Spring Cleaning for your Computer

I just love the smells, sights and sounds of spring. The fresh aroma of pine-scented cleaning solvent, the rustling of dusters on the shelves, and the dog playfully chasing after the vacuum cleaner all make me smile. Yes, it’s time for our annual spring cleaning!
It’s a good time to perform your computer’s spring cleaning as well. There are several maintenance chores that should be done at least annually. Performing these could make a difference on whether you might need to bring your hard drive to us for data recovery. The Data Rescue Center is here to help if you need Windows® disk file recovery or Mac data recovery. However, here are three tips to keep problems to a minimum.
1. One of the major enemies of computer components is heat. Shut off your desktop computer and remove the side panel. Using a can of compressed air for electronics, careful blow out the dust and debris that has collected. Don’t forget the vents on the side panels and the dust that has collected on CPU, power supply and graphics card fans.
2. You might want to reseat all of the cables and connections from the motherboard to various components. Static electricity can damage electronic parts, so be sure to wear a grounding strap.
3. Clean up your hard drive as well. Take a good inventory of the programs that are installed. Some may need updating while others just need trashed. You’ve probably amassed a wide array of programs, many of which you no longer use. Old programs can often become corrupted and are a common source of logical drive failure and data loss.

Knowing what your hard drive contains is also important for another reason. Many folks will sell or donate their old computers when they buy a new one. Most of these users will delete their files and personal data from the hard drive before they let it go. Even so, you will recall that files that are merely deleted are still resident on the drive. This is why our recovery engineers are able to retrieve your lost data in the first place.

According to a recent study in the United Kingdom, 65 percent of the people surveyed sold or gave away their personal devices. This includes smartphones and PDAs as well as computers. The study also found that one in 10 of the hard drives sold or donated were not effectively wiped of all data. The original owners actually left personally identifiable information on the drives that could be easily recovered.

You already associate our business with flash media and SSD recovery as well as standard hard drive data recovery services. However, we also provide secure hard drive recycling. More information can be found on our website at http://www.harddriverecycle.com/. We will securely wipe your drive using Department of Defense standards so that your personal data can never be retrieved and used. There is no cost to you for this service, and your hard drive parts are recycled in the recovery business, once your data has been wiped from the drive.

Business should have a disaster plan in place to protect their data.

Disasters are interesting things. We never want to be involved in one, however, we seem to be drawn to depictions or actual descriptions of them. For example, the sci fi channel seems to run a disaster movie marathon at least once a month. News flashes on television immediately draw our attention if they are about some natural or man-made disaster. As interesting as they might be, it is important that we do assess our own situations and plan for any disasters that could happen to us. For a small to medium sized business, this includes the protection of vital business data.

The two basic parts of a disaster plan should include the actions to take during the disaster and the actions necessary to recover from the disaster. For example, planning the actions to take during a natural disaster would include determining evacuation routes, safe shelter locations and emergency communications. Disaster recovery plans should include provision for food, water and shelter.

Some disasters are not really earth-shaking; however, their impact on an individual business can be devastating. Data loss disasters can drive a small or medium sized business into extinction. According to recent surveys taken in the United States, Britain and France, 20 percent of businesses in this category have experienced data loss.

Part of any business’s data disaster recovery plan should include researching companies that can perform hard drive recovery. As more of our data is stored on personal computers and servers, finding a trustworthy hard drive recovery engineer or laboratory should be a priority. Furthermore, the prevalence of smartphones in business environments necessitates that an effective flash drive recovery source is found as well.

Protect your data when you donate your old hard drive

In past posts, we looked at taking inventory of the files on your computer. It is important that you know what is there and take steps to protect it from loss. We discovered that backing up your data regularly is the only sure method of data protection. Even though our data recovery services employ current technology and techniques, some files may not be recoverable in certain cases.

Knowing what your hard drive contains is also important for another reason. Many folks will sell or donate their old computers when they buy a new one. Most of these users will delete their files and personal data from the hard drive before they let it go. Even so, you will recall that files that are merely deleted are still resident on the drive. This is why our recovery engineers are able to retrieve your lost data in the first place.

