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Data Recovery Service Odyssey: Part 1 of 2

Data Recovery Article: Network World – February 15, 2002

By Dave Kearns

A couple of weeks ago, I promised to share my experiences with a data recovery service. Events intervened (my second grandchild was born – that’s more important than even data recovery!), and I flew off 3,000 miles without my notes. (Hopefully, no one has been waiting two weeks with an unmountable disk while I ooh’d, ahh’d and made a fool of myself over a baby.)

A couple of years ago when our network needed some additional space (which coincided with my wife’s acquisition of a digital camera – coincidence?), I purchased a network-attached storage (NAS) device. This is, essentially, a black box with a minimal Linux OS, a large disk drive and an Ethernet port. Plug the port into your hub, run an installation utility and you’ve added lots of storage space to your network.

After our move from Texas to California last month, the only part of the network that refused to come up was this NAS system. It appeared to be alive (its Ethernet LEDs would flash as packets were sent to it), but no contact could be made. Most of the data on the system had been archived (stored for posterity) on CD-ROM, rather than backed up (stored for quick recovery) on tape. These were my wife’s pictures – that’s even worse than losing your boss’ memos.

All these years, I’ve been touting data recovery services but I’d personally never had to use one. This seemed like a good time to find out what they could do, how quickly they could do it and what it might cost.

I contacted CBL Data Recovery Technologies, which has offices in New York and San Diego, as well as in a half-dozen other countries around the world. CBL claims that no matter if your data loss is the result of mechanical or electrical failure; virus activity; system malfunctions; accidental erasure or reformat; water, fire or smoke damage; or file corruption, it has the uniquely talented people and the resources in-house to solve the problem.

CBL also claims to be able to turn around most work within 24 hours, and almost all work within 48. Further, it claims that neither platform (PC, laptop, Wintel, Macintosh, tape cartridge and so on) nor operating system (Windows, NetWare, MacOS, Unix and Linux are mentioned) matter – it can always recover your data.

I packed my NAS device and sent it off by overnight delivery to CBL’s Armonk, N.Y., laboratory. I sent it on a Thursday, in fact. On Friday morning, I got a call from CBL saying the drive had been received and was now in the lab awaiting inspection. Did I want weekend service (I’d have the diagnostic information on Saturday) or regular service (I’d hear from the technician on Monday)? Since it wasn’t business-critical, I chose the regular service.

I then faced the weekend with a bit of trepidation. Would it be salvageable? Had I been right to recommend these services all these years? I was warned that recovery of the 20G bytes of data could cost more than $1,000. But these were my wife’s files, our 35th wedding anniversary was coming up and this would make the perfect present. There was no hesitation on my part.

Next issue, what the technician said. (Hmm, should there be organ music with that?)

[Read Part Two Of This Article: Data Recovery Odyssey: Part 2]