Data recovery case study for Data Compass

Desktop/Laptop/Server/Others：Laptop

HDD/flash/SSD/Others：Seagate 2.5” HDD

Storage Media Intro:  Seagate 5400.3 ST9120822AS 120 GB

Failure Symptoms：Non bootable and detected as RAW in Windows and I/O errors

Failure Causes：Weak head

Data Recovery Process (Tools Used, Tips or Tricks Used)：Heads checked with HD Doctor for Seagate, recovered data with Data Compass without change headstock

Success Rate (How much Data Recovered): 100%

Time to Get the Data Back: 2.5 hours

Difficulties during Recovery: None

Suggestions To Improve Our Tools: Better English manuals for HD Doctor

Data Recovery Development Status In The Local Market：Data recovery is growing in Denmark

SalvationDATA Review：Learned a lot from using Salvation products and reading customer forum and recovery at Salvation blog

Data recovery case study for Data Compass

Desktop/Laptop/Server/Others：Desktop and laptop

HDD/flash/SSD/Others：HDD

Storage Media Intro: Seagate barracuda 7200.7 80GB, ST380011A

Failure Symptoms：Not detecting in bios, spinning the motor

Failure Causes：I connect the doctor and watch the terminal window, then I can see the F:> terminal, then I do load all modules and I get the T:> then I view the 0 sector I can access the data.

Data Recovery Process: Some times the Data Compass can good for recovery the head desirable option for imaging the drive it is very good option

Success Rate (How much Data Recovered): In head desirable in DC I can access the 85% success rate

Time to Get the Data back: Half day

Difficulties during Recovery: Physical recovery is very tuff, means after open the HDD it is little risk.

Suggestions to Improve Our Tools: I think the SA emulation in WD and Maxtor want to improve and update in DC

Data Recovery Development Status In The Local Market：In INDIA, Kerala state, here is no more team in recovery section. So I pained to extract my small firm to recovery field.

Western Digital hard drive SA Emulation for head damage

Western Digital SA Emulation-Head firmware loading

Head firmware loading is one core data recovery technology of Data Compass 2011.

Data Compass 2011 main features

* Portable data recovery hardware and software complex, requiring no internet and securely run without backdoor design;

* Logical data recovery-Easily recover lost data due to file system corruption, virus infection, hard drive formatting, accidental deletion, operating system malfunction and so forth;

* World’s first professional and high success rate of disk image and data recovery hardware requiring no data recovery training, automate data recovery by several simple clicks;

* Image or recover data from all detected drives including SATA, IDE, SAS, SCSI, USB flash drives, SD, CF, MMC flash cards with necessary adapters;

* Data Compass accesses to faulty unstable drives which have been performed disk dismounting, head exchange or platter exchange and recover 70% more data than traditional data recovery tools;

* DC can access and scan the patient drive which has severe bad sector problem. Extensive Forward Image, Extensive Backward Image, Intensive Forward Image, Intensive Backward Image, Quick Skip LBA, Exact Skip LBA, Timeout and many other configurable image and recovery settings are provided to handle the bad sector problem which can’t be done by traditional data recovery software;

* DC adopts physical write blocker and ShadowDisk technology to make sure no change or damage will be occur to the patient drive; this is very important and is an advantage especially for customers who work in data recovery companies (they can promise their customers that even if we can’t recover your data, we will return the drive to you in its original status).

* File recovery by file type. You can search the exact file and recover, you can recover data by skip some file types or you can recover files with selected file types. All files can be viewed and opened within the data compass as normally as you view under windows to see if it’s perfectly recovered.

* Maximize data recovery efficiency and success rate. Skip files when reading failed, Skip files if it has an entry sector of 40 char, Skip file if it has 00 character, Reset power when reading failed, real time view the data during the image, etc.

* Recover data directly from drives with our unique innovative SA Emulation technology supporting so far Hitachi/IBM drives firmware failure and Western Digital drives head failure.

* Access to HD doctor for Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi/IBM, Western Digital, Samsung, Toshiba/Fujitsu to repair firmware corruption and then recover data directly. You can use Data Compass and HD Doctor Suite collectively or separately.

* Image or recover data by selective heads supporting Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, Hitachi/IBM, Toshiba/Fujitsu, etc. The world’s first 32bit data image and recovery by selective heads for Toshiba and Fujitsu hard drives.

* DC hardware part connects to your computer via USB cable, which enables you to work data recovery from even a laptop, no special socket required. DC software part runs on Windows XP and Vista, with a standard Windows GUI, everyone who uses Windows OS can handle this software easily following the user manual.

