Home » Media Coverage

Hard luck & hard drives: Recovery experts retrieve data of owners who didn't see crashes coming

Data Recovery Article: GM Today Newspaper – March 5, 2003

When hard drives break, so can hearts.

“We’ve had people sobbing and crying in the lobby,” said Bill Margeson, president of CBL Data Recovery Technologies (cbldatarecovery.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 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 (data recovery.net), says companies such as his are fielding more service requests from home users.

A University of Texas coed’s father, for example, recently raced up to 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” Kapurch recalled.

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” said 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.

“People think that if it’s on the computer, it’s there forever,” said 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.”

Said 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,” said 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,” Margeson said. “That’s only making matters worse.”

Ideally, home users should back up their data every week, experts say. But that alone is no guarantee. Kapurch has seen corporations lose both hard drives and tape backups in fires because backups were stored in the same room.

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. 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,” said 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, 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,’ “ said Kapurch. “But it can and will happen, probably sooner than later.”