Meanwhile, we discard the other potential lovers that want us. We pay them no mind; we care less for them. We forget them sometimes; they are not attractive enough; they are not popular enough; they are not playing hard-to-get enough for our fancy. They do not appeal to our desires. They will not bring us riches. So, we don’t feed to their passion. We do not submit to their wants, but yet they take us in. Meanwhile, the Lover we chase rejects us by the dozens. Rejection fuels our passion; we are studying ways to manipulate that Lover. We are still incapable to fully understand her; she is full of mysteries. Her algorithm of ways is the best kept secret. If at any moment, she understands that she has been discovered, she would alter it in a heartbeat.

Still, we press on. We like the challenge. We take in all the frustrations because we know that if we are successful to be in the top-ten list, it is worth every sweat.

We become addictive, and it drives our passion to be counted. It is the human in us to want what everybody holds precious. It is in our psyche to want the lover that is elusive, hard to get. We always want the lover that makes us squirm for the attention. We do the same thing to the ones that want us, and we are not too interested in.

We like living on the edge; this Lover is the prize of all prizes. She is good to have. She is like the devil that attracts us with all of its pleasures.

I, on the other hand, have had it with such Lover. I have seen through her ruses; and do not want to commit to her follies. She is too deliberate; she is too smart. She will always have me by the balls. She is apparently slow. I can understand, she is accosted by millions. I am through with her. I will not continue to be the sucker that most of us have been. I understand her situation; she can’t give all of us her attention. When she does, it is slow to come. I am done with her. No more. I will not do things to make her acknowledge me anymore than she is doing now.

I realize now that the other lovers that I took for granted were actually good for me.  If I can be content with them, I can live a bit happier.

I am now focusing on the rejected ones, because they never rejected me. Even when my submits were not intended to them, they picked them up, and count them as theirs.

They deserve my attention. For now on, Yahoo and Bing are the lovers I give my all to.

“The last word from the dying patient, data.”

This is a customer’s tale about searching online for a specific product. I was trying to locate a live chat company to give my business.

What did I know about live chat? Why did I need to use it? Was it critical for me to use?  Why the first website on the search list, which I clicked on and browsed, did not do it for me? What about the second one? Why did I go down the search’s list?

As a customer, I knew that live chat would help me bring more businesses, but I did not want to increase my overhead too much. The cost had to make sense. I had no prior information about what the monthly cost would be, I so I went on my hunt. I searched for “live chat”. Obviously, as any typical online customer, searching on Google, I clicked on the first website that came up. Its caption read, “[Company A] offers an award-winning live chat service which has a proven recovered in sales incensement and improve customer service”. This caption said it all. Not only it was the first in the natural search, but it also answered my questions. I needed a chat service that could help me increase my sale and improve customer service. The first thing I analyzed was their offer, “an award-winning live chat”. They told me that their service is quality. The second thing, their record, they have a proven track record in sales incensement and improve customer service.

As I browsed their site, I wanted to know whether this service had all that I needed. My first inclination was to use the actual service that I needed to see how it works and feels. I started a chat session; my first question was “how much it costs?” Their chat information was helpful, and I liked the feel of their product, but it was too pricey. So I am on the next search. I was looking for the same service at a lower price. Now, I have an idea what this thing might cost. (Hint: If I found the other ones’ prices comparable, I would go with the first one)

As I continued my search, I found company B at the middle of first page on Google. Obviously, I clicked on the ones in between, but did not stay too long.

That one, at the middle of the search page, got my attention. You know it—It was the price; way cheaper! Another thing caught my attention, they had different pricing plans. They also had a 15-day trial without commitment of signing up with a credit card. Company A had a 21-day trial with money back if I was not satisfied. My mind’s set was that I needed a service to use for free where I could decline or accept after the trial without my credit card being involved.

So I went with company B. After using company B for the 15-day trial, I knew a lot about the product. If I was looking for the service again, I knew what measurement I can use to get what I wanted. Company B had a great chat services, but their live chat was a laggard. It was slow as far as response time. The chat interface was very elementary. It did not look professional to my taste. But, they have a great analytic tool. I love it! (I am still waiting for them to make a better interface)

Because of the slow speed, and the look, I went back on my search for a new live chat program.