* DC hardware is compatible with any of the logical data recovery software. That means besides the logical data recovery software provided originally, you can use any other data recovery software of your own to perform file retrieval. By connecting the patient drive which can’t be “seen” by the computer to DC, it will become visible again as an external USB hard drive, and then you can use any software to access this drive for file retrieval. This is very important especially when one customer has been very familiar and skilful with one software, he won’t try other software easily.

* DC also provides many other solutions and features like read/write control to the patient drive, sector view (sector editor), sector servo (sector scan), view HDD SMART, Enable/Disable SMART, HDD soft reset, HDD hard reset, and Cache Fix.

Download Data Compass 2011 Technical White Paper

if you are interested in learning more about Data Compass 2011, please mail to info@salvationdata.com

Learn more about Data Compass 2011 here

SalvationDATA data recovery business calculator

SalvationDATA data recovery business calculator: Calculate your data recovery business now

We have offered two packages of data recovery tools with this calculator: one is our king data recovery tool-Data Compass, this one is used to recover data from all detected drives and non-detected Hitachi/IBM and Western Digital hard drives. To start with this data recovery tool is a great choice for it takes you one hour to use Data Compass well and then you can use it to make money and have Data Compass pay for itself and pay back your business; The other package of data recovery tools include Data Compass+HD Doctor Suite+HD HPE PRO+Flash doctor. This package is used for comprehensive data recovery from dead hard drives and flash drives including both logical data recovery and physical data recovery.

By entering your daily no. of logical data recovery cases, physical data recovery cases and flash data recovery cases, you can easily calculate how long the data recovery tools pay for themselves and pay back your business.

Note: This data recovery business calculator is based on the global average data recovery cost and the results are just for your reference. It’s at your own risk if you use the results.

Power reset setting for Seagate hard drive

This function is added to fix the problem that the hard drive is stuck easily during imaging but neither soft reset nor hard reset works and the hard drive must be reset manually by user. This solution orientated from one customer using Data Compass to recover data from Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive of 320 GB capacity. Our researcher analyzed the hard drive and drew a conclusion that the hard drive is locked up when encountering bad sectors but BSY is not still reading “1”, keeping the status of “before locking up”, therefore Data Compass cannot recognize the true status of the hard drive, resulting in not actuating “soft reset, hard reset and power reset”. It is caused by the defect in design. According to the ATA protocol, the status register should be “1”, when hard drive is locked up and fail to carry out external order. Therefore, in order to be in conformity with this protocol, our researcher adds ‘power reset setting’. Users are able to specify the status register bit to reset the power.

The real status of the hard drive must be identified by users when it gets stuck if you are going to use this function, by testing whether each status register in each Bit is effective or not. Here this function is demonstrated by the Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive mentioned above. (For detailed approaches, please refer to the corresponding video in the installation package)

Two partitions can be opened before specifying the condition of power reset, as is shown in Figure 6.

At this time, the status of hard drive reads “error”, while all lights of “DRD”, “DWF”,”DS”, “ERR” are on in Data Compass control panel, and it is shown in Figure 7. And then if you view sectors, Data Compass reads “4040”, and it is shown in Figure 8. It results in failing to access to SA, for the hard drive has been stuck and failed to execute external commands.

So we have understood from above the effective bits for the status register after this current hard drive gets stuck and we need now to specify the condition to reset the power. As shown in Figure 9, tick the ‘on’ lights “DRD”, “DWF”, ”DS”, “ERR”, click set and after that, the third partition can be opened as well as shown in Figure 10.

This function is able to well solve some Seagate 7200.11 and 7200.12 drives when they report falsely ‘ready’ while they get stuck. SalvationDATA so far has found the problem with Seagate only, if you find other HDD brands with the similar symptoms, you can try this function too.

Data Recovery Case Study for Data Compass

Data Recovery Case Study for Data Compass

Desktop/Laptop/Server/Others：Laptop

HDD/flash/SSD/Others：SAMSUNG 2.5

Storage Media Intro: 80GB

Failure Symptoms： head knocking

Failure Causes： power swing

Data Recovery Process (Tools Used, Tips or Tricks Used)：HPO, Data Compass

Success Rate (How much Data Recovered): 100%

Time to Get The Data Back: 4 HOURS

Difficulties During Recovery: exchanging the patient heads

Suggestions To Improve the Tools: Data Compass, improving the transfer of data, when you get a copy files, then on more copy, copy begines with error. Partition when not think, you do not fine any file. In this case needs to find the  software data, even if not finding the facts. For more serious problems, check the soft final data for optimum data copy bad.

Data Compass 2011 Status register and Error register

The status register and error register function is updated in order to make users find out the real time status of hard drive and know the type of error easily, by adopting the users’ suggestions.

