Hard Disk Recovery

A few weeks back I got a call from a woman who had lost the partition on her hard drive; she had all of the photos of her kids on that drive and was slightly hysterical about it. I had her download DART XP and run it on the drive; it found the partition and then showed her a full directory structure. This was great now she can get the pictures of her children back. I tell her just click the purchase button and put in your credit card information and you can then copy your files off. She asks me how much is the software and I tell her $99.00, she starts to cry. She explains that she doesn’t have the funds to justify spending a hundred dollars to save her personal photos. I was moved by that, because she was completely honest, so I asked if fifty bucks would be more attainable, she agreed that although it would still make her in a pinch that she could swing it. So I charged her card 50 dollars and then sent her a code for the software. It occurred to me though, that many of our customers may be suffering from this same problem and that during these times we might want to help out with a price reduction on our data recovery software. I spoke with my boss and he agreed that a drop in price for the time being would a huge help to our customers, so that they will be able to still retrieve their personal data. We hope this helps in some small way and if you need help using the data recovery software as always you can reach me at  727-345-9665  ext 236.

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Hard drive pricing is a definite factor in making a decision to purchase a hard disk drive. The thing is, you can’t just look for the best bargain without taking into consideration which hard drives have the best performance, storage capabilities and life time. So what are some of the factors that go into hard drive pricing?

Best Hard Drive Prices

When searching the Internet for hard drive pricing, you are going to find a ton of online shops that are offering major discounts on hard disk drives. When looking at internal hard drives (click the link if you are interested in external hard drives and their pricing) there are many options. Below is a list of the most common types of hard drives:

• Desktop IDE Hard Drive Pricing - a desktop hard drive goes into a standard tower and use IDE cables to transfer data between the hard disk and your computer’s motherboard. IDE hard drives (Integrated Disk Electronics) and even motherboards that use IDE connections are becoming a thing of the past. SATA is the I/O (input/output) of choice for the major computer manufacturers like Dell and HP. The fact is that there are still millions of computers in use and still being sold with IDE connections, so hard drive pricing for IDE drives might be going down and you can get a good value for them if you are still running IDE. Also external hard drive cases mostly come with IDE connections. Because of the I/O interface IDE is slower than SATA which is why new computer makers.
• SATA Serial ATA Hard Drive Pricing - SATA is used on both desktop and laptop hard drives. SATA hard drive prices are usually higher because of their higher performance. Even though the cable looks diffenernt on a SATA it is still an IDE I/O standard.
• Solid State Storage Pricing - solid state storage is now being used in laptops and other portable devices replacing traditional hard drives. The pricing is much higher, but they are more reliable because there are no moving parts link on a hard disk drive.
• SCSI hard drive pricing - SCSI hard drives which stands for small computer system interface is a protocol is a solid system which is both fast and reliable. SCSI is the most expensive hard disk with moving parts with a second to none burst rate.

Hard Drive Pricing From Cost Per MB to Cost Per GB

How times changes! Just in the last decade alone we have seen hard drive prices go from cost per MB (megabyte) to cost per GB (gigabyte). The amount of storage has also risen at an incredible rate due to the need for people to store pictures, video and music. A few years ago a user wouldn’t have conceived of needing 500GB worth of space on their hard disk drive. Now we need to span 500GB drives together to get a TB (terabyte) of storage for all of videos and music files. Gamers have also influenced the industry demanding more performance and size.

Here is a look at how the hard drive pricing has changed in the last 20 years:

