HEAD CRASH: A head crash refers to the damage that occurs                                                                 when the heads come into contact with the spinning disks. In a                                                                       good working hard drive, the heads float on a microscopic layer                                                                 of air just above the surface of the disks. But if the drive is                                                                   bumped while spinning, the heads may easily break through this                                                               air cushion and touch down on the surface of the disks. The                                                                    disks are composed of an aluminum or glass core, coated with a super thin MAGNETIC coating. Unfortunately, your data IS the magnetic coating! When the heads touch down they begin to score the disk as it spins under the pressing head. Within milliseconds a complete ring around the disk may form and clouds of black data dust are released into the sealed chamber. In the process the head is completely destroyed or in the case of a multiple head drive, this scenario is likely unfolding with many heads simultaneously. If allowed to continue, the damage will quickly dissolve any chance of recovering the data. Disk Drive data recovery from such a scenario is NOT always possible and almost always expensive. The first step is to disassemble the drive and remove as much of the black dust as possible. The platter surfaces are then cleaned and lubricated using proprietary techniques. Several compatible parts drives are located. The head assembly from one donor is removed and prepared for installation into the defective drive. The new head assembly is installed and aligned in the crashed drive. Imaging of the surfaces starts from one clean end of the platter towards the crashed area. Imaging is stopped as we begin to enter the crashed area and restarted from the opposite end towards the crash. As we again approach the crashed area, the heads will become damaged permanently. In an effort to get as much of an image as possible we will often repeat this procedure 3 or more times using different sets of donor heads. When we determine that we have as much of the data as is likely possible, we analyze the image for any file structure damage and subsequently repair it. Once the file system structures are repaired enough to allow access to the data, a complete list of good and bad data files is created.

DRIVE DOES NOT SPIN UP DUE TO A BAD SPINDLE MOTOR: Once regarded as an almost unrecoverable disk drive data recovery situation, seized spindles are no longer the bad news they once were. While to the layman it seems like an easy fix; just re-install the platters or disks into a new drive. In reality only a single platter drive allows this simplistic approach. When you have a drive with multiple disks, as most drives now do, the disks must be moved as a single unit with no change in their physical relationship to each other. The disks must remain aligned vertically to such accuracy that just loosening the screws that secure the platters down WILL destroy the alignment and any chance of a successful disk drive data recovery.We have developed several proprietary techniques and specialized tools for dealing with “no spin” motor type cases, but due to the propriety nature of these techniques we prefer not to disclose them in any detail. Suffice to say, we are able to transplant stacks of disks up to 4 platters and acheiving industry success rates of over 85%. Very few disk drive data recovery companies can accomplish this.

SYSTEM AREA PROBLEMS: The “System Area”, the “Maintenance Tracks” or the “Engineering Tracks” are all common names for a special hidden data area found on the hard drive. Being totally invisible to the user, the System Area is accessible only for the hard drive’s service use. It contains the equivalent of the drive’s own operating system and is used for such functions as error management and performance tuning. In fact this same area is also used for special functions like storing the drive’s SMART history and setting up a HPA or Host Protected Area. Every manufacture has its own System Area design with very little common ground. Even within a manufactures product lines there are big differences in how the System Areas are implemented. The amount of time required to reverse engineer System Areas makes this approach not practical for average disk drive data recovery. Fortunately, there is a very specialized piece of equipment that solves most System Area problems on most manufactures drives. But of course it’s very expensive and consequently many lesser equipped data recovery companies do not possess this equipment. The System Area is one of the first items checked by a freshly powered hard drive and it must be error free for accessing the client’s data area. If the drive fails this check we can use our specialized equipment to repair the damaged modules and re-acquire access. If it is impossible to fix the System Area due to read errors on the media, there is another technique that may be applied. This alternative method involves the creation of a dummy System Area on another good working drive. Critical and unique modules for the System Area are then transferred from the client drive to the dummy drive and the client drive is temporarily initialized using this dummy System Area and a technique called PCB hot swapping. This procedure will give us temporary access to the client’s data area and provide a successful disk drive data recovery.