Data recovery service in Manchester

This week I’ve been investigating the world of data recovery. Data recovery is a very interesting subject and something of a “dark art”. The techniques companies use to retrieve information from devices like hard disk drives and mobile phones are shrouded in secrecy because it’s this knowledge that gives these firms their competitive advantages. Here are just of the enquiries received by data recovery service providers in the UK.

> Unable to Boot A Server
Hi I have a customer who has had a server fail on them we are no longer able to boot the server or run a repair i have had the drives out and bought the relevent cables and software to extract the data from a raid 5 but i have had no sucess the drives are 4 x HP 146 gig SAS drives can you help.

> Serious PC Problems
After large thunderstorm, serious problems. PC will start and yellow HD warning light comes on, disc starts to spin up, then dies and it keeps repeating this cycle. HD is Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB. External backup HD completely dead, power light does not come on. HD is Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB.

> Nexus Tablet Stopped Working
My Nexus Tablet stopped working in June and I’ve tried several people to see if they can repair it and they can’t . What I’m concerned about most is the photos that I’ve lost. Are you able to recover them and if so, at what cost and approximately , how long would that take?

> SSD Hard Drive Problem
I have a problem with my current SSD model : SSD 960go CRUCIAL M500
SSD not booting in BIOS system due to a failure of the electronic circuitry and internal cell of the flash memory
Failure of many cells in the NAND memory due to electric shock. These do not allow access to data in the SSD

> Broken Screens
Broken Screen on iPad 2 Mini and iPhone 5. Not sure if this is something you do or not, but if so, would love to send the business your way to help justify the sponsorship of the great Richie Allen show.

> Two Ticking Hard Drives
I have two drives that are clicking:
1. Seagate ES.1 1TB
2. WD Blue 500GB

> iPhone Water Damage
My iphone, having received water damage, no longer responds – ie won’t turn on or show any sign of life.
Whereas I’m quite happy for the iphone itself to be consigned to the scrapheap, I’d like to recover the data (in particular the photographs) that are stored on it.
Can you be of any assistance?

So if you have a similar problem to any one those listed above, just look on this blog for a data recovery specialist – they are a few recommended.

UK data recovery experts Datlabs have launched a new look web site for their hard drive recovery business. The growth of the site reflects the growth in their hard drive data recovery business over the last 18 months or so.

I called Datlabs to ask them about their new web site and how they are fairing in the complex world of data recovery. “We have seen a huge upturn in the amount of work being sent in to us where portable and external USB hard drives have broken” said Datlabs tech wizard Ashley Gomes. “Whereas only 5 years ago we would see comparatively few external and portable data storage devices, we now see an increase of almost 5 fold.”

This is a statistic that is common amongst many data recovery companies the world over: external hard drives are just so much more popular these days, and the fact that they are portable means they get lugged around from place to place and get knocked and dropped.

“Inside the casing a hard drive is a very delicate storage device”, continued Gomes, “a jolt or knock can cause real problems with accessibilty, whilst dropping and external hard drive can result in the data being lost forever”.

With the likes of web sites http://thursdaynightblues.com/ and http://harddriveman.com/ reporting on many different types of hard drive fault, Datlabs should be busy, and their new site rocks!

I’ve been supporting RAID and servers for longer than I care to remember… I think the earliest server (excluding ICL mainframes) that I worked on was an ICL Intel 486 system, back in something like 1992.

This was before Windows and as we know, things have moved on significantly since then. Servers were complicated beasts back then, now they’re even more complex. One thing that really annoys me is 1st/2nd line technical support staff who rather than admit they don’t know what they’re talking about will recommend the wrong course of action because they don’t know any different.

Here’s my response to an email from a customer of ours with a 7 disk RAID 5 server that has significant bad sector problems across several of the disk in the volume. The customer has been told by his tech support to rebuild the array and everything will work fine… WRONG, the rebuild will fail because of the bad sectors across multiple drives. This will cause a huge amount of irreversible data loss for the customer who is a professional video editor.

Hi <X>,

My colleague <Y> has just informed me you’ve been in touch after speaking to tech support regarding your RAID.

