Archive for October, 2016

Getting Data Back

Friday, October 14th, 2016

Get Back CCTV Image Data

Question: “We have a criminal case and we have a major problem. We have a digital cctv recorder. The footage we needed was recorded on the 2 of September when I called the engineer to tape the footage it said we could no longer go back to that date. Is there anyway we can retrieve that footage? I would greatly appreciate it. I’m feeling so stressed about this hopefully you can help.”

Answer: The likelihood of recovering data from CCTV recorders like this is very slim. This is because this equipment records on a continuous loop, continually overwriting the older data on the hard drive. In this case I believe the data you want to recover has been completely overwritten. This is common thing.If you have data from a CCTV system that you want saved its important to switch the CCTV recorder off so that it can’t overwrite any of the recordings you want back.

500GB Harddrive Not Appearing

Question: Have a seagate 500GB harddrive, used it a week ago and was perfectly fine. Tried to plug it in yesterday however nothing appeared on my Mac. Tried a windows and still the same. Windows makes sound when plug in. The light appears on device then flashes for a bit and then stops and goes back to just the light. It makes a heart beat type of sound when plugged in, such as it’s trying to do something but keeps getting caught. Really need the data on the device.

Transcend Store Jet harddrive

A 1TB Transcend Store Jet hard drive

Answer: The noise your Windows system makes when you plug your hard drive in is that of a USB device being recognised. There’s a subtle difference here – the noise is NOT your hard drive being recognised, rather it’s only the USB interface being recognised. I therefore suspect that you have a harddrive problem. The heart beat sound you mention when the harddrive is connected is probably similar to the repetitive clicking sound that most people report when their hard drive does not appear. This sound indicates a serious hard drive problem, and getting the data back from these fault requires engaging a skilful data recovery company who will be able to extract the data from the harddrive.

Transcend StoreJet Stopped Working

Question: My external hard drive (1TB Transcend StoreJet) has recently stopped working. Every time I plug it in to a computer it turns on, but says drivers have failed to install and thus it can’t be accessed.
I wanted to know how long does it normally take for you to examine a hard drive and recover data?
Please email me back. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Answer: This could be a problem with the drivers rather than a problem with the external hard drive. My first recommendation would be to plug the hard drive into a Mac and see what happens. Mac’s don’t use drivers as such and therefore plugging to device into a Mac should get past this problem. If the hard drive still fails to show up then you will have a faulty hard drive. Don’t worry if that hard drive shows up and you are unable to read it. Incompatabilites between Windows and Mac systems exist and you might not be able to read the data from the hard drive BUT you it will show up on the system.