Data recovery is basically the extraction of data from damaged or faulty media. The media can become damaged or faulty for reasons such as; viruses, power surges, fires, floods, failed back ups, etc.

How do you know when your media has become damaged or faulty?

• You get error messages, which say that the device is not recognized.
• Previously accessible data is suddenly gone.
• Scraping or rattling sound from the hard disk drive.
• Hard disk drive stops spinning.
• Computer or hard disk drive stops functioning.
• System crash and operating System won’t re-load
• Back up tapes won’t Load
• Software applications stop loading data.
• Virus Corruption e.g.; weird messages appearing on screen
• A completely blank screen
• Strange and unpredictable behavior
• An error message stating, "File not found."
• Physical damage due to natural elements, handling, or intentional breakage
• Power Surges/Blackouts.

Avoid further Loss or damage
In some circumstance the actions taken after the initial damage to the media can cause more Harm than Good. To minimise any further loss, follow these steps;

Never Subject a Malfunctioning

• Avoid prolonged operation of an unhealthy drive; doing so could damage the media beyond recovery
• If a drive cannot be seen by the system BIOS or does not respond to low-level commands, (i.e. you are unable to view the partition table or the system is unable to ID the drive during the boot sequence), then there is little chance of being able to recover the drive without specialized tools and skills.

Never Open the Drive Enclosure

• The drive enclosure should only be opened under a clean environment.
• Tolerances in modern drives are extremely tight; one dust spec can destroy hundreds of sectors or even trigger media failure.
• Furthermore, just loosening the cover screws can cause the drive to be knocked out of alignment to the point where the drive is no longer recognized by the drive's control electronics (the circuit board on the drive).

Never Write to A Corrupt or Malfunctioning Drive

This is by far the most common mistake. Writing to a corrupt drive often destroys clues that a qualified engineer uses to piece the file system back together
Use of Software utilities often brings a corrupt file system to the point where very little (if any) data can be recovered.

Contact us immediately (24 HOURS, 7 DAYS A WEEK):

Within Australia: 03 9532 7959
International: +613 9532 7959

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Data Rescue has over 90% success rate in data recovery.