The rebuild procedure they suggest will unfortunately not complete successfully due to several of your hard drives having bad sectors issues. Rebuilding is an automated software task that relies on all the drives involved being free from bad sectors. Rebuilding is unable to cope with bad sectors – which are a physical problem. This is why drives with bad sectors have to be recovered using hardware rather than software. I wrote a blog post about this sometime ago, titled something like ‘5 things you mustn’t do if your RAID fails’. – take a look at all of it – especially the last point: http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/raid-or-server-failure-the-top-5-things-to-avoid/

As you know, we’ve been doing this long enough to know what we’re talking about, so may I suggest two possible courses of action –

1. We complete the recovery as planned.

Or

2. We first clone all your hard drives (effectively copying them) before returning them to you so you can then try the rebuild. Us having cloned your hard drives means we can go back to the data and perform the recovery when the rebuild doesn’t work.

Rebuilds that are unsuccessful result in massive data loss across the entire RAID and are irreversible due to the old (good) data being overwritten by the new (corrupt) data. It’s one of the largest causes of data loss on any type of RAID 5 system, and we wish tech support companies would stop recommending it as they are assuming all the hard drives in the array are free from bad sectors (which is the reason your RAID fell over in the first place).

Please let us know how you’d like to proceed.

I’ve just emailed this to the customer and await their response.

Data Clinic Ltd, the well know UK hard drive repair and data recovery specialist has announced a new data recovery service for Microsoft Exchange Server.

Exchange keeps all its data in a large EDB file which can become easily corrupted by a server crash, RAID error, or software corruption. Remember as well that the most common cause of data loss – human error, can also result in EDB files being deleted.

Inside the EDB file are often many individual PST files – one for each user, the Data Clinic service is able to extract these from the EDB file and repair individual PST files where necessary.

I don’t know about you, but these days the family environment is a busy one when it comes to IT and computers. My eldest daughter has her own laptop and my youngest daughter has an IPad. They both have smartphones too. As well and texting and all the other things teenagers use their mobile phones for, they also take a lot of photographs that want to save.

Saving this data on the family iMac was fine – there was plenty os space and it was an easy thing to achieve but as time went by there was more and more data to store – more photos, more videos and now music too. Using the internet to search for an answer to my problem, my attention was drawn to Network Attached Storage, otherwise known as NAS. Basically these are devices that connect to the router in your house an allow anyone connected to that router to use them. Great I thought – I’ll get one of those !

So I did, everyone was happy. It came in a nice box with a link to Datlabs NAS Data Recovery Services, who I could call if I needed any technical assistance setting the NAS up and getting it working correctly. I just plugged it in, typed our password and it installed itself on our network. The first thing to do was to transfer all our photos, videos and music data from our family Mac onto the NAS. That was easy – a simple drag and drop operation saw that completed without any problems. There was a lot of data – some 50GB or so… How do teenagers make so much data?? All of which was of course, essential to them.

Anyway with that done I set about cleaning the Mac up and deleting files and folders. Another 30 minutes or so and this was completed. The first thug I noticed was the the machine began to run a lot quicker – which was a result I was very pleased with.

Next I took a look at the configuration of our new NAS device. It’s a 4 disk Linux based storage device that runs RAID 5. This means that the data it holds is spread across the whole 4 disks instead of one. That’s a bit odd I thought but after closer investigation I learned that this was infact a good thing. It allows one drive to fail and my data to still survive without being lost. RAID 5 also provide enhanced data read speeds too – something that was evident from the moment we began using our NAS file server concurrently. My daughters could watch their movies while I was able to stream music from it. This all worked fine – something that we could never do before on the Mac as it was just not quick enough.

So introducing a NAS RAID file server into our home environment has been a great success. Installing it was easy and I didn’t need to contact Datlabs for help in setting it up, I do think I’ll keep their link though just incase anything happens to the NAS that I can’t sort out myself.

