What ‘cheapo’ data recovery companies won’t do…

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At Cheadle Data Recovery we make it a priority to ensure that you are happy with what data you receive back before any money changes hands. To do this in advance of raising an invoice we send a file listing detailing the recovered data. Not only do we send a file listing but we provide software to view the listing easily. This makes a big difference, as being presented with just an excel spreadsheet with 50,000+ lines showing what data has been recovered is, in our opinion, rather frustrating.

Below is an image of what you would expect to see when you have loaded the file listing into the software. Not only will you see a complete directory structure which is browsable, and details telling you the number of files recovered, but there is also a search/filter function to make finding those critical files easier.

A list detailing the recovered data

Moreover, we include a ‘Status’ column. This gives an indication of whether the file is working, or whether it is corrupt. In most cases the data is working, but on occasions there can be files which are corrupt. We would prefer to tell you this in advance of receiving your data back, rather than you getting a nasty surprise when you come to access your files. Also, if for whatever reason the critical data you want is corrupt, and you do not wish to receive the other data back, then we will not make any charges for the recovery services up to that point. Remember, we want you be happy with what you get back.

 

 

When you can tell data is unrecoverable just by looking at the outside of the disk

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Rather a long title to this post, but you are probably asking your self, just how? No we don’t have X-ray vision here. Or special (fictional) tools we see on TV in CSI that we can wave over a hard disk drive. Take the picture below of a 500GB Seagate HDD. This HDD was received in this week from a local PC shop.The picture is a little blurry, but can you tell why this data is unlikely to be recovered? Look carefully.

Seagate 500GB 7200.10In fact I’ve made it a little easier by exaggerating the issue myself just to give you a chance – notice in the top right hand corner the white sticky label looks as if it has been peeled back. On close inspection it looks as if the white sticker has been peeled back to reveal the security screw underneath it.

So why does this make the data unrecoverable?

Well it doesn’t per se. However it indicates to us that it is likely that someone has exposed the screw to undo it, and accessed the hard disk assembly (HDA) and exposed the platters. In nearly all cases when the owner/PC shop has accessed the HDA and exposed the platter surface we find the data is unrecoverable. This is because they do not handle the disk appropriately and contaminate or damage the very sensitive components in the HDA. In this case we found a fingerprint on the platter surface and a scratch on the platter surface where someone has tried to move the head assembly. As such what was likely to be a good opportunity to recover the data has been lost.

I cannot express this clearly enough: if you want to recover your data DO NOT open the hard disk drive and expose the platters. You are not going to make matters better, and most likely they will become worse, very quickly.

Fixed price quotations, but chocolates welcomed.

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Sometimes it is pleasant and helpful to have data recovered. Sometimes it is very important. No matter what the scenario our prices remain the same. On diagnosis of the hard disk Cheadle Data Recovery specifies which tier of pricing the drive failure fits into, and a fixed price quote is generated. This includes the cost of any donor parts required, so there will be no phone call a week later asking for an upfront, non-refundable donor parts fee on top of the original quote.

Last week a 1TB Hitachi Desktop 3.5″ HDT721010SLA360 was received in with a PCB failure. Over the last few years Hitachi desktop hard disk drives have been relatively reliable and we have few spare parts in stock. The requirements for matching a donor PCB on a Hitachi drive are quite specific, and are based on the NVRAM and CPU controller, it’s useful to match the machine level code (MLC) too. We were able to find a supplier with a matching part within 2 working days, and work was completed with 5 working days. A full recovery was made of the data, including the university MBA dissertation that was due for submission in a fortnight.

Hitachi 0A38016

Failed Hitachi 1TB with PCB fault and a little gift

 

How easy is it to find a donor hard disk drive? Part 1.

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A significant proportion of the hard disk recoveries we see in require donor parts. That is to complete the recovery of data from the failed hard disk drive it is necessary to source a compatible (matching) hard disk drive. There are three main types of failure that require a donor part:

  • Printed circuit board failure (PCB)
  • Firmware failure
  • Read/Write head failure

The set of requirements for each is different. Over the course of the next few posts I will discuss the difficulties and nuances in finding suitable matching donor parts for each type of failure.

To begin with, where do we look? Understandably many customers expect that we can go to our nearest computer hardware dealer and buy one off the shelf. Much like if your car broke down you would take it to the nearest garage, and they will probably have matching exhausts, tyres, brake pads in stock. Sadly this is not the case for us. All HDD donor parts we look for tend to have been manufactured at roughly the same time (often within the month) of your failed HDD.

Customers then wonder if we can order one directly from the manufacturer; that would be to order one direct from Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung, Fujitsu etc. If only! This would be ideal, sadly they do not provide spare parts for any storage devices they make.