This time, I knew I wanted the same exact analytic feature and price of Company B, but the look, feel and speed had to be much better. I have tried some other ones; they seem to answer the call for look, feel, and speed, but lack the analytic prowess of Company B. The ones that had it were more expensive. Many of them could not come close to how Company B did their analytics.

So, as a customer searching for a service online, I kept hopping from one site to the next until I got what I wanted.

I am like U2, still haven’t found what I am looking for-It happens to be one of my favorite songs.

After writing my own tale as a customer looking for specifics about a product, the light bulb turned on for me.

For data recovery, I am still trying to understand the specifics that customers are looking for when they search for data retrieval. DataMedia Recovery Services is much wiser because of this experience. I don’t know if we are applying it right. But one thing I know, we need to know fast the specifics the customers are looking for. I hope that your company finds them out after reading this.

I guess that I am no different from a customer looking for data recovery.

“The last word from the dying patient, data.”

I have wanted to write a blog about this for awhile. Now, because I get to hear about a similar issue, I feel that the time is good to warn you guys.

I am not by any mean bashing computer techs here. I am in data recovery, so anytime somebody, or a friend has a computer issue, my first instinct is to backup their data first before I do anything. If at all, I want to help the good techs, and help you guys make the best decision when you have a tech look at your computer.

This customer came and chat online with me about their data issue. They had some viruses on the laptop computer, and brought their computer to a local tech. He told me that they removed not only the viruses, but everything else like his data and applications.

This is classical for many computer techs. If they don’t have the skills to fix the problem, they apply the one solution that works all the time—reinstall.

Oops! They forgot that the customer had critical data on their hard drive. Oh no! How did they forget about that?

Hey! Anybody can reinstall an operating system, but it takes a great tech to fix the issue. Trust me, I do that too. After I have exhausted many hours on my friends’ computer to battle viruses, I just reinstall. But hey! I work in data recovery; so I BACKUP THE DATA before I reinstall.

I forgive them sometimes, but some people should not call themselves computer technicians if they can’t think critically. I don’t know if data recovery makes me wiser, but my programming skills would have given me that wisdom.

Ok—what are we saying, and what can be taught here? Disk recovery, to me, is a misnomer. Disk recovery does not include your data. DISK RECOVERY IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM RECOVERY. It reinstalls your computer from scratch. That is, it reformats or install over previous partition. Once you do that, your data will be overwritten. You will be extremely lucky if your data can be recovered. I never say never, because there are situations where it can be recovered. But the odd is against you, period.

What can you do to protect yourself? Listen; it does not matter what computer shop you use. Even people we should trust, like a Dell tech, make these types of mistakes. Tell them to backup your data, before they work on it. Or, you backup your data before sending it to them. Take control of the situation.

One side note:

I had a friend of my cousin who had some critical data on his laptop hard drive a couple of years ago. He sent the laptop to the manufacture; they replaced the hard drive, but the data is lost because they discard the old hard drive. So, if you have important data, get the data out first before sending it to the manufacture. Once you send it, it is gone.

Another side note:

I am sorry to say that. But, again, I hear too many follies. I just have to share and help somebody. Because of data recovery, I know what to do and not to do. If your server is not working for some reason, PLEASE DO NOT RE-INITIALIZE THE ARRAY. You are doing the same thing that the tech that reinstalled OS did.

Hey! There is no excuse for a network technician to find themselves in this situation. A company can go under because of this. Take heed.

“The last word from the dying patient, data.”

When your hard drive failed, and that issue is clicking related, there maybe not much you, as a user, can do to get the data.

Two things can make a drive clicks, bad read/write heads or firmware. The read/head(s) of the drive will seek back and forth without finding its bootstrap (so to speak) because of damaged heads.  The drive will behave same way when firmware is corrupted, and successive clicking will damage the heads. Eventually the heads will crash onto the platter where the platters themselves will get damaged. At this point, it is very difficult for data recovery companies to retrieve your data.

About the myth

Customers assume that, since the platter is where the data reside, they can remove the platters and put it on another drive and get it to work.

So the impulse is to open the hard drive’s cover, and play around the shiny plates. These are some shiny plates that once your fingers are there, you are busted. Your fingerprints will not be removed without creating more smudges.

