A Hard Drive Rebuild Can Vary Widely in Complexity

| Posted: 13-01-2008 | Comments: 0 | Views: 16 | Rating: (55)

(?)

Hard drive rebuild, in the general sense of the term, can mean a simple operation of replacing the firmware (controller card) and reprogramming it using specialist software. Or it can mean replacing the drive's precision components like its read/write head, done in Class 100 clean rooms by specialist data recovery technicians.

Hard Drives Are Susceptible to Failure

Hard drives are electro-mechanical devices that are spinning even when the computer is idle. Typical spin rates vary from 4000 to 15000 rotations per minute. They are thus susceptible to failure as are CD, DVD or tape.

A hard drive rebuild can become necessary owing to mechanical failure of the disk but a logical recovery of the file system may still be needed to make the data readable. The logical file system can get corrupted with errors during the failure of the drive.

Failures can occur through a variety of causes:- power surges, causing physical damage like a drive head crash, a natural disaster like fire or flood, dropping a laptop or external drive, or damage caused by faulty design of the drive or its firmware programming, even a virus attack or malicious intent could be an issue.

Hard Drive Recovery

Data recovery from a hard drive can be simple or complex.

For example, if the data was lost owing to accidental deletion of files, you might be able to recover them yourself by running a data recovery software.

On the other hand, if the read/write head has crashed and the drive is clicking or the motor has seized, you will have to entrust your drive to a specialist professionals. They will have a dust free clean room where they will open the drive and replace the damaged heads, and the necessary resources and experience with a range of drive problems to help you in your hour of need.

Data recovery professionals typically start by copying the existing image on the damaged disk to a backup location. They will work on a copy trying to recover the data using specialized tools. Only after they have succeeded are they likely to transfer the recovered data to a replacement drive or give you secure access to their servers so you can check the data is intact and download it directly.

Simply replacing a damaged part like the printed circuit board of the drive cannot put things right; it will require some reprogramming to ensure it is correctly matched.

Does Your Recovery Company Have Hard Drive Rebuild Experience?

Hard drives have come a long way since a 5MB RAMAC, weighing a ton, was introduced in 1956 by IBM. Today's drives can be a tiny box in comparison offering many Terabytes (each terabyte is a 1000 GB and each GB is a thousand MB).

Today, there are many storage drive makers each offering models with different features. The drive can be a single drive or a RAID system with multiple physical drives with their own cut down operating systems and hot swap features.

The drive interfaces to the computer can differ. For example, it can be IDE, EIDE, SATA, SCSI, Lan, etc.

Data losses can be caused by many different factors, requiring different kinds of approaches to any recovery.

Only an experienced hard drive repairer can identify just the right remedy that is both effective and economical

Once you have decided on a hard drive rebuild, check that the company you select is experienced and has the resources in house, or is a reseller of a reputable established company who ensures any recovered data is managed securely for your protection and does not broadcast your company's loss of information on their website without your permission.

Conclusion

A hard drive rebuild becomes necessary when you are unable to boot with the drive or to read the data you have stored on it. You will also be better off if you approach a data recovery specialist if your drive is making strange noises (that you have not heard before) or data seems to be disappearing, or your system is spewing error messages.

Considering the numerous makes and models of hard drives in the market, each with differing features, you should approach only an experienced data recovery company with a track record of success but beware of the varying costs and just like any purchase expensive does not mean it is the best.

Rate this Article:

Current: 0 / 5 stars - 0 vote(s).

Article Tags: Hard Drive Recovery, Raid Recovery, Laptop Data Recovery, Emergency Data Recovery Services, Pc/desktop Data Recovery, Usb Memory Stick Recovery, Document Recovery, Zip Disc Recovery, Floppy Disc Recovery

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recovery-articles/a-hard-drive-rebuild-can-vary-widely-in-complexity-303426.html

Print article

Send to friend

Publish this Article

Author feedback

About the Author:

Andy Butler from ABC Data Recovery writes about Hard-Drive-Rebuild visit www.abc-data-recovery.co.uk for further information.

Submitting articles has become one of the most popular means of generating quality backlinks and targeted traffic to your website. Join us today - It's Free!

Article Comments

Add new Comment

Clean Room Data Recovery - What's Its Significance?
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
What are clean rooms? Why is clean room data recovery important? We look at these issues first.

Data Loss and Data Recovery: an Overview
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
Data stored on computers can get lost in several ways. To recover from such a situation the main option would be to restore from backed up data.Alternatively calling on the services of a specialist data recovery company. Reconstructing all the lost data manually is usually not a viable option.

