritten data.

You'll have to install the software on a second working drive and connect the drive with your missing files as a secondary drive. Set up the program so that recovered files are written to the drive it's installed on.

The software can also be very expensive and difficult to use in some cases, so if you're uncertain or uncomfortable at all with using data recovery software, don't risk using it. The chances of damaging your deleted or corrupted files outweigh your chances of success, and by sending the drive in to a data recovery company, you'll be able to rest easy knowing that your data will be returned quickly and securely.

A Clean-room Is Not Really Needed When Opening a Hard Drive.

11/01/2006

Wrong! But, why is a clean-room necessary for data recovery?

In order to understand what a clean room does and why it's important for data recovery labs, it helps to understand a few basic facts about hard drive construction.

The inside of a hard drive consist of many components, including one or more heads which read and write information to the platters of the drive. The platters are magnetic disks, and they're extremely sensitive, both physically and magnetically.

When a drive is opened in an unsafe environment and exposed to pollutants, the platters can become contaminated. Even a single speck of dust can be enough to potentially ruin a hard drive, making any sort of data recovery impossible, even on the sectors of the drive that weren't touched by the dust.

No room cleaned by hand is a fit environment for hard drive data recovery. Even when dust isn't visible, contaminants still exist, and will cause irreversible damage when they come into contact with the platters of a hard drive.

A class 100 clean room is a room that employs powerful air filters to become virtually free of contaminants. The "100" means less than one hundred microscopic contaminants per square foot of space, and many hard drive companies and data recovery companies agree that any room with a greater number of contaminants is unfit for physical data recovery.

Clean rooms are very expensive to set up and maintain. Data recovery engineers must take extreme precautions not to introduce new contaminants into a clean room, and regular maintenance and check-ups are also necessary.

For added security, some data recovery companies such as Aero Data Recovery, Inc. utilize clean-flow benches. These are specialized data recovery desks that further filter air and provide a safer environment for working with the exposed platters of a hard drive.

Hard Drive Myth: Hard Drives Can Be "Fixed", Not Recovered

10/02/2006

Many computer users believe that when a hard drive fails, a simple mechanical repair is possible in order to avoid the costs of buying a second drive. However, this unfortunately isn't a realistic option given the way that hard drives are constructed.

Hard drives parts are extremely specific to the drive they operate within. The subtle repairs that are necessary even to get the drive to an operable condition are very delicate and often expensive.

Even when a hard drive is restored to its original condition, the mechanical wear caused by the failure makes a second failure very likely, sometimes within a matter of hours. Data recovery companies use very specialized methods to pull data from drives while avoiding a second crash, but outside of a recovery lab, no typical computer can safely run a repaired hard drive.

For this reason, a repaired hard drive can't be restored to its original working condition. Replacement and data recovery are the only options on a failed drive.