According to a recent study in the United Kingdom, 65 percent of the people surveyed sold or gave away their personal devices. This includes smartphones and PDAs as well as computers. The study also found that one in 10 of the hard drives sold or donated were not effectively wiped of all data. The original owners actually left personally identifiable information on the drives that could be easily recovered.

You already associate our business with flash media and SSD recovery as well as standard hard drive data recovery services. However, we also provide secure hard drive recycling. More information can be found on our website at http://www.harddriverecycle.com/. We will securely wipe your drive using Department of Defense standards so that your personal data can never be retrieved and used. There is no cost to you for this service, and your hard drive parts are recycled in the recovery business, once your data has been wiped from the drive.

Signs of an impending hard drive failure

My wife and I were reminiscing about our early years the other day. We’ve always had a soft spot for action-thriller and science-fiction movies. In fact, one anniversary we went to see the romantic comedy “Alien versus Predator.” We talked about some of the movies we saw before the kids were born and one that still brings tears to my eyes was “Jaws.” I think I still have bruises from where she gripped my arm. One of the things I remember most was the ominous music that played whenever the shark was about to attack. You knew something was going to happen that was fierce and dreadful.

So, what does that have to do with computers? Just like in the movies, there are certain sounds that warn us of impending disaster. A clicking or grinding noise emanating from the hard drive may not signal a shark attack, however it should warn the computer owner that the drive is about to fail. It is highly recommended to immediately stop using the drive.

Additionally, there are other warning signs of impending drive failure. If programs take extremely long to start or you get a lot of error messages, it could be signaling that the system files are corrupted or that there are many bad sectors on the drive.

We specialize in data recovery here at The Data Rescue Center. Our recovery engineers are highly trained in the process of disk file recovery. Whether it is Windows or Mac data recovery, retrieving missing files for our clients is our main business.

Before you hear the sounds of impending doom, get your data backed up. But, if you lose your files you can count on us to help in an emergency.

Repair or recycle your old computer equipment?

Computer prices have dropped significantly. This might put you in a quandary when you have computer issues. Should you repair, reuse or recycle old or damaged computer equipment? The answer depends on the age of the equipment and the extent of the damage.

For example, I have several computers that are five to 10 years old. Obviously, they can’t handle many of the new operating systems. Being the packrat that I am, I hate to throw anything out. I have disassembled a few for parts; however, I installed Ubuntu on a few and they still run well.

On the other hand, hard drives are a different story. If the drive controller goes out, the drive might possibly be repaired. If the drive is suffering from physical failure, making grinding or clicking noises, the best option would be to shut it down, have a data recovery services laboratory retrieve your files and get a new drive. Here at The Data Rescue Center, we have hard drive data recovery services for standard platter drives and can perform SSD recovery as well.

While we’re on the subject of SSDs, solid state drives are still rather expensive. Recoveries on SSD drives can often times be more expensive than a traditional hard drive recovery due to the amount of time and extra work involved in an SSD recovery.

Finally, it may be better to scrap old equipment. However, don’t just throw it in the trash. Many parts can be recycled locally. The Data Rescue Center offers free hard drive wiping for any hard drive donated for eWaste.

The Data Rescue Center offers excellent customer service

I’m going to make a profound statement: Data recovery is not the same as, say, lawn mower servicing. Hard drive recovery is obviously more involved and is an extremely technical task. A hard drive recovery engineer cannot just get a repair manual and attempt recovery. Recovery engineers go through extensive training so that they perform safe, effective retrievals.

Horror stories of botched or improper drive recovery abound. A news story earlier this year recounted one such incident. A woman took her high-end computer back to the electronics retail store because she was having issues. She fully expected the computer to remain in-house for repair. It didn’t.

When she hadn’t heard back about her computer for some time, she called the store to check the progress. She was then told that it had been shipped out to a regional repair facility, obviously without her consent, and that they would check on it. To make an extremely long story short, she finally got a replacement computer after several months of waiting. However, all of her personal computer data was lost forever. Her digital pictures, music collection, videos, work and home documents, everything.