Disaster Recovery Needs Contingency Planning
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
Disaster recovery will be an unsatisfactory exercise if it is organized after a disaster strikes. Only a lot of advance planning and preparation can ensure that the business resumes operations quickly after a major disaster.

Forensic Computer Investigations Require Specific Protocol for the Legal Handling of Recovered Data
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
Forensic computer investigations seek to gather evidence for determining whether computer systems have been used for unlawful or unauthorized activities. The evidence can reside in computers, storage devices and the network.

It Support Contracts: Take Pains to Ensure That your Needs are Met
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
IT support contracts should be complete and transparent, and should not confuse you with obscure wording. If there is some unavoidable legalese that you don't understand, discuss it with your IT support contractor and get clarifications in writing and agree the level of service you require so that the contractor can supply an appropriate service level agreement (SLA ).

Memory Stick Repair is a Feasible Option
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
You might not even know that memory stick repair facilities and data recovery facilities exist. Unaware of such a facility you might decide to abandon the valuable pictures that are on your memory stick. This can happen when you repeatedly receive a "Card not found" or Needs Formatting or similar error message when you try to retrieve the pictures from the memory stick.

Raid Data Recovery is a High Tech Exercise
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
RAID data recovery requires a high level of technical skill and specialized facilities. Not all data recovery companies will have sufficient resources. So your first task if you come to need RAID data recovery is to find a data recovery company with a successful record of recovering data from all kinds of RAID systems.

Server Installation and Configuration Needs Experienced Professionals
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
A properly configured and sufficiently powerful server installation can facilitate collaborative working, efficient communications and informed decision making.

Got a Question? Ask.

Ask the community a question about this article:

Q&A Powered by:

Latest Data Recovery Articles

Outlook Express Dbx Repair Tool
By: Recovery Toolbox Inc | 04/09/2008
Microsoft Outlook Express DBX repair tool. Recover damaged DBX files. Recover deleted emails from Outlook Express folders.

Undelete Files With a Wizard
By: Chris Smile | 04/09/2008
Undelete Wizard can still successfully locate, reconstruct and recover many types of files and support undelete files for many Windows versions.

Digital Photography Tips: Recovering Lost and Deleted Pictures
By: Michael Kharinsky | 04/09/2008
Brought your digital camera home only to find out there are no pictures in it? No worries! There is an easy way out. In fact, there is more than one way out!

Rar Repair Tool
By: Recovery Toolbox Inc | 01/09/2008
RAR repair tool. Extract files from damaged WinRAR files.

Points to Consider Before Backups
By: Stuart King | 31/08/2008
Some important info before considering a backup strategy

Top 10 Photo Recovery Tips
By: Korey B Bachelder | 29/08/2008
Perhaps you have a capacious memory card. Maybe you simply trust the technology of your latest digital gizmo to forever shield your data from harm.

What to Do if You Have a Hard Drive Problem
By: Russell Phillips | 28/08/2008
If you suffer a hard disc failure it can be a very stressful time. The hard drive failure could mean that you might lose valuable information or work that you have completed. It might have corrupted your files, or worse, destroyed them completely.

Electronic Document Scanning Medical Health Records Digitizing Nyc-scantronix.net
By: scantronix | 26/08/2008
Scantornix.net Offers ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT SCANNING HEALTH MEDICAL RECORDS With PAPERLESS OFFICE SCANNING DOCUMENT DIGITIZING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT STORAGE For HEALTH MEDICAL RECORDS of DOCUMENT SCANNING NYC.

More from Andy Butler

Server Recovery Can Affect Business Survival
By: Andy Butler | 13/01/2008 | Data Recovery
Effective server recovery can prove absolutely essential for business survival because servers are critical to business operations. Servers are continuously supporting operations by serving files, applications, transaction data and other kinds of support information and tools without which businesses and individuals would find it harder to survive.

Article Categories

Article Marketing

Article Notepad

Stop Duplicate Content

Term Papers

Follow ArticlesBase at http://twitter.com

Need Help?

Sign up for our email newsletter

Receive updates, enter your email below

Use of this web site constitutes acceptance of the Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy | User published content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Copyright © 2005-2008 Free Articles by ArticlesBase.com, All rights reserved. (0.73, 17)

A Hard Drive Rebuild Can Vary Widely in Complexity

Article Comments

Related Articles

Got a Question? Ask.

Latest Data Recovery Articles

More from Andy Butler

Need Help?

Site Links

Webmasters

Business Info

Sign up for our email newsletter