• Hard Drive Prices in the 1980’s - in the mid 80’s Iomega hard drives that had a whopping 10MB of storage cost $899.00! For those not into doing the math that’s $90.00 per MB! By the end of the 80’s Western Digital released a 40MB hard drive for $1199.00 bringing the cost per MB to $36.00.
• Hard Drive Prices in the 1990’s - as it became apparent in the 90’s that computers were headed to the mainstream, more companies started making hard disk drives. In 1995 Seagate released their first 1GB hard drive for $849.00 making the cost per MB 85¢. By the end of the decade the price per MB remained under 10¢ with the most notable hard drive released being by Quantum with 8GB of storage at about 4¢ per MB. The final hard drive price we will look at as far as cost per MB is Fujitsu’s new IDE hard drive that boasted an unprecedented 28GB of storage for a mere $388.00 bringing the cost per MB to 2¢.
• Present Hard Drive Pricing - looking at the time after the millennium the hard drive pricing will be factored by cost per GB. Right out of the gate in 2001 Fujitsu was selling a  20GB hard drive for $299.00 with a cost of $17 per GB. In 2004 hard drive prices fell to around a dollar per GB with Western Digital 250GB hard disk costing $249.99 which is around $1GB. We will be exploring the current hard drive pricing by hard drive type, storage capacity, etc. in future posts.

Hard Drive Pricing - Shopping Online VS Shopping At Retail Outlet

What is the best choice for most consumers? Well taking away factors like if you have a CompUSA or Best Buy in your area, most of us have the choice of buying online or going to our local retail store to purchase a hard drive. Are their any benefits to shopping in a retail store other than not having to pay for shipping?

Not really. There is no difference if you buy a hard drive from a retail outlet in your neighborhood, or shopping online. We get hundreds of hard drives shipped to us every week and have never had a hard drive that was damaged by the shipping process. Today there are hard drive packaging techniques that prevent any damage to the hard drive throughout shipping.

So the answer is Online shopping because you can compare the pricing between your retail stores and multiple online vendors. We will be posting our reviews of not only hard drives, but of retail and online vendors throughout the month and linking to them here.

Like many of us I have accidentally used ‘fdisk’ to partition a drive that I had never intended to. Whether it be adding a new drive, repartitioning and formatting a USB device, or just trying to reload the operating system there has been more than one occasion where I have chosen the wrong drive and seemingly destroyed all my data on my drive.

In these next few installments I will reveal what actually happens when using the Windows XP fdisk to partition a disk. What data components get destroyed, how those components can be replaced, and what is really important to the operating system when trying to mount a file system.

The tool we will use is ‘Free Partition Recovery’ with a few enhancements for this particular problem. This tool is extremely powerful and can make matters worse if not used in a safe and proper manner. However, I will take you step by step on how to do the recovery of your fdisked drive.

Next installment I will discuss exactly what happens to a file system when ‘fdisk’ is used and the stop gaps Microsoft has put in to help us in the recovery of their file system. Hopefully with this knowledge we will be enlightened and begging to chant the mantra “Microsoft… Microsoft… Microsoft…”…

Until next time…

Last month I purchased a Dell Inspiron 1720 with all the RAM and processing power that I could get. I also picked a 320GB hard drive to store my data files. Being involved with data recovery in one way or another for the last nine years has certainly prepared me for what happened last week.

My hard drive crashed in a laptop that was not even 20 days old. It not only crashed, but had significant sector damage. How could this happen in a brand new laptop? Well the fact is every hard drive that goes out to the general public is released with bad sectors. There is S.M.A.R.T Technology and Sector Maps that are there to protect clients from data loss. If you want to know more about those 2 things read my wife Victoria’s post: Hard Drives A Destiny Of Failure to learn more.

Anyway, here I am with a damaged hard drive and a laptop so new that I hadn’t started backing up my data fully yet. I then remembered an article that Jacqui Best, our support team leader wrote about BART PE which is a Bootable CD For Data Recovery, and I used the info in that post to get off my files.

The moral of this story is to start your data backup routines at once! After you have all you settings customized to your needs, clone your hard drive! This way the restore process is much easier. I spent 2 days getting my laptop back to were it needed to be. Fortunately I did not need hard drive recovery!

This article and video will show you how to use a USB enclosure to slave a laptop hard drive. Many times laptop - notebook hard disk drives come in here that we are able to recover with data recovery software. This video will help you use a USB enclosure to get data off of a failing laptop hard drive.

