How data recovery actually works.
No sales copy: the technology behind it, in plain English. Why a hard drive clicks, why deleting on an SSD works differently than on a hard drive, why a RAID rebuild is more dangerous than the failure itself. Understanding that leads to better first decisions — and the first decisions are the ones that count.
First aid
First aid after data loss
The first few minutes decide more about a data recovery than everything that happens in the lab afterwards. Not because there is any rush — but because almost every well-meant reflex makes the damage worse.
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Fundamentals
File system or raw data recovery?
Two recoveries of the same scope can lead to very different results: in one case the complete folder structure with names and dates, in the other 40,000 consecutively numbered images with no context. The difference is not the effort involved but whether the file system was still readable.
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Before shipping
Sending in a storage device safely
A drive that survived the failure but not the journey is an avoidable loss. Packing is not a formality — one knock on the sorting belt can turn an electronics fault into a head crash.
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In the lab
Why hard drives are only opened in a clean room
The clean room is the picture every data recovery company shows. More interesting than the picture is the reason: the distances inside a hard drive are so small that ordinary room air acts as an abrasive.
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Understanding SSDs
Deleted on an SSD — why the data is often still there
Once something has been deleted on an SSD, no recovery software finds anything — and many people conclude that the data is gone. It is not: with many controllers we recover deleted files, even after TRIM. What matters is what you do in the first few minutes.
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Encryption
Encryption and data recovery
Encryption protects your data from us as well. That is not a shortcoming but the whole point. For a data recovery it means: we repair the hardware, you bring the key.
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RAID & NAS
Why a rebuild kills more often than the initial failure
A RAID array can cope with the failure of one drive. What it often cannot cope with is the attempt to recover from it. In practice the rebuild is one of the most common causes of permanent data loss.
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Prevention
Reading SMART values before it starts clicking
Almost every storage device keeps records about itself. These values can be read out, and in many cases a failure announces itself there weeks in advance — you just have to know what to look at.
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Forensics · Damaged mobile devices
Forensic extraction from a damaged smartphone: what options are there?
A physically damaged smartphone can prevent a forensic extraction even though the stored data itself is still present. Whether it becomes accessible again is usually decided not by the memory chip, but by the condition of the rest of the original hardware.
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Forensics · Methods
Chip-off in smartphone forensics: possibilities and limits
Chip-off is one of the best-known hardware-level methods in mobile device forensics. With current, encrypted smartphones it runs into a fundamental limit: the memory chip holds the data, but not the key.
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Forensics · iPhone
Forensic extraction from damaged iPhones
With a damaged iPhone, the condition of the original hardware determines whether a forensic extraction becomes possible at all. The data is encrypted, and the key exists only in the interplay of the original components.
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Reference
Glossary of data recovery
Every diagnosis contains words that nobody outside this field needs. Here they are in comprehensible form — so that you can read a quotation without having it translated.
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We will take a look at your storage device.
The Economy diagnosis is free of charge. You find out what is possible before anything costs money — and what it would cost is put in writing beforehand.
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