When finding donor parts it is necessary to match exactly many of the parameters listed on the front of the HDD and on the PCB. This can be challenging, and most regular sellers will not list such details. Realistically there are three options:

  • Internal supplies – hard disk drives we have in stock. In our case this numbers several hundred disks, Wonderful as there is no direct cost to us. The downside is we are currently storing approximately 1500Kg of hard disk drives on the premises. They take up a lot of space too.
  • Specialist HDD suppliers to the data recovery industry – they list the important details of each drive. The down side is the cost. The price of a disk from a dealer is often two or three times the cost of a new disk.
  • eBay -  wonderful if you have the time to go through hundreds of listings and squint at out of focus pictures of hard disk drives. It is usually necessary to contact sellers to confirm the details of the drive they are selling. Often they are unresponsive or even bemused at such requests and do not always provide reliable information. On the positive side, the prices tend to be lowest.

In following posts the requirements for donor spares will be discussed. Hopefully this will illuminate those with an interest on how challenging it can be to find the necessary parts to successfully recover data.

Symantec: ‘NetBackup 7.5 speeds backup 100X’ • The Register

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Symantec: ‘NetBackup 7.5 speeds backup 100X’ • The Register.

Well done Symantec! {Ahem} You are only several years behind the likes of DeltaCopy / Rsync. As far as we are aware various other companies have already been offering online backup using fast incremental backup services based on block-level changes rather than file-level changes. Do keep up.

Solid State Disk reliability – no need to backup?

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We have already had one or two customers tell us that after the failure of their hard disk drive (HDD) they have decided to purchase a solid state disk (SSD). Prices for SSDs are falling, whilst in recent months prices for HDDs have been increasing. That combined with the perception that SSDs are more reliable have allowed them to fall into favour.

However, it came as quite the surprise to one customer when his SSD had stopped functioning completely. This is typical for SSD drives. Unlike HDDs which can often have a slowly degrading performance to the the point of failure, SSDs tend to be working OK one day, then catastrophic failure the next.

Put in the most simple terms, SSDs are much like a giant usb memory stick. A usb memory stick typically has one or two NAND flash memory chips and a single controller chip. An SSD has multiple NAND Flash memory chips. For example the 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD has a total of 16 Flash NAND chips and a single controller chip.

In the case of recovering data from Flash NAND technology it is necessary to dismount the memory chips and read them directly using specialised technology. Then the controller chip is emulated and folder and file structure is recreated. Needless to say it is not as easy to achieve good results as it might sound.

In this most recent case, the OCZ 120GB Vertex II, the controller chip is manufactured by the popular supplier “Sandforce“. These controller chips have shown excellent performance and are currently being used widely by a number of SSD manufacturers. Unfortunately the Sandforce SF-1200 series controllers encrypt the data stored on the Flash NAND chips. This means if the chips are removed all the data pulled from them directly is useless due to the 128bit AES encryption.

As such the options for recovering data from Sandforce based SSDs are very limited. The printed circuit board components can be tested to see if any other parts are at fault, and a reflow of the PCB can ensure there are no bad contacts between any of the components and the PCB. Otherwise it is a non-recoverable device. In the case Cheadle Data Recovery received this week, this was just the case. As such, do not think of SSDs as a safe storage method, and do continue to back up your data.

Head crash gallery – when data cannot be recovered

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Non-recoverable data is not good for any party. The customer does not get their data back, and we do not get paid, anything. Our ‘no-recovery, no-fee’ policy applies to all of the work that is conducted by Cheadle Data Recovery. There are no diagnostic fees or up front fees. That means that when we can’t recover data it is disappointing for us in every regard.

When we break the news to a customer that the data is not recoverable we can get a number of responses. Some are very grateful for the effort we put in, some are understandably disappointed, and some want a second opinion and think that another data recovery company will be able to recover the data. There of course could be occasions when a second opinion might be valuable, particularly working on challenging firmware corruption. There are however, many occasions when we know that data is not recoverable.

Below are some images of three hard disk drives that have been received since January the 6th. All of these disks have visible damage to the surface of the top platter. Within the industry this is called a “head-crash”. This is where the read/write heads make contact with spinning platter and damage the surface. When there is physical damage to the surface of the platter it is not possible to recover the data.

Being told that data is not recoverable can be hard to hear, and many customers look for a glimmer of hope. I have had customers tell me that they have phoned a data recovery company who said they can recover the data in these situations. Needless to say these companies tend to charge a non-refundable upfront diagnosis, ‘re-opening’ or donor parts fee. Again, we’d like to reiterate, if your hard disk has a head-crash it is not recoverable.

 

December RAID follow up

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Following the Christmas time post regarding the six RAID arrays Cheadle Data Recovery received in during December, I thought it might be useful to follow each of these up and let you know of the results.

HP/Compaq RAID 5, 5-Disk SCSI with a 2 HDD failure: This RAID array had two badly degraded hard disk drives. Cheadle Data Recovery was successful in taking a high quality disk image of each, and then rebuilding the array. The result – a full recovery of the data. We were also able to provide the customer a de-striped ghost disk image of the RAID volume. This allowed the customer to recreate the RAID before the time of failure and boot the server, saving him hours of time having to potentially reinstall and reconfigure the Windows Server operating system.