As a contractor in the computer support industry I come into a lot of contact with servers and RAID arrays. In fact, my main job is looking after the data held on SAN servers and other form of Network Attached Storage. I work for companies and government institutions as a sort of freelance computer troubleshooter and mostly use IBM, Dell and HP server equipment. The Dell servers are typically Dell Poweredge series and the HP kit is mainly Proliant. Again the equipment is hooked up to a SAN data network.

Data redundancy is a big problem of mine, it’s what happens when I inherit old legacy systems that really should have been decommissioned years ago but because of budgetary constraints have continued to be used. I work on several HP Proliant and Dell SAN servers that I’d love to switch off and migrate the data onto something far more up to date like a Dell Blade or IBM X Server system. Unfortunately, I don’t really have any say in buying new equipment.

Older servers and computer equipment fails more regularly, it just does. It wears out, hard drive fail, memory goes bad and UPS’s fail. What greeted me when I came into work last Monday was a failed SAN server array – 12 disks running in a RAID 5 configuration with a hot spare. Analysis of the server logs showed that one of the hard drives had dropped out of the array on Saturday causing the hot spare to click in. This had seemingly worked fine – the hot spare should simply be ‘rebuilt’ back into the array, but instead the whole array had fallen over.

In the server room the SAN’s RAID BIOS reported that three of the hard drives had now dropped out from the array. Well, that would explain why the SAN server was no longer booting the array. What had caused the three drives to fail was at this point a mystery. The server in question was one that ran part of the council payroll so it was obviously important to get the SAN back up and running as soon as possible, but obviously this had to be done in a method that followed best practice. It became my task and no data could be lost in recovering the SAN either.

Now I’m good a IT and SAN server support I’ll admit but when I discover 2 of the 3 drives that had dropped from the array had mechanical faults, the problem was beyond my abilities. I used a data recovery company a few years back but they were no more. Searching online pointed me to a specialist SAN recovery company called RAID and Server Data Recovery, an online review or two told me they could be trusted and that they were recommended, so I called them.

I spoke to RAID and Server Data Recovery’s specialist SAN recovery team who confirmed what I thought already. Some of the drives had mechanical damage and would need clean room attention in order to progress the data recovery attempt. I got clearance for the costs from finance and loaded the SAN server into the car and drove it down to the recovery company.

Analysis showed 1 drive had a head crash while the other two had firmware issues. Firmware is code that runs the hard drive’s operating system. It can corrupt and when it does the hard drive fails. It seemed that this firmware problem was the cause of the SAN crashing and all that needed fixing was the firmware on the two failed drives. This was indeed the case and after the repairs to the hard disks were completed and the drives re-integrated back into the SAN RAID BIOS, the SAN came back online and the data was accessible again. Panic over. The data was fully restored which was the outcome everyone had wanted.

Now those of you lucky (?) enough to know me will know that I spend a good portion of my time working out of an office in Central London. Some of you may even have visited me there and yes I have tidied up since the last time you visited ! I know I hardly ever tidy up but a new girlfriend in my life means I have to do these things in case she wants to drop in and visit me.

Another reason I had to tidy up was to avoid accidents like the one that happened to me last Thursday. There I was, enjoying my Burger King meal whilst surfing the net. The phone rang and I moved to answer it and managed to knock my Coke over. I’d taken the lid off and the result was the liquid missed my computer but spilt all over my external hard drive instead. It was one of those annoying calls trying to sell me something as well, so to say I was annoyed is putting it mildly.

Anyway I got rid of the call and cleaned up the mess. I then noticed that my external hard drive wasn’t working anymore… Hmm worrying.. I switched it on and off again but got no response, the lights weren’t coming on and the disk wasn’t making it’s usual whirring sound either.

I work to deadlines and although I didn’t have a deadline for that day I did for the week after and my external hard drive contained data that I didn’t have anywhere else. A few phone calls to some friends (yes I do have them) had me looking for data recovery companies or services. People who fix hard disks are not called ‘people who fix hard disks’, they are called ‘data recovery companies’ and finding a good one can be a difficult process. I assumed that all data recovery companies are as capable as each other but this isn’t so. One data recovery company can be rubbish, whilst another one can be good. After looking around I choose Data Recovery London and I’m very pleased I did. They were able to rescue the data on my hard drive and also repair it so that it worked  again. This was a great outcome as all it meant I had to do was plug my hard drive back into my computer again and everything worked ! Thanks Data Recovery London, you saved my life, and quite possibly my job too.

