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Multitasking November 2007 • Vol.5 Issue 11 |
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Remain Calm Your Lost Data May Still Be Recoverable |
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Jump to first occurrence of: [DATA] [RECOVERY]  If you haven’t experienced the heartache that is losing thousands of photos, hundreds of Outlook contacts, or a database full of sales figures, you probably know someone who has. An unfortunate reality of living in a digitally driven world is that eventually a mechanical malfunction, human error, or unforeseeable disaster will cause you to lose some or all the data in your notebook’s hard drive or the memory in your smartphone, PDA, MP3 player, or USB flash drive. Still, with each form of disaster comes a period of recovery. Where digital data is concerned, the recovery process offers more hope than you may believe, especially if you exercise some common-sense measures immediately upon encountering a data-loss situation. Even if your attempts to retrieve lost files by reviving a dead hard drive or mobile device prove fruitless, there’s a fair chance that a professional data-recovery service can pull the data back from the dead. The following offers some guidance for recovering data.  What Could Go Wrong? A lot, actually. In addition to a mechanical error zapping data from a notebook’s hard drive or mobile device’s memory, corrupt software; viruses; and water, fire, electrostatic discharges, drops, and other physical damage can wreak havoc on data. Further, your reaction to such situations potentially plays a huge role in the possibility of recovering that data. Jeff Peterson, manager of data recovery at Ontrack Data Recovery, a company specializing in data retrieval, says about 75% of its customers perceive that a hardware- or system-related problem caused their data loss. “What we actually find . . . is that number is much lower,” he says. Ontrack’s studies indicate hardware and system errors are responsible about 56% of the time. “The reality is that it was actually the human causing the problem, and the physical error was a result of the choices he made along the way.” Beyond accidentally deleting or overwriting critical system files, users can also erase data by accidentally reformatting a drive and continuing to use hardware after warning signs surface. Typical signs include noticeably slower system performance, odd noises coming from the device or drive, and difficulty copying and transferring files. If you suspect something is amiss with your gear, the time to act is immediately. "A strange or new noise indicates a problem with the drive, and data should be backed up while there still remains an opportunity to do so," says Bill Margeson, CBL Data Recovery president and CEO. If you can’t access your data, he says, “The wisest action is to stop any and all activity that could overwrite files and attempt a warm and hard reset. In the event there are new noises emanating from the media, power down. You won’t be able to retrieve your data if your hardware is not functional. Prolonged and continual attempts to operate noisy media or the use of commercial recovery software on defective media will compound the problem.” Thus, although a physical problem may start small, repeatedly powering a notebook on or off, for example, with the hope of rebooting it can do more harm than good. “Every single time they do that, the heads on the drive are going to potentially make that start of a crash even worse,” says Peterson. Recovery vs. Success Although many data-loss situations appear bleak, remain positive. Peterson says that of all the damaged media Ontrack receives, damage is so severe that technicians can't recover at least some data only 10 to 15% of the time. "Now whether that's as thorough as a customer would like is different, and there's no real standard as to what success is." For example, Peterson says, "We've had cases where we've recovered 99.9% of physical sectors on the device, but because the one file that had read errors in it was the data the customer was looking for . . . they didn't want to proceed because that file wasn't going to work. Not successful." Conversely, Ontrack technicians have “read less than 1% [on some drives but found] that area had data the customer wanted and was deemed a success.” Margeson says data is permanently gone from disk drives “only if the magnetic signal on the platter is removed or overwritten.” He says, “10% of the jobs received by CBL laboratories arrive with no magnetic signal or data overwritten.” Because every disk drive is unique, he says, “so, too, is every problem.” Peterson asserts that from an engineering perspective, Ontrack techs never assume data is gone forever. “It doesn’t matter what a customer has told us he has done to a device—whether it be smart media or any external drive, any laptop media, servers, doesn’t matter. We want to evaluate it. . . . Until you have a professional look at the media and determine there’s nothing that can be done to pull that media back, don’t assume it’s gone.” CBL’s recovery approach involves examining, evaluating, and analyzing storage media in a lab, with techs copying the media sector by sector, working “on the mirror image of the drive as they engage in the recovery of data at the hex level,” Margeson says. Similarly, Ontrack’s “experts piece together every byte,” Peterson says. Ontrack’s techs also specialize in different operating systems, and Ontrack offers different service levels. All customers, however, receive a list of the exact data they can expect to recover. Beyond a $100 diagnosis fee, recovery costs vary. After receiving a diagnosis, Peterson says, users choose how they want to proceed. Depending on the problem's severity, the amount of data involved, and other factors, professional recovery services can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Many customers will happily pay any amount, though, if it means getting back irreplaceable information. For corporations, Margeson says, “data can be their most valuable asset next to their employees.” What You May Not Know Losing data is certainly an anxiety-ridden experience. Take solace, however, that in addition to notebooks, PDAs, and smartphones, data-recovery pros can typically retrieve data from damaged MP3 players, USB flash drives, removable memory cards, microdrives, digital cameras, and other storage devices. As Peterson says, “The digital realm—where everything, music, photos, everything that people store—is stored electronically now on some form of media that’s going to fail at some point in time.” The key is in knowing what to do when this unfortunate reality occurs.  by Blaine Flamig
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