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Hard luck & hard drives
Recovery experts retrieve data of owners who didn't see crashes coming 02/20/2003
When hard drives break, so can hearts. "We've had people sobbing and crying in the lobby," says
Bill Margeson, president of CBL Data Recovery Technologies (cbltech.com). "It's
really sad. People are devastated." As computers have insinuated themselves into every corner
of our lives, so have the chances that hardware failure can
cripple our activities. But a growing number of companies are
springing to our rescue. And data recovery specialists such as Mr. Margeson of
Toronto and Dallas-based Data Recovery Services Inc. have a
message for anyone who has crucial data stored on an
apparently busted hard drive – or any other storage medium:
Most of the time, your files can be reconstituted. And the
cost – $99 and up – may be more affordable than you think.
Tom Kapurch, vice president of Data Recovery Services (datarecovery.net), says companies such as his
are fielding more service requests from home users. Emergency cases A University of Texas coed's father, for example, recently
raced up to the Data Recovery Services office with his
daughter's hard drive and a distressed expression. The drive
had crashed as his daughter was preparing for final exams.
"He waited an hour, and we had it all back for around
$100," Mr. Kapurch recalls. The electronic components inside most hard drives – the
circuitry – shouldn't be trusted to last more than two years,
recovery services say. But the interior platters on which data
is stored can hold your files for 60 years or more. "Once it's there, it's generally there unless you scratch
it off or bust it," says Mr. Kapurch. In general, not even fires, saltwater flooding or plane
crashes can harm the data stored on those platters. Operating
systems may fail, but even reformatted disks retain old files
that can be recovered, the experts say. Of course, there are ways to avoid using disaster recovery
experts. Preventive medicine "People think that if it's on the computer, it's there
forever," says Mr. Margeson. "They don't do simple
maintenance. They don't do defragging of their hard drives;
they don't do backups. There's a malaise they fall into." Says Mr. Kapurch: "It's like 9-11. You don't see the
disaster until it smacks you in the face. Computers have
gotten so good and can do so much, we just think they're going
to run forever." Many of the drives brought to recovery specialists today
were put into service in the mid-1990s. That's too long to
expect hardware to function properly, they say. And when drives start to self-destruct, they usually give
plenty of warning. They make strange noises. "It's a grinding sound or clicks
or whistles or whirrs," says Mr. Margeson. "If there's any new
noise, that's a bad flag." Many times, it starts with a clicking sound. Hard drives
are sort of high-tech versions of phonograph records. That
clicking means the data-reading head is returning to its
parked position because it has lost contact with some data.
When the sounds start, it's time to shut down. "There's no sense in repeatedly beating up the hardware,"
Mr. Margeson says. "That's only making matters worse." Backup snafus Ideally, home users should back up their data every week,
experts say. But that alone is no guarantee. Mr. Kapurch has
seen corporations lose both hard drives and tape backups in
fires because backups were stored in the same room. Mr. Margeson has handled numerous cases where people
thought they had good backup copies, only to learn they had
been backing up an empty directory. In other cases, they
attempted to back up files that were open on their desktops,
and the backup program couldn't access that data. Beyond storing backups in secure locations away from the
computer, users would be wise to run tests on the backups.
Other media Data stored on floppy disks, CD-Rs, Zip drives and other
media can also often be recovered – no matter what the
information technology people or the retail clerk at the
big-box electronics store tells you. "It's easier for them to say you've lost it, then have you
reinstall the operating system and let them upgrade you," says
Mr. Margeson. "Even if you've used Fdisk or some other program
that seems to wipe the disk clean, it's usually still there in
good shape." For those buying replacement drives, Mr. Margeson
recommends brands such as Seagate ("They're like Buicks; they
just keep on working"), Maxtor and Western Digital. Stay away,
he says, from IBM's Desk Star ("We call it the Death Star")
and the Fujitsu MPG series ("They're dropping like flies").
Hard drives, by and large, remain a dependable part of most
computer systems well beyond their warranties, which are
usually about five years. But if data are critical, plan on
replacing them regularly. "People think, 'It's not going to happen to me,' " says Mr.
Kapurch. "But it can and will happen, probably sooner than
later." |