On the evening of Friday 10th January 2014, Dropbox engineers accidentally deployed a software upgrade to their active data servers, bringing down Dropbox completely. While the service was partially restored within three hours, some users were still experiencing issues more than 24 hours after the initial outage. Dropbox has issued an apology and reassured users that their data is safe following the significant service outage over the weekend.

Following a high profile password hijacking incident in 2012, Dropbox was swift to try and quell anxieties that Friday’s outage had been from a data violation or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Instead a software bug was to blame and a Dropbox spokesman explained that despite running two copy “slave” machines, the bug resulted in many master machines as well as their slaves going down concurrently, producing a loss of service.

In addition, the company has developed applications to speed up the recovery of substantial MySQL copies, a tool Dropbox said would be published into the open source community so others could profit.

Dropbox had learned from this weekend’s troubles and had taken steps to ensure the bug wouldn’t be replicated. These measures contain an added level of tests that require machines to locally check their state before running incoming commands, which gives machines the right to reject orders when they would create a “harmful” consequence.

As the marketplace for affordable cloud storage grows, the outage once again emphasised the value for cloud storage companies to keep data reachable constantly so that customer belief can be preserved. The outage also demonstrated the brittle nature of cloud storage.

Security is an important concern for any business.  Having a strong security system is not only important in terms of deterring and preventing theft, but it can also be an important factor in determining your insurance premiums.  Businesses need to worry about theft by local gang bangers as well as employees with access to inventory and the cash register.  Even a full time security guard does not have eyes in the back of his head.  To get the most comprehensive surveillance possible, you need video monitoring.  CCTV DVR systems represent a great system towards these ends.

Closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras are at the heart of any monitoring system.  These provide the watchful eye that scans your shop, potentially 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.  These can be acquired in simple black and white, color, or even with infrared capability.  The latter is especially useful if they will be monitoring the place in the dark.

Each camera is outfitted with a lens that defines the viewing angle.  These lenses can be configured for a very wide fisheye style viewing angle to cover the most real estate possible.  They can also cover a narrow field if you need a close up view with detail, such as perhaps near a cash register where one might want to be able to catch the denominations of any bills pulled out.  Cameras can also have zoom lenses that can pan in and out when controlled remotely.

It is not uncommon for CCTV cameras in such a system to be hard wired directly to a digital video recorder (DVR) which will record all of the footage in real time.  However, many modern cameras are being produced to work without being physically wired in to any other device other than the electrical socket supplying power.  These usually have their own wireless data transmitter that is connected to a wireless router or hub.  This hub then usually connects to the worldwide web and the DVR. The DVR can be either at the location being monitored or somewhere off site where it is secured from being tampered with by employees or thieves.

There are many advantages to this setup.  First, this makes setting up the system relatively easy.  There is no need to worry about running cable lines from various parts of the establishment, which could require substantial refits to the premises.  Each camera in such a system can also be polled remotely using its assigned IP address in real time.  If the DVR fails for some reason, this could be useful for obtaining real time security.  Certain cameras might even have the ability to pan back and forth and zoom in and out.  These could then be controlled remotely using by the IP address with this setup if suspicious activity is observed.

The DVR’s primary function is to collect and store the incoming data.  In older systems this would have been handled by a video cassette recorder (VCR).  The obvious disadvantages of the latter system are (1) the short duration of the tape which requires frequent replacements, (2) the ability to only record one camera per VCR, and (3) the inability to go back and view previous video frames on the tape while it is still a problem.  DVRs solve all of these problems.

