What happens to the media surfaces of a dropped drive?  If you are old enough to remember vinyl music records, you can visualize the needle being forcefully moved across the record surface and making a deep non-concentric groove, which often rendered that record unusable.  For the younger reader, think about a CD or DVD that made contact with a rough surface or is badly scratched and will not play anymore.  Similarly to the playback-head of a record player, the force of a dropped drive will cause the READ/WRITE heads to move across the platters and make several damaging contacts with the media surfaces.  The contact will typically dislodge a sizeable amount of the magnetic material, which will then be dragged along with the moving READ/WRITE heads, causing further damage.  You would be amazed how quickly the disk surfaces will deteriorate to a dusty-mess.  That is why we suggested in our first blog post on this subject to PULL-THE-PLUG!!

Because the damage is mostly to the media, there is absolutely nothing that a non-data-recovery-lab engineer can do.  An inexperienced attempt by anyone else, will only make things worse!

Next posting we will cover, what happens to a dropped drive which was not-powered at the time of the trauma.

In a recent article in eWeek.com the headline read:

 ”Data Storage, Data Backup, and Storage Virtualization: 10 Important Enterprise Disaster Recovery Tips for IT Managers”

The article goes on to explain how Sepaton, www.sepaton.com a data backup provider from Marlboro MA, can backup very large data volumes using VIRTUAL TAPE LIBRARIES at a high rate of 34Tb per hour.   Clearly, this is  an important development for IT departments with large amounts of data to protect.  The article continues with 10 tips for Enterprise IT managers to address in their disaster recovery planning.  All 10 tips are valid and essential.  However, I would like to suggest an 11^th tip which is commonly missing from most such recommendations:

Tip # 11.    Evaluate a Data Recovery lab or two and establish ongoing relations.  We at Cherry Systems have daily proof that is indisputable: systems and processes designed by humans will fail.   Murphy’s Law clarifies it by saying that it will happen at the worst time!  Therefore if our experience is a good indicator and Murphy’s law concurs then the 11^th tip should be included and executed.

By saying executed, what does it mean?   It means that IT management should establish communication and form relations with a P.D.R (Professional Data Recovery) http://www.cherrysystems.com/blog/data-recovery-recognizing-a-professional-part-2 provider, who can consistently recover lost data.   

IT managers:  Don’t wait until that awful day lands in your lap.  Safeguard your disaster recovery plan with a proven data recovery  provider.

In previous blogs we discussed the many sources of data loss, and that prevention can minimize many, but not all occurrences.   Execs in charge of data access and security sometimes overlook these less likely scenarios because they are few and far between.  But the impact of such occurrences can be potentially devastating and require timely resolution. Since most companies do not have an in-house data recovery lab, the only option, is to send the defective media to a third party lab.  So when that dreadful day comes, and data loss is looming, there is a frantic scramble to find a reputable data recovery lab.   The pitfall is that under the time constrains to save the data and the day, due diligence is typically limited to price and turnaround, often neglecting to take into account one of the key consideration SECURITY; “Is the data recovery company safe?”  Is the data recovery lab at par with the customer’s data security policies to prevent data leaks or at worse data breech?

In a recent article in Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/05/data-recovery-privacy-technology-cio-network-breaches.html.  By Andy Greenberg  he cites a study done by Ponemon Institute ,  clearly linking data recovery to data breach, potentially causing a bad situation to turn real ugly.

Conclusion:

Fortunately, CIOs and IT execs can prevent this unsavory scenario by pre-selecting a data recovery lab who can maintain the security level the customer requires while successfully recovering the data.

One day Data Recovery could save your business.

State-of-the-art equipment doesn’t operate itself.  A data recovery lab technician is a fusion of a watch maker/repair person (i.e. can work on very delicate, minute mechanical devices) and a heart surgeon (i.e. a highly specialized job that requires interpreting many, many indicates and messages, where a mistake or a slight wrong move of the hand can turn out to be fatal to one’s data).

Yes, there are some “easy fix” data recovery software tools on the market.  Yes, it’s okay sometimes to use them.  How do you know WHEN it’s okay to use them, and how long to keep trying before you call the professionals in.