Hard Drive Recovery and Data Restoration

When hard drives fail, they typically do so with very little warning. One day, all is good, and the next your data is unreadable. The most important security policy you can enact in your home or business is to keep current, continuous backups of your data. Don't let the term mislead you: a backup, at it's core, is nothing more than a copy. Multiple copies from different time periods ensure business continuity, and peace of mind.

If you suspect your hard drive is having difficulty, please turn off your computer or external drive immediately and do not turn it back on. Let us examine the drive, and see what we can do. We excel at getting data read from balky devices: even devices making audible noise or with obvious physical damage. Our software can read the data that you may have accidentally deleted, as well.

If we can't get your data off, we don't charge for our time. When we are succesful, we charge our standard rate. Typical labor times are 2-4 hours.

In the event that we cannot recover data from your drive, we recommend you send it to DriveSavers. While Corvallis Technical is considerably less expensive, DriveSavers is nationally recognized as a leader and pioneer in clean-room, bare-metal hard drive recovery. In our experience, they have never failed to recover a drive. Use our DriveSaves referral code of DS19543 to get 10% off your DriveSavers bill! DriveSavers will provide us with a free quote on the total charge for your hard drive recovery, as well. Finally, play around with the hard drive simulator below, where you can explore the different failure modes of hard drives and crash them yourself!

Case Study 1 - The Smoking MOSFET

A customer contacted us about a PC that was infected with viruses and other malware. After cleaning the PC of the infection, we began a backup of the hard drive. At this time, the drive began to smoke, and give off a very acrid smell. Hitting the breaker on the work bench, we began to investigate what caused the smoke. Upon close inspection, we discovered that a MOSFET had burned out on the drive controller circuit board.

The part in question is a 2P102 MOSFET integrated circuit - a high-speed electrical switch used to control the servo arm that reads the data off of the spinning platters in the hard drive. Since there was no other damage to the drive, we ordered a $0.60 replacement chip. Detaching the burnt out chip, and soldering on the new one, we were pleased to see the drive come back to life. We quickly copied off the data, and returned it to the customer on an external USB hard drive. The drive was then decommisioned, having served its purpose. This project shows that as long as the damage is not to the spinning hard drive platters or the read heads themselves, there can often be repairs done to the drives such that the data can be read off just one more time, in this case preserving years and years of un-backed up business data. The total bill on this unusual project was four hours of labor, plus the $0.60 chip, plus $1.90 for shipping, for a total of $322.50.

Case Study 2 - Flash Card Data Loss

A Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo flash card was brought to us that contained photos to be used in a Christmas present. The card was designed to be used in a camera, and then loaded into a picture frame to display family photos. Unfortunately, the filesystem on the card was damaged, with the result being that the irreplaceable photos on the card could not be read: in fact, the computer could not even identify the card as being properly formatted. We took the card, inserted it into our recovery PC, and ran our bit-level recovery software against it. This software is able to read the data off of the card even if the format or structure of the card is damaged. We were able to copy all of the pictures off of the card, which was then reformatted. Placing the pictures back on the card, it was succesfully given as a gift for Christmas. The total bill on this project was one hour of labor, for a total of $80.00.