Different Types of Hard Drive Failures:

Your data is stored by magnetizing tiny bits of magnetic material on the the disk surface. A magnetized bit represents a number "one". A non magnetized bit being a "zero". All of your data is written to the disk surface using these "ones" and "zeros" much like messages use to be sent via morse code.

Note: a zero is actually a gap. A place where there is no one.

A software failure is a failure that causes any number of the "ones" to become "zeros" or "zeros" to become "ones".

This can occur intentionally by a virus or unintentionally by software crashes, hardware glitches or the user using the wrong command (i.e. format, fdisk, delete etc.)

The cure for this problem is to have a trained professional manually restore the pattern of "ones" and "zeros" back to their original state.

The thing that sets us apart from most of the other so called (software) "data recovery" places is that we never fix the bits on your original drive. We always make a "Mirror Copy" of you drive and work on the copy.

This is what separates a good software data recovery company from a bad software data recovery company. It is quite simple, all data recovery software and Engineers can screw up. Specially if the person operating it does not know what they are doing. We have seen may cases where the so called data recovery firm has done more damage than the crash or virus and there is no way to go back. Many of the drives we get are from customers who have already been to these so called "data recovery" firms with catastrophic results.

Another very important difference, most of the other software data recovery places will not fix your drives "Service Area". This is the area on the hard drive that is used exclusively by your hard drive during it's boot process. The only way to access this area is through the use of special electrical hardware. If your service area is damaged your drive will not be recognized by the BIOS. There is no "software only" fix that will allow anyone to access this area.

We have over a hundred different data recovery tools to use on you hard drive. Some recovery tools we use retails for over $5,000. It can take days and in some cases weeks of continuous run time to recover a drive with many bad sectors. Anybody who says that they can do it faster is skipping the bad areas of your drive.

Most big data recovery companies fix the easiest drives to fix first.
If a drive is going to take longer than a predetermined amount of time, it is said to be "unrecoverable".

We have recovered data from many of these "unrecoverable" drives because we spend the extra time.

If you look at the hard drive photograph at the top of this page you will notice there is a circuit board on the hard drive with hundreds of electrical components. The failure of any single one of these components will prevent you from accessing the data on your drive.

We have skilled Engineers who will debug and replace failed electrical components on your drive. This is what sets us apart from many of the other so called "data recovery" places. Ask your $99 place if they can replace surface mount chips.

Over half of the failures that prevent you from accessing data on your drive is due to hardware failures not software failure. This means that a place that does only software recovery has less than a 50% success rate of recovering your data.

Most "software only" data recovery places just take any drive they can get their hands on and run their $50 software. If nothing happens or they get some error that they don't understand they just return the drive in worse shape than it was when you gave it to them and tell you that it can't be recovered. If they are somewhat successful they charge you a few hundred bucks and tell you that is all of the data that anybody can get off the drive. Some places will even charge you even if they are not successful !!!

The black aluminum part in the picture above is a sealed enclosure which contains the platters (disks), the motor that spins the disk, The read/write heads and the actuator arm that moves the heads back and forth. There are few electrical parts in this enclosure. It contains mainly mechanical parts. This sealed enclosure can not be opened unless you are in a special clean room. This is because the gap between the read/write head and the disk surface is so small that a single speck of dust on the disk surface looks like a bolder sitting on the highway to your car. The encounter could be catastrophic. There are only a few companies in the world who have a clean room and can properly repair drive internal component failures. They also charge a minimum of about $1,000 for this service. We have our own clean room here on site and as far as we know we have the lowest price of anybody.

A quick way to tell if your drive has an internal mechanical failure and needs a clean room is to listen if your drive is "clicking" (see: debug).

We do realize that quick recovery and privacy is important to you. Your drive will be given immediately to one of our Engineers. They will work on the drive until the recovery process is complete. Your drive will not leave their hands until it is returned directly to you. Great care is taken to insure that no further damage is done to your drive.