112 NOVEMBER 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 381
“This type of work typically requires
the use of spare parts. To best serve
our customers, we keep an extensive
stock to cover almost any make or
model of hard drive,” he says.
“When it comes to hard drives, we
see many different types of physical
damage.One of the most common is a
‘head crash’, which is when the read/
writeheads crash down on to the
platter surface where the data is stored.
Customers often hear the drive clicking
when this happens, or making other
unusual noises. Data can still be
recovered in this case; however,the
drive will need attention in a‘clean-
room’environment by atrained
professional, to avoid further damage
and maximise the chances of recovery
success,”Bridge adds.
Either way, aphysical repair won’t
always restore all the data, so further
work is needed.
“Once the physical issues have been
bypassed, an ‘image’ofthe drive is
taken.Thisissimilarto takingaphotoor
snapshot of the drive’s contents to
ensure there’s no further damage to the
deviceorthedata.Ourlabengineerswill
then piece together the data structures
and recover the files,”saysBridge.
The increasing use of solid-state
drives (SSDs) brings its own problems,
though ahead crash isn’t one of them.
“While SSDs have no moving parts,
theyare still susceptible to damage,
particularly electronics failure.Failed
memory chips are acommon fault,
however the data can still be recovered
in many cases,”Bridge explains.
The keytosuccess, he says, is a
knowledge of the device’s firmware and
strong relationships with the majority
of global device manufacturers.
So,that’s abriefguide to what
happens when you enlist the services of
adata recovery
company,but what
should you do in
practice when you
have that sinking
feeling? Bridge
outlines the process if
you were to approach
Ontrack, although
details might differ if
you choose an
alternative company.
First of all, if you’re
not familiar with the
inside of your PC, this
isn’t aproblem.
“If customers feel
comfortable taking
their hard drive out
themselves then
they’re welcome to do so; however,it’s
not essential,”hesays.
“Weoftenreceive PCs and laptops
with the drives still inside and in various
conditions. We’d strongly recommend
against taking the drive out of adevice
if it has fire or water damage,toavoid
causing further harm.”
One wayoranother,Ontrack will
eventually have adead storage device
to deal with and, first of all, the firm
will assess the situation.
“The data recovery process begins
with an initial consultation to determine
if data recovery is an option, based on
the data loss situation. Next, every
customer is offered afree evaluation.
During this stage,our engineers
executeanumber of physical and
logical checks of the device and create
areport detailing the results, which
includes aquotefor the recovery
work,”Bridge explains.
So how much might you expect to
pay? While not giving any hard and fast
figures –unsurprisingly,given the huge
range of possible fault conditions –
Bridge did provide some pointers.
“Pricing will vary depending on the
exact situation, However,asanexample,
forasingle hard drive with logical
damage,the pricing would start from
around £249 on our standard service,
which takes around 10 working days on
average,” he notes.
DESTROYING DATA
The fact that deleted files can often be
recovered leads us to an inescapable
conclusion. If you decide to sell an old
PC or donateittoacharity,just deleting
all the files on the disk might not
provide adequatesecurity,and sensitive
BELOW:With
suitable undelete
software,files that
you thought were
gone forgood
could live to see
another day
ABOVE:Reality
sometimes isn’t
as bad as first
impressions might
suggest. Ontrack
was able to recover
all the data from
this NAS drive that
was damaged in a
building fire