Customer service is extremely important when dealing with a client’s critical data. Unfortunately, this woman’s story is not untypical. Critical files have been lost, damaged and stolen because care was not used. Poor customer service causes distrust and unnecessary anxiety.

We understand that the client is an important part of the process, whether it be business server repair or flash drive recovery from a personal digital camera. Always make sure your equipment is being handled properly and securely. You should be consulted at every step of the process as well.

Data recovery scams and tricks to be aware of...

One of the worst things seen in the computer recovery industry is the outright scams and dirty tricks that are prevalent.

Lock Your Drive: You send your drive off to a company and they quote you $2000.. Yikes, that’s a lot, so you send it to a few other companies, but the other companies say they can’t get any data from the drive no matter what the cost. Ok, the original company, although expensive, must be good, since they’re the only ones that are able to get any data for you. It’s expensive but seemingly the only option. What may have happened, and it happens every day, is that original shop may have locked your drive with a password. Only they know what that password is now, so anyone else looking at it might not have access to the data… So they’ve in essence locked you into their service and their price—You have no other option.. Dirty….

Clone Then Ruin Your Drive: A similar dirty trick is where a company may get your drive and then quote you say, $3000. Of course you say no to that and want them to send it back to you. In the meantime, they’ve already cloned the drive, so they have a good copy of the data on something back in their lab. They will then physically damage your drive in what looks like a naturally occurring way, which makes the data unrecoverable. So you get your drive back and send it to other shops… The other shops will look at the damage (which looks all legit) and tell you that they can’t get anything from a drive in that condition. Once again, the first company looks like a hero, being able to recover data from a drive that no one else can… So you send the drive back to them, which they receive, and they get the data from that clone they have. You walk away thinking, “Wow, that company was expensive, but they sure are great, they got it back when everyone else said it was impossible!”

Punishment for shopping price: Another dirty trick is where you send your drive to a company and they quote you. The pricing is high, so you want to shop it around. They return the drive to you and you send it out to a few other shops, getting quotes. I turns out that the first place was the best price, so you go back to them. However, they now tell you that “your drive has been opened in an unclean environment, which has contaminated the platter and now it’s going to cost another $1000 on top of that original quote”. Wow, now you’re mad at the other companies, since one of them must’ve opened your drive in a dirty environment and now it’s gonna cost you even more to get your data back! In reality, the original company might be scamming you. They will in essence punish you for shopping the drive around, and in the meantime, they will use this as a way to ruin the reputation of the other service companies you sent your drive to. We have seen this happen before and did an experiment to prove what was going on. We knew about this scam being used by a very large recovery house here in the U.S. We had someone pose as a customer send a drive to that service shop. They quoted the recovery and the fake customer asked to have his drive returned, since he couldn’t afford the amount. When the drive was received back from that original service shop, the fake customer just let the drive sit in his office.. About a month later, we had him put some stickers from our company onto the outside case of his hard drive (non-tamper stickers usually affixed to a drive after servicing or inspection). Note, the customer never opened up his hard drive, and he never sent it to us to open up. He simply took a few stickers and stuck them to the outside of the drive. He then sent the drive back to the original company. They received it and saw those stickers and assumed “oh, he sent it to someone else to get a quote.”- That original company then contacted the fake customer and told him, “your drive has been opened in an unclean environment, which has contaminated the platter and now it’s going to cost another $1000 on top of that original quote.” —- That’s right, they assumed his drive was sent off to a competing company (heck, the evidence was there because those stickers were there, right?). They tried to make the second company look bad, but in reality it exposed that they were indeed performing this scam.
In Conclusion:
As a computer user, you are likely never really worrying about your important computer files like digital photos and videos, financial documents and digital music files. Yes, there are backup solutions readily available for a low cost, but most of us seem too busy to take time to ensure we’re protected. For that reason, many computer users find themselves panicking once a computer crash occurs. It is during this crisis that you must take time out to investigate your possible solutions and then find a truly trustworthy company to work with. Simply searching the web for positive reviews or “customer” recommendations is no longer a reliable way as this is being abused by fake review sites and paid-for customer review postings. A great way to find out more about a company is to use the old-fashioned telephone communication model. Call up the company and talk to them, hear what they have to say and ask many questions. Ask them to call you back and see if they do. Do they respond to you in a manner that satisfies your needs as a potential customer? If not, then they are likely to fail you even if you become a paying customer.

