Discount Computers

Recovery

Know what you’re dealing with

The world of data recovery is a big mystery for most consumers
and even some IT professionals. This is largely because hard
drives themselves are complex devices and their technological
specifics are not generally well known. Data recovery companies
thrive on their customers’ lack of information and often get
away with charging obscene rates for any recovery, regardless of
complexity. I hope this article will be a helpful resource for
consumers and professionals alike. I provide some basic
information about data recovery by shedding some light on how
hard drives work, how they can fail, what are the chances of
successful recovery and how much the user can expect to pay.
This information will enable the user to make an informed
decision when choosing a data recovery company.

A bit about Hard Drives

A computer hard drive stores data on metal oxide platters which
spin up to 10000 revolutions per minute. An actuator arm
contains the ‘head‘ which reads and writes the data in
the form of magnetic charges one millionth of an inch above the
surface. Any given drive can have multiple read and write heads
and each head can ‘crash’ independently. A head crash
occurs when the read/write head comes in contact with the
platters of the disk (more on head crashes below). As
manufacturers strive to cram more space on hard drives without
increasing their physical size, the data gets written
increasingly closer together, making for very difficult recovery
should one or more heads crash. The brain of the hard drive is
its controller board and this is unique for each
individual hard drive. One other detail worth a mention is the
service track of a hard drive. This is an area located on the
outer part of the disk platter and it contains the drive’s
firmware zone. The firmware of a hard drive is the
information used by the computer to communicate correctly with
the drive. These are the main components that make a hard drive
work, now let’s talk about what can go wrong.

There are many ways in which a hard disk can fail

Hard drives are extremely fragile and can suffer failures in
many different ways, leading to a loss of data. The five most
common types of drive failures are: logical errors, mechanical
failure, electronic failure, firmware corruption, and bad
sectors, or any combination these. Least severe of these is
usually data loss due to logical errors.

Logical errors are often the simplest and sometimes the
most difficult problems to deal with when recovering data. They
can range from an invalid entry in a file allocation table, a
simple problem that needs little work; to severe issues such as
the corruption or loss of the entire file system. Logical
errors can be spotted when files become inaccessible, there is a
delay in starting up the computer, and programs do not run
properly. Logical errors are often seen as simple because
there is nothing wrong with the physical drive leading users to
try recovering it themselves by using third party software. This
is quite risky, however, as running such software on a damaged
drive can result in total loss of data. The most effective way
to prevent logical errors on your hard drive is to regularly use
the Disk Defragmentation tool in your operating system. For more
comprehensive information on preventing data loss, visit the tips section of
our website.

Recovering a drive with logical errors can be simple and
quick, however if the problem requires manual bit-by-bit
reconstruction of the data, it can also be quite complex and
time consuming. Normally, logical errors are in the lower end of
the price range as they do not require manual disassembly of the
drive, however there are cases when logical failures end up in
the higher end of the price range. The bottom line with logical
errors is the sooner they are caught and the less a user tampers
with the drive, the better the chances for a quick and thorough
recovery.

Mechanical failures are often much more serious than any
other failure and frequently lead to a partial or even total
loss of data. The most common type of mechanical failure is a
head crash, which is when the read/write head comes in contact
with the disk platter. Head crashes can be caused by a variety
of reasons, including physical shock, static electricity, power
surges, and mechanical read/write failure. Mechanical
failures are detected by a constant clicking or grinding noise
coming from the drive. If you suspect mechanical failure,
you must immediately shut down your computer and call a data
recovery company for advice.

Mechanical failures are usually the most severe and most
challenging to recover from. All mechanical failures require
physical disassembly of the drive. The replacement of a
read/write head is one of the most complex and costly procedures
that can be performed by a data recovery engineer, especially
with larger capacity drives. The chances of recovery depend
entirely on how much damage the drive has sustained, however
they can be quite good. A crashed head does not mean that all
your data is lost! Once again, the sooner you catch a
mechanical problem and turn off your drive, the more of your
precious data is likely to be rescued.

Electronic failures are most common after a power surge
or due to some other electric problem, and the most common type
is control board failure. A power surge can knock out the
control board, making the drive undetectable in the BIOS.
Because each drive is fitted with a unique control board,
recovery of this type is relatively complex. However, the good
news is that normally once the control board issue is fixed, the
data is usually 100% recoverable.

Recovering a drive that has suffered from an electronic
failure can be time consuming, mainly because the specific
problem takes some time to diagnose. Once diagnosed, though, the
recovery is usually not tremendously complex and would probably
land in the mid-range in terms of price. Most of the time, we
are able to achieve a 100% recovery from drives that have
suffered an electronic failure.

Firmware corruption is caused by logical problems or
physical damage to the firmware zone on the disk platter. When
the firmware becomes corrupt, the computer is often unable to
properly communicate with the hard drive, and drive is not
recognized in the BIOS. Fortunately, when the drive fails due to
firmware corruption, the data is usually fully recoverable once
the drive has been repaired.

Recovering a drive that has suffered from Firmware
corruption is possible with the use of our proprietary
technology. Because the firmware information is isolated on the
outer rim of the disk, most of the data can be recovered
successfully. The complexity of recovering a drive that has
suffered from firmware corruption depends on the amount of
damage suffered by the service track on the disk’s platter.
Expect the cost of this type of recovery to be in the mid- to
high-price range.