Table 1

Table 1 shows each mean of the status register in each Bit
BSY — Abbreviation of Drive Busy
DRD –Abbreviation of Drive Ready
DWF –Abbreviation of Drive Write Fail
DSC –Abbreviation of Drive Seek Complete
DRQ –Abbreviation of Drive Request
CRR –Abbreviation of Correct
INX –Abbreviation of Index
ERR –Abbreviation of Error Received from the drive’s error Register

Table 2

Table 2 shows each mean of the error register in each Bit
BBK– Abbreviation of Bad Mark Block: A bad sector mark was found in the ID field of the sector or an Interface CRC error occurred
UNC– Abbreviation of Uncorrectable Data: An ECC in the data field could not be corrected (a media error or read instability)
IDNF– Abbreviation of ID Not Found: The required cylinder, head, and sector could not be found, or an ECC error occurred in the ID field
ABRT– Abbreviation of Aborted Command: The requested command was aborted due to a device status error
TONF– Abbreviation of Track 0 Not Found: Track 0 was not found during drive recalibration
AMNF– Abbreviation of Data Address Mark Not Found: During the read sector command, a data address mark was not found after finding the correct ID field for the requested sector (usually a media error or read instability)

Data Compass 2011 background

Data Compass, as one hardware and software complex data recovery tool, was designed to recover data from patient hard drives which are either logically damaged or physically damaged and was released initially in 2008. Since Data Compass was launched into market, it has been updated for many times, adding several important functions, such as Shadow Disk technology, SA Emulation technology for Hitachi hard drives and Reading by Selective Heads, these technologies have helped to solve many data recovery barriers and create good profit for the customers using Data Compass.

As the advancement of hard drive technology, manufacturers of hard drives have been introducing some new technologies into hard drives and have released TB-level hard drives to meet the new demand of market, however, there are still many malfunctions and firmware damage from these hard drives, especially the TB-level ones, due to some design defects. Since November 2008, there had been successive news that an escalating number of Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA and DiamondMax 22 drives were failing due to a fatal flaw in the firmware which caused the drive to suddenly lock itself up and prevent the BIOS from even detecting it in the system. (SalvationDATA provides solutions for these firmware problems in Seagate hard drive recovery resolution) According to the Seagate, these firmware problems can be fixed by updating firmware from its official website. This was the famous Seagate Firmware Problem. Although Seagate had updated the firmware of Barracuda 7200.11 and launched Barracuda 7200.12, yet there were some malfunctions from the two series. One of these malfunctions was falsely locked up, which means the hard drives were failing when encountering bad sectors and reporting “it is ready”, while these hard drives failed to refresh.

In the first quarter of 2010 Western Digital manufacturer outnumbered Seagate sales and ranked first in terms of shipments, partly because of the Seagate Firmware Problem. But the shipments don’t mean that the hard drives of WD are totally perfect in quality. In recent years the ROYL Series of WD had been reported to be defective in design. Just the same as other hard drive manufacturers, WD designs two pieces of firmware. The two pieces of firmware are stored successively in logical head 0 and logical head 1, for there are more than two heads of hard drives. However, the status of each head is to be detected after powering on, therefore, in case that any one of the two heads is damaged, the hard drive can not be initialized and motor fails to rotate, making clicking noises. Consequently, users must exchange the magnetic component parts in order to recovery data from these firmware malfunctions. But the cost of exchanging the magnetic component parts is relatively high, for most hard drives are with capacity of more than 500 GB, what’s more, there is still possibility that the hard drive can not work well after exchanging the magnetic component parts.

SalvationDATA is to release the Data Compass 2011 to fix the above two problems.

Data Recovery Case Study for Data Compass

Desktop/Laptop/Server/Others： Laptop
HDD/flash/SSD/Others： Western Digital 2.5
Storage Media Intro: Western Digital Blue 2.5 Model WD4000BEVT-00ZAT0

Failure Symptoms：
1. Not detected in Bios
2. The drive start and then stop

Failure Causes： The drive was beaten

Data Recovery Process (Tools Used, Tips or Tricks Used)：

1. Diagnose the drive using hddoctor for western digital.
2. Confirmation problems with the head to start the drive.
3. Open the drive in the clean room and unlock the heads on platters. The heads were moved to the parking area.
4. Connect the drive to Data compass and the drive was detected
5. Using data compass the data was recovered

Success Rate (How much Data Recovered): 100GB, Success rate 100%

Time to Get The Data Back: 3 Hours

Difficulties During Recovery: the drive showed error to be restarted for DC and recovering the data

Suggestions To Improve Our Tools: Have updated the tools for the new disk models