Recovering Your Files
Our data recovery service is what these pages are all about. We recover data from your hard drive or a memory card in, but not limiting to the following typical failures:
- deleted files and folders, accidentally or not
- corrupt file-system records caused by OS or other program misbehavior or malware
- bad sectors (uncorrectable read-errors) in critical areas
- corrupt or unreadable data in drive's firmware zone
- burnt or otherwise defective hard-drive electronics, often caused by PSU failure
- mechanical issues such as head-collapse, failure of spindle or voice-coil motor, or other internal component
We yield a success rate of 92.9% (as of 2011-01-10) - a real number obtained by dividing the count of resolved cases by all of them, including the tough ones. This is an outstanding number and if someone promise you more, ask how they got their figures. In short, we help nine out of ten customers - the single unlucky one would most likely not be helped elsewhere either.
Now we're not gonna spill a multi-page list of supported OS vs. file-system vs. drive-models here as others do. Instead, we let the search engines find their feed somewhat deeper in our site. However, let us define:
- a media
- as the thing that contains your data. This can be either a floppy disc, tape, CD, DVD, memory card, or in most cases, a hard drive.
- physical format
- as a way of arranging the data to make it storable on the media. This usually breaks your data into blocks called sectors, adds error check and correcting codes plus some other info. The units become physical sectors and the effective (user-data) part of each is called a logical sector. The relationship between the two is not always that straighforward though.
- logical format
- is the OS-level structure, i.e. file-system. It keeps track of which area (logical sectors) of the media your files are actually stored in. Loose this and you may have a hard time finding your data, although the files sits there perfectly unchanged.
Most of the time we work on hard drives. The hard drive is by far the most complex and sensitive media in the market and is subject to wear as well as accidental failures.
At the same time, it usually stores orders of magnitude
more data that any other media could possibly handle.
Loosing access to your hard drive is always a big pain.
Remember the extensive tables of supported OS's, versions, medias etc. that some companies use to catch googlers
to their site?
Let's face it: if you can connect it and you can read it, most likely you can fix it too.
If you can do NTFS (or FAT, for that matter) you'll fix it whatever the exact OS version is, and whatever media it is stored on.
But we're still talking about fixing the logical format problems here.
On the other hand, you certainly won't fix a memory chip that's dead short
, nor will you read data from disk platter ground to the point when you can actually see through.
In between those extremes however lies a vast and colorful land of failures, mechanical, electrical or firmware related, which different companies can - or cannot handle in different ways.
We do it all. We don't care how serious your failure is - we won't refuse any order. In fact, we like the tough ones better. If neccessary, we're ready to update the existing or even create new, specific tools to get the job done.
Understanding and fixing the OS-level structures of both common and less known filesystems is definitely a must.
Indeed, we actually fixed and recovered data from totally undocumented, proprietary filesystems, like ones used by musical instruments and other specialized gear
.
And yes, we do RAIDs, incl. RAID-5 too.
We don't rely on any third-party software - we develop our own set of tools.
Neither we do send your disks to some third-party laboratory
- we do all the mechanical works in-house too.
We spent hundreds of hours on reverse-engineering the hard drive firmwares to find out what exactly the drive does when it works,
how to find why when it is not, and what to change to change it.
Exactly this is the edge that enables us to succeed where others do commonly fail. For instance,
we consistently swap heads on WD Caviar and Protege drives - a recognized nightmare
for most recovery technicians.
What's more, we even can read the data from good heads first and then complete the image for the faulty ones, following the eventual head-swap,
and we can do this quiet fast.
Some recent head-swaps, all successful (highlighted are drives that came here after a competitor failed to fix them):
| Make | Name | Model | Form | Size [GB] | Heads | Density [GB/head] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate | Barracuda 7200.11 | ST3500320AS | 3.5 | 500 | 4 | 125 |
| Seagate | Barracuda ES | ST3160815AS | 3.5 | 160 | 2 | 80 |
| Seagate | Maxtor DiamondMax21 | STM3200820A | 3.5 | 200 | 3 | 66 |
| Seagate | Barracuda 7200.7 | ST3120026A | 3.5 | 120 | 3 | 40 |
| Seagate | Barracuda 7200.7 | ST380011A | 3.5 | 80 | 2 | 40 |
| Seagate | Barracuda 7200.7 | ST340014A | 3.5 | 40 | 1 | 40 |
| Seagate | Barracuda ATA IV | ST340016A | 3.5 | 40 | 2 | 20 |
| Seagate | Momentus 5400.6 | ST9500325AS | 2.5 | 500 | 4 | 125 |
| Seagate | Momentus 5400.6 | ST9320325AS | 2.5 | 320 | 4 | 80 |
| Seagate | Momentus 5400.2 | ST9120821AS | 2.5 | 120 | 4 | 30 |
| Seagate | Momentus 5400.2 | ST96812A | 2.5 | 60 | 2 | 30 |
| Seagate | Momentus 5400.2 | ST9808211A | 2.5 | 80 | 4 | 20 |
| Maxtor | DiamondMax Plus 9 | 6Y120L0 | 3.5 | 120 | 3 | 40 |
| Maxtor | DiamondMax Plus 8 | 6K040L0 | 3.5 | 40 | 1 | 40 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar Green | WD10EADS-00L5B1 | 3.5 | 1000 | 6 | 166 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar GP | WD7500AACS-00D6B0 | 3.5 | 750 | 6 | 125 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar SE | WD3200JB-00KFA0 | 3.5 | 320 | 6 | 53 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar SE | WD2000JS-60NCB1 | 3.5 | 200 | 5 | 40 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar SE | WD1600JB-00REA0 | 3.5 | 160 | 4 | 40 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar | WD400BB-00DEA0 | 3.5 | 40 | 2 | 20 |
| Western Digital | WD Protege | WD400EB-00CPF0 | 3.5 | 40 | 2 | 20 |
| Western Digital | WD Caviar | WD200BB-00AUA1 | 3.5 | 20 | 2 | 10 |
| Hitachi | Deskstar 180GXP | IC35L090AVV207-0 | 3.5 | 80 | 3 | 30 |
| Hitachi | Travelstar 5K160 | HTS541616J9SA00 | 2.5 | 160 | 4 | 40 |
| Hitachi | Travelstar 5K100 | HTS541010G9SA00 | 2.5 | 100 | 4 | 25 |
| Samsung | Spinpoint F1 | HDD322HJ | 3.5 | 320 | 2 | 160 |
| Toshiba | HDD2164 | MK2018GAP | 2.5 | 20 | 2 | 10 |
We regularly do miracles on WDs, Maxtors and Seagates. We do a lot to other drives as well. And don't mind if your drive's not listed here - in most cases we can and do help.
For Conditions and Terms and futher documents please see our Documents folder.