Bad sectors are a common fate of all hard drives.

Eventually, all drives develop areas that are no longer
functional and when this happens, they are isolated by the
operating system. Bad sectors are very much like bumps in the
road, areas which are avoided by the read/write head and which
are no longer accessible to the user. If mission critical data
exists on the drive, we recommend to backup as soon as possible,
as the formation of bad sectors often indicates the impending
demise of the drive. Finally, and most importantly, do NOT under
any circumstances run the ScanDisk or Chckdisk utilities when
data becomes inaccessible. These utilities are designed to fix
only file system errors and not any other types of errors, so if
your hard drive has suffered from bad sectors, these utilities
only make things worse.

Bad sectors are accessible

We are able to recover drives with bad sectors using our
proprietary mirroring technology. The process often involves
manual mirroring bit-by-bit, which can be time consuming. The
price of this type of recovery will generally be in the
mid-range of the pricing schedule.

I hope the above explanations are of some use to all computer
users. The basic fact is that data loss happens to everyone.
Every hard drive crashes, and often when you least expect it to.
Backup is essential for end-users and business users alike, and
there are many excellent ways to back up your data. But if
you’ve lost data, attempt to understand the problem before
calling a data recovery company. Be informed, save your money,
get your data back.

About the author:
Alex Bezborodov is the technical writer for Accurate Data Recovery.
Let ADR bring your data back to life!

Have you ever received an email telling you that the person you
emailed is on vacation and will not be answering his email for
the next week? What about a company that answers with an email
thanking you for your interest and that they would get back to
you in a day or two? Or even an email saying that the email you
tried to send could not be delivered?

Each of these is a different version of what we commonly call an
autoresponder. An autoresponder is simply that, a computer
program that automatically answers email sent to it. This simple
definition, however, belies a world of difference between the
different types of autoresponders in use today.

The first auto responders were incorporated into mail transfer
agents or email providers. When they could not deliver a piece
of email, they would send an autoresponse to you letting you
know as much. These types of emails were helpful, but not
particularly sophisticated.

That has all changed radically in recent years, as
autoresponders have been incorporated into the marketing
strategies of many companies. Today autoresponders are used by
companies to immediately give feedback and information to
prospective clients. This might include sending an autoresponse
to email inquiries which include pricing information, more
details about a product, and a timeline for when they can expect
someone from the company to get back with them.

These ‘client touches’ are a valuable commodity in the world of
marketing because they improve conversion rates in the purchase
of goods by keeping the product or service in the mind of the
purchaser for a bit longer, as well as provide the company with
an additional opportunity to provide the potential customer with
more information on the product.

Autoresponders are setup primarily in one of two ways, with an
outsourced ASP model, and a server-side model. The Outsourced
ASP model involves the company or provider who would like to
incorporate an autoresponder into their business model
contracting with an outside provider. The outside provider will
then typically provide the user with access to a web-based
control panel. From there the company or individual can dictate
exactly what they would like the autoresponder to say to each
email received as well as how to deal with different types of
emails and other variations. For these services, the company
typically pays a monthly fee to the autoresponder provider.

The second category of autoresponders is server-side.
Server-side autoresponders simply refers to programs that
instead of paying for someone to implement for you on a monthly
basis, a company can install the system on their own server and
run it for themselves. While this process is typically not as
simple as purchasing a program out of a box and uploading to the
server, it has become significantly simpler in recent years.

About the author:
Timothy Boser recommends that you visit
http://www.getresponse.com for more information on autoresponders.

Computer

New computers come with two new power settings that may be
unfamiliar to many people. The settings known as “sleep” and
“hibernate” may sound fun and playful but can actually be
powerful tools to extend the life of your computer, give your
laptop a longer battery life, and waste less energy. Let’s take
a look at how to get the most use out of these new settings.

Let’s say you’re going to lunch, a meeting, or going to run some
errands, but will be coming back to use your computer in a few
hours. You might want to turn your computer off so it doesn’t
waste electricity, but your “computer guy” (or girl) told you
it’s dangerous to turn your computer on and off all the time, so
what do you do? This would be a perfect time to use the “sleep
mode” on your computer. When you tell your computer to go to
sleep, it turns off the monitor, stops the disk drives and saves
its current state into memory. When you return, just touch your
mouse or keyboard and your computer quickly wakes up, and you’re
exactly where you left off.

What if you’re going to be away from your computer for a longer
period of time but will be coming back relatively soon? This is
when you should use the hibernate mode. Think of hibernate is a
deeper state of sleep. In hibernate mode your monitor is shut
off, hard disks are stopped and your state is saved. A major
difference between sleep and hibernate is power consumption. In
sleep mode your computer is in a very low power state, and can
wake up quickly. In hibernate mode your computer isn’t using any
power so it takes longer to warm up.

Some other tips you should keep in mind are always save your
existing work before going into sleep or hibernate modes.
Occasionally the computer will fail to wake up and you will lose
any unsaved data. Laptop owners should also remember sleep uses
power and will eventually drain the battery.

© Copyright TabletPC.6LN.com, All Rights Reserved.

About the author:
Eve Larson writes news and computer tips for tablet pc’s,
laptops and desktop computers on her website
http://www.tabletpc.6ln.com , where you can read more tips or
subscribe to her blog.