Watch out for companies offering a "Low-Cost Guarantee"

Low-Cost / Maximum Cost Guarantees:  Any company that promises you a “Guaranteed” cost of $399 or $499 without ever seeing your drive. That will not get you physical recovery. When they claim that, they are hoping you send the hard drive in without trying a software solution yourself. If they get the job and the software solution works, they can charge you that amount. If the recovery does indeed require physical recovery work, they can try to re-quote you or send it back and say they weren’t able to recover it. You may want to check to see what their return shipping costs are, to make sure they aren’t trying to make money off of that as well. They might also contact you and say that “they” can’t get the data back for you (at that guaranteed low cost), but they can pass the drive onto a partner who can (no guaranteed cost). It’s the old bait-and-switch technique to be careful of.

Cleanroom or Kindacleanroom: Make sure the company has a cleanroom—Sure, they may say they do on their website, but we all know the web really isn’t policed. If they have a cleanroom, they would be proud of it and show it off with a picture or two on their website. If someone opens your hard drive in a non-cleanroom environment, your drive will likely suffer damage that will either make the data unrecoverable (due to scoring caused by particles) or will make it more difficult and more expensive for the eventual recovery. Do not trust that they have a cleanroom just because they say they do, require some proof.
Virtual Recovery Shops: Make sure the company actually exists and does the work themselves. Many people are setting up websites with great stock photos, industry keywords and a phone number or email address. They get you to send the drive to them but in reality they don’t do any of the work themselves. What they will do is send your drive to a few shops, seeking out the best price. Then they contact you back and give you an inflated price. If the shop can do it for $1000, they might contact you and say it’s $3000… You might say you can’t afford that, but you then negotiate down to $2000, thinking you’re getting a great deal. In reality, you just paid double what it would’ve cost you if you contacted the legit place by yourself.

Trustworthy/Background Checks: The last thing you want to do is send your computer hard drive to someone you can’t trust. Personal photos, banking information and other personal data should be entrusted only to a professional company. You don’t want your personal pictures posted online or your financial information rifled through. Make sure all their employees undergo a background check and make sure the company itself has a good standing with a service like the Better Business Bureau or similar consumer protection agency.

Class 100 Cleanroom

Physical hard drive failure occurs when one of the mechanisms inside of your hard drive breaks or fails. Realizing that your hard drive is spinning around inside at speeds of up to 10,000 rotations per minute (even faster in some top-speed drives), you can imagine that something might go wrong at some point in time, especially when they are trying to cut costs for producing these hard drives.  Once you’ve determined that your hard drive is suffering from a physical issue, you need to take time to find a computer recovery service that you can trust with your data. Employee background checks, secure storage of your hard drive, a certified cleanroom and technical expertise are all needed to protect you from harm and provide the best chance at recovering the data

A physical hard drive recovery service is expensive. Think of them as brain surgeons for your computer. Yes, if you scratch your arm, you mom can easily clean you up and throw on a band-aid, but if you need brain surgery, you can’t trust your mom to do the job. The same is true for physical hard drive recovery. You can’t go to an all-around computer store to get this done. Likewise, you can’t trust your IT uncle or Geek friend to do it either. Physical computer recovery requires specific tools, costing $15,000 and up, as well as a cleanroom and years of daily recovery experience. Your IT uncle or geek friend just doesn’t have the tools, facilities or technical experience to perform this type of work. In fact, if you let them try, they will almost surely cause more damage to the drive, making the professional’s job even harder (as in more expensive for you). You wouldn’t trust your mom to perform brain surgery on you so don’t trust non-professionals to check out your hard drive.

www.TheDataRescueCenter.com does background checks on all employees, makes use of a Class 2 Vault for customer hard drive storage and employs only the finest data recovery engineers and advisors. The new facility in Livermore, California also employs Pentafluoroethane Gas Fire Suppression (ECARO-25 FIke) System as well as above and below grid motion sensors and RGB cameras to provide best in class protection of customer hard drives.