Hard Drive Recovery Video Series - How To Slave a Laptop Hard Drive

If you have a clicking hard disk drive chances are you need hard drive recovery and slaving your laptop will not help you get your files back. This method is for hard drives that are still recognized by the BIOS, they just don’t show you your data, or let you access it.

The software that you need to recover your data is dependent upon the Operating System that was on your laptop.

• For Windows XP or Microsoft Vista with NTFS File System use DART XP - this program will scan your laptop drive and show you the files that can be recovered before you actually buy the software. You can download the demo version for FREE without having to sign up for anything. DART XP Data Recovery Software. If the scan shows you the data you want, you can purchase it right through the software interface.
• For All other types of Windows or for external hard drives that are running NTFS, FAT, FAT 32 or FAT 16 you will need Recover It All. The Demo version also is FREE and will show you the data before you buy it. You can save the scan and purchase the sofrtware off of our website. Like all our products you don’t have to register it to get the demo and will receive the full version within seconds of purchasing it. Click here for the demo of Recover It All Data Recovery Software.

All of our data recovery software is guaranteed to work or you get your money back. Just like our data recovery services which are No Fix No Fee, we will show you your data before you buy!

DTI also has extended software support. Our software support people work right here in Florida. We don’t outsource anything ever! Our support phones are answered from 9 AM EST to 10 PM EST at 727-345-9665, if you are calling after normal business hours choose the software tech support option with your phone.

Remember if you need hard drive recovery DTI has the best support in the business, a class 100 clean room and a strict no data no charge policy on hard drive recovery. When it comes to laptop data recovery, DTI Data is second to none!

DART Undelete Data Recovery Software

DART Undelete data recovery software is a powerful undelete program that can restore files that have been deleted. Created by Dick Correa specifically for the NTFS file system, DART Undelete has an intuitive fltering system that makes it easy for users to find the data they are looking for. DART Undelete also has a fast scanning engine that cuts the scan time in half!

If you would like to buy just DART UNDELETE you can use the BUY Now Buttons below:

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DART XP data recovery software is DTI Data’s finest file recovery program they have ever created. Built by Dick Correa specifically for the NTFS file system, DART XP is a powerful and easy to use data recovery software.

DART XP is on sale for only $49.00! For a limited time you can get one of the most powerful data recovery softwares for $50.00 off of the regular price.

Buy The Software:

If you just want DART XP Data Recovery Sofware Click One of the Buy Now Buttons Below:

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Hard drive recovery is one part of the overall process of data recovery. Data recovery involves many steps that vary depending upon the actual circumstances of the hard drive failure. When the disk is physically damaged it will need to be repaired. This stage is referred to as hard drive recovery

Hard Drive Recovery Techniques: The Clean Room

When performing hard drive recovery, it is absolutely imperative that the repair take place in a clean room. Static discharge and dust can have adverse effects on both the heads and the platters. The picture below shows the parts we are talking about:

Depending upon the cause of the initial hard drive failure, the engineers will repair the electronics or hardware.

Hard Drive Recovery Technique: Head Replacement

One of the most common hard drive recovery scenarios involves a clicking hard drive you can hear an example here. The clicking is most likely a head failure. The repair of the heads usually entails replacing them from a good hard drive of the same exact model. Once the heads have been replaced, the engineers move on to reading the disks and moving the data off to stable media.

These are just a couple of techniques the engineers at DTI Data use when doing hard drive recovery. Feel free to call us Call Toll Free: 1-866-438-6932 or fill out an online quote form for immediate support.

When your hard drive fails it is more than likely a physical problem. In most cases noise will accompany hard drive failure, clicking and scraping are common sounds that a hard drive will emit while it is failing. It is important to back up all your files if your hard drive is making any noises.

Hard Drive Recovery From A Failed Disk

When a hard drive fails, it needs to be repaired so the data can be transferred to stable media and the files can be recovered. Hard drive recovery is the process of repairing a failed hard drive. After the data is transferred, the data recovery process begins.

Exmerge is a very usefull tool that can import PST files back into your Exchange Server Information Stores. Here is a tutorial from our Exchange Engineer John Best on how to use ExMerge.