RAID 10 Dell, 8TB 4 x 2TB SAS comprising of a dozen virtual servers: Cheadle Data Recovery successfully rebuilt the RAID array and recovered all of the data within 48 hours on the our emergency service. This was a challenging job, largely due to the high capacity hard disk drives, the total volume of recovered data and having the ensure error free virtual server image files (.VHD). What the customer said:

“Obviously this has been a difficult process for all of us [at the company], and we appreciate that you have gone to unusual lengths to provide us with the data we require, and to satisfy our changing requirements.” R. Illing, Web Applications UK Ltd.

HP/Compaq RAID 0, 3-Disk SCSI with a 1 HDD failure: One of the SCSI Seagate Cheetah 10K hard disk drives was suffering from a translator fault. The result of this is that the hard disk drive is completely inaccessible and shows a capacity of 0Mb. Cheadle Data Recovery was able to resolve this issue and then rebuild the RAID array. The result was a full recovery. What the customer said:

“That’s amazing…Many thanks for the recovery work you performed for us. I will have no hesitation in recommending your services to anyone who needs them.” P. Thornicroft, Tectrix Solutions Ltd.

RAID 0, mini G-RAID 1TB external hard disk, 1 HDD degraded, and corrupt HFS+ filesystem:   A full recovery of 900GB of data was made. The critical 120GB of this was returned to the customer within 24 hours of starting working on the device. The remainder of the data was was returned at a later date at the convenience of the customer. What the customer said:

“This is all good, thanks for all your help yesterday and thanks so much for giving me such a good deal, it is really really appreciated.” S. Owen, Standby Productions.

RAID 1, 1TB Netgear NAS:   Partial recovery – it was not possible to fully recreate the folder and file tree. This was a direct result of the owner of the device starting a full format of both drives recording approximately 20GB of new ’0′ data to the front end of each disk. The owner did not require the recovered data back, and as per our policy Cheadle Data Recovery made no charges other than a £7.99 return postage fee.

16 SAS HDD 8TB RAID 5 SAN:   Recovered remotely over a period of 5 days to ensure data was available before the Christmas.  Filesystem reconstruction was possible, the recovery of the two critical Sql databases was made. There was some corrupt data due to 40GB of new data which had been written to the volume before Cheadle Data Recovery had started work on the array.

All in all a very busy month for Cheadle Data Recovery in December, and a nice way to finish the year.

 

This HP controller was found in one of the failed servers. This is a very long card (about 20 inches!), and we struggled to find a case that it would fit in.

Scientists Fabricate Magnetic Data Storage Unit with Area 4 by 16 nm

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Scientists Fabricate Magnetic Data Storage Unit with Area 4 by 16 nm.
The German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and IBM scientists have developed a storage on an incredibly small scale. It works out at about 100 times the present media density of modern hard disk drive. What this might mean the in future is hard to know; by the time this technology is applied to consumer storage devices will Flash based media have become the main method for data storage?

Hard drive manufacturers cutting warranties as of 2012

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Hard drive manufacturers cutting warranties

A news summary of the changes announced by Western Digital and Seagate regarding the warranty period of any HDDs you might buy in 2012. It appears that, in no uncertain terms, they are reducing the warranty period for nearly all consumer drives. This comes as little surprise, given how tight the OEM manufacturers are on replacing failed drives. I know a number of customers who have had difficulties with Lacie/Buffalo/Freecom as they have opened the caddy (not the hard disk assembly) and have voided their warranty in an attempt to retrieve their data.

The question which could be raised is, ‘are the warranty changes a result of decreased reliability in hard disk drives?’ A knee jerk response, would be, “Yes, they are selling worse and worse products and need to reduce the warranty period accordingly to save them money”.

But, one has to consider the way in which hard disk drives are being used presently. Cheadle Data Recovery sees an increasing number of hard disk drives which are used in laptops and external units compared to when we started trading about 6 years ago. These hard disk drives tend to be used ‘on the move’ unlike their desktop computer predecessors. Any increased failure rate could well be attributed to the (mis)handling of these mobile devices which then cause failure. The obvious example which comes to mind is hard disk drives sustaining a physical shock, usually resulting in a clicking or buzzing sound. There is very little way for the hard disk manufacturer to tell if the HDD has sustained a physical shock, and is under an obligation to replace the failed drive, despite the fault lying very much with the owner.

Would you consider it reasonable for John Lewis to replace a broken vase which you dropped? Probably not.  Unfortunately most people don’t understand that hard disk drives are incredibly delicate devices. That is not to say that they should, after all many hard disk drives are advertised as ‘portable’, and of course laptops are designed to be used not just at a desk. But in reality an ideal environment for a hard disk to be used is a stable one; physically, electrically and by temperature/humidity. You are not going to get that whilst plugging in your laptop to the AC charger on the mid-summer Virgin Voyager train service from Manchester to London. Be warned.