DVRs utilize a hard disk to store the data instead of a tape.  All video is digitized at the level of the CCTV and then compressed into a digital file using standard computer video formats.  Due to the speed of the digital processing power of the DVR, it can handle signals from many cameras at once, writing all the data onto different hard drive files as the data comes in.  Since computer hard drives can hold up to four terabytes of data, a lot of video can be stored before the old video would have to be backed up to some other sort of backup.  Since hard drives operate on the principle of random access, one can always go back and view any frame or multiple clips from multiple views simultaneously even though the system is still recording. As you probably know, hard drives can break from time to time and the data on them lost. Should this happen it’s frequently necessary to contact a CCTV or DVR data recovery specialist.

DVRs can be configured as standalone units, like home entertainment center DVRs, or as personal computers outfitted to perform the same function.  A computer DVR will give a business owner much more flexibility in terms of software that can be used in addition to software and hardware expansion possibilities.  However, a standalone unit can be more stable since it is usually not working on a bloated PC operating system that can be prone to crash.  Multiple PCs can be used, one off site and one on site, if crashes are a concern.  The latter configuration also provides some redundancy in case of an outgoing network failure effecting the off site DVR or physical tampering of the data at the on site unit.

CCTV DVR systems have provided business owners with more options to monitor their operations more efficiently. Deterring crime with 24/7 surveillance has never been more easy to install and cost effective.

High tides and strong winds combined to defeat flood defences and damage many shops and businesses in Hull this week. Companies, shops and houses were evacuated as flood water disrupted computer systems causing them to crash and their data to be lost. Subsequently IT support companies have been called into many businesses to restore failed computer systems such as RAID servers, stand alone PC and Mac computers. Recovery work is also underway across the region as companies try to restore their computer data and get their businesses back up and running again.

Flooding causes widespread disruption to computer systems and large scale data loss. Hard drives that have been involved in floods are often water damaged and have to be cleaned and carefully dried before attempts to access the data on them can be made. The drying process has to be very carefully managed as once a hard drive begins to dry out its components begin to oxidise. Oxidation of the hard drive must be prevented as it will prevent any type of successful data recovery result. One of the worst things that can be done is for a water damaged and oxidised hard drive to be powered up. Doing so will damage the platters of the drive and destroy the data.

Water damage will frequently break the hard drive controller board by causing a short circuit. Swapping the controller board will no work because controller boards are now unique to the hard drives they are shipped with and contain data unique to that hard drive.

A recommended data recovery company like Data Clinic are specialists in recovering the data from flood and water damaged hard drives. With many years experience in hard drive faults and data recovery they are often the company of choice for many UK businesses and individuals. With regional offices throughout the UK, customers can call in and have their hard disk assessed or take advantage of a countrywide free collection service. Drive faults and damage is assessed and then a price given for the recovery of the data. It’s then the customer’s choice whether they wish to proceed with the recovery or not.

With all the bad weather around the UK at the moment it’s not only Hull that is suffering, many businesses on the East coast of England are also taking the brunt of the poor conditions with shops staying shut and business data going offline. Computers and hard drives are resilient to many things but bad weather is not one of them, and those businesses without data backups are in for an agonising wait while the data recovery firms work at repairing their hard drives and recovering their data.

Whether it’s for your business or personal use, you can’t go wrong backing up your data.  You should always create a backup of your data at least once a month, even more than that if you have a lot of important information that you add to your laptop on a frequent basis. To put it in simple terms, nothing in the computer industry is fool proof.  Hard drives can crash, computer hard disks can get stolen, or be dropped and rendered useless. To ensure that we are never left without our valuable data, we should always create a backup of our information. There are several methods available that ensure data is backed up. Online services that back up data remotely can be used, alternatively so can external hard drives. Another cheap way to back up data and files is to burn them to a data CD or DVD. If you don’t have that much data to back up you could also use a USB memory stick. Preserving data is something you should really look into, especially if you have business material on your hard drive.

As mentioned above, the easiest and quickest way to backup important data is to use an online backup service.  Depending on your internet connection this can take from several minutes to several hours. It is time well spent though because at least you’ll know your data is safely stored to somewhere other than your hard disk should the drive crash. It would be an interesting study to discover how many businesses and households have lost data because of the recent flooding, what percentage of them had made backups and what percentage had to use data recovery services to rescue their data from their flooded hard disk drives.