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Diagnostics If a file or some group of files seem to have disappeared:
Hard drive mechanical failure: A hard drive is a mechanical device. Please read How does your hard drive work? for more details. Any mechanical device has a fixed life. For example, if your car has over 200,000 miles on it you know that you will need a engine replacement soon. Most hard drives spin between 5,400 RPM and 10,000 RPM. The actuator arm moves back and forth millions of time. Both the bearings in the actuator arm and spindle motor will eventually wear out. Under normal use, life is normally 3 to 4 years. If your computer is on all the time and runs hot, your life will be less. If you rarely use your computer, life will be longer. As your drive's bearings wear the alignment between the tracks and your drive's read head starts to change. You start to loose random sectors. It may start off as one sector a month. You may not notice it. It may be a file that you never use. You will soon start loosing a sector per week, per day and even per hour. Eventually it will hit an important operating system file. Depending on which sector died it could do anything from not being able to open one of your Word documents to knocking out an entire directory or even your entire drives operating system so that the BIOS will not see it anymore. A simple FREE check program is HDDScan Red or Blue sectors are sectors that Windows can't see. Orange sectors are sectors that are going to die soon. If you run this program monthly you can actually watch your drive go bad by the number of green, orange, red and blue sectors you get. Most data recovery programs that you buy can't recover Red or Blue sectors.
The above drive has many bad sectors and should be replaced ASAP Our probability of recovering all of your files with this failure is high. Smart Hard Drive Detects Imminent Failure and/or Wrong/No Drive ID :
The above picture shows two problems. The worst problem above is the bad drive ID. Our probability of recovering all of your files with the above failures is about 75%. Blue Screen of Death (B.S.O.D.)
The most infamous of all failures. Most likely Windows is going to want to try to format your drive. If you accidentally formatted and/or partitioned and/or reloaded a new operating system. Stop what you are doing and send the drive to us. You did a Hard Drive Wipe and/or Zero fill. Sorry, nobody will be able to help you with this one. If a large group of folders just disappeared and are nowhere to be found: If everything is OK,
run your virus scan software. Many virus programs go after your "My Documents" folder first. You should never load or save anything to a drive that you just lost data on! Some virus will disable your virus software and not let you run a scan. If you can't run a scan, power down your computer. If it won't let you, pull the plug. You need our help. If you hear drive activity, but the computer will not detect or boot from the hard drive or you receive file errors such as:
What should you do? If the above errors just started occurring and you did not have your computer open or changed any of its components then you should contact us. If you did have your computer apart and were making changes, this is what you should check:
If you still are having problems, please give us a call. Our probability of recovering all of your files with this failure is high. If the drive does not spin up and/or the drive light doesn't illuminate during power-up: If your drive makes a "beep" noise or "plays music": Your bearings are seized or the head is stuck. Not much you can do but send it to us. Our probability of recovering all of your files with this failure is high. If your drive makes a clicking noise:
IBM Click and Grind This normally means the drive's read head "Crashed" into the disk surface and was destroyed. This is one of the worst things that could go wrong with your drive. No read head means no data. Only our clean room can repair. Our probability of recovering your files with the above failure is 90% if you had no surface damage. The more you let you drive click, the more surface damage your drive will have. Note: Some laptop drives are very quiet when they click and you have to put your ear to them to hear the clicking. Some drives may click for only a few seconds and shut down. This is because some drives have a time out feature to prevent surface damage. If it clicks for a few seconds and shuts down it is still a head crash. IF YOUR DRIVE IS CLICKING, POWER IT OFF NOW! OR YOU RISK LOSING ALL YOUR DATA FOREVER!!!!!!! Note: Our success rate is dependant on the damage you had to the disk surface. Most crashes cause disk surface damage and when a new head runs across this damaged area, the new head is destroyed. Files that are near this damaged area can't be recovered by anyone. High pitch bearing about to fail with head click If your drive makes a high pitch "chirp" noise:
The probability that anybody on this earth can recover the files from the drive above is 0%. If your drive cycles up then shuts down: Our probability of recovering all of your files with this failure is good. If you see or smell smoke: Unplug your computer immediately! If you have a laptop, remove your battery. Our probability of recovering all of your files with this failure is high.
If your computer gets wet: Turn it off immediately!! Pull the plug. If it is a laptop pull the battery out. If you know how to remove the hard drive, remove it. Shake the water off, dry it off. Use a hair dryer on low or no heat. Don't try to power it on! This is when the worst damage will occur. Contact us for what to do next. Our probability of recovering all of your files with this failure is high. If you drop your laptop (or external USB drive). If your drive is not making any funny noises and is still working, back up your files as quickly a possible. If the drive was off when you dropped it, DO NOT POWER IT ON! Once you turn it on your odds of recovering your files quickly goes from 100% to 0%. A running drive will take less shock than a non running drive. How much shock will a non powered drive take? It is about the same as a drinking glass. If you dropped a drinking glass from the same height and it breaks then your drive is also broke. How much shock will a powered drive take? We had crashed drives in from customers who have just banged their fist on their desk or dropped their drive from a height of only one inch. Do not try to fix it yourself! We strongly suggest that you do not try to recover anything yourself. Some of the worst damage we have seen is from customers trying to recover their own data. If you really want to try it yourself the only thing we ask you to do is make a mirror copy of your drive and work on the copy. Once you start overwriting data there is nothing that any data recovery place on this earth can do for you. Unlike may data recovery places and software programs we never write to your drive. See our About area for more details.
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Data Recovery NJ We are located in Scotch Plains, N. J. 07076 Please do not mail us your drive unless you first contact us by phone or e-mail. Please fill out our Submit a New Case form. Open 10:00am to 10:00pm 5 days a week (We are closed Saturday & Sunday) |