There are some situations where opening the hard drive will do you no good. Staring at the platters will not recover the data. Spin the platters will not do it either. If the heads are bad, they will need to be replaced by professional data recovery engineers.

In one of our blogs about how to protect your external hard drive from drop, we talked about platters’ alignment.

I think that I am at liberty to state the fact for professional data recovery services. WE DO NOT TAKE PLATTERS OFF A DISK TO RECOVER DATA, especially for multiple platter disks. If the hard drive has motor issue, there, we may have no choice to do so. The thing we do to recover data on bad head drive is to replace the bad component—Heads.

On a single disk platter, some engineers would remove the platter rather the head(s). In this company, DataMedia Recovery, we deal strictly with head swap, unless it is those slim Maxtor drives. People in data recovery would know what I am talking about here.

Ok! your data will not be recovered if you removed or shifted the platters of a multiple disks’ drive. That data is a goner. The alignment of these disk’s platters is gone forever; and without it, the drive will not work.

Even when you don’t remove the platters or put fingerprints on them, you introduce dust particles inside the disk.  You heard about clean room that data recovery companies use to work inside the drive. The second you open the disk, numerous dust particles land on the top platter. If you read the storagereview.com’s article, you will know that the distance between the read/write head(s) and the platter‘s surface is small enough for dust particles to crash and damage the platters.

You know, momentum can be a killer. When I am driving sometimes and I get to an intersection, my momentum pushes me forward; cars are coming, and I know to stop, but my momentum pushes me to be risky.  I would cross the street, knowing that I could have waited until the road is clear.

I know this is more about impulse than momentum. But the minute you open this drive, your momentum will push you do more, even when you know the risk.

So, we do not take platters out and read it from a special machine. I wish such machine existed. It would be expensive too. But it would worth every dollar. I say kudos to all data recovery technicians that can do this work efficiently. It is nerve-wracking to do head transplants. It is also exciting when it is successful.

I hope I cleared the myth, and give you caution when it comes to a clicking hard drive. Who is touching your platter? Hope it is not you, or some friends that have no business in opening a hard drive.

“The last word from the dying patient, data”

Did you know that a lot of hard drives get damaged because of lack of ventilation? Last week, we received a raid external with 2 hard drives. When the engineers open the external, they found a lot of dust balls. It was really dirty and filthy. The external failed because one of the drives started to click. Mind you, that these drives are stripped with raid 0, and they contain 5 platters and 10 heads. Ouch!

I don’t know what you think, but I think the dust balls suffocate the clicking hard drive. The dust balls simply clog the ventilation of the external, and put a lot of strain on the hard disks.

I know we can’t just open the external and dust if off. If your external disk has vents, check them out; you may be able to use a dust-off to clean it.

We all know to put our computers and external in an area devoid of heat. It is equally essential to place them in area less dusty.  That is, we would need to clean the area often. Server storage specially needs to be clear of dust. We can’t have these expensive machines gathering dust for too long; something will give out; it is either the server itself, or the storage unit.

Ventilation is good for the external hard drive, internal disk drive, and the computer itself. I don’t know how many clients’ computers we had to go outside to dust off. Like anything else, we need to look after our computers and storage media.

Drives and computers that failed because of ventilation can be costly in term of data lost. When a hard drive can’t breathe, it will cough in a clicking manner.

It is always a danger to the data when a hard disk clicks. The damage may be seen or unseen. The work that is required sometimes is cost prohibitive for most clients.

I advise you to keep your computer and externals ventilated. Avoid extreme heat around your computer. If you know a little about computer, open the lid, and see if dust balls, and spider webs are not multiplying around the CPU fan, power fan, and any other ventilation.

These fans are there for a reason; if they are clogged, they will not do their job properly. Your data can be in jeopardy at any time.

Are dust balls cutting arteries of your hard drive? Don’t let a clot build. Once a hard disk’s heart beat in a clicking manner, it may be too late to save your data.

For me, I have no choice to have a dust-off bottle around. I work in data recovery. It is one of the best tools we have. It keeps our computers dust free, and cleans your hard drives when they come to us with those dust balls. And for us in data recovery, we know what else it can do.

So please, check inside your computer from time to time for clogging fans. It will save you the headache of recovering your data.

_Here is a visual from the  inside of the external in question–Even after we dust-off it.

Dust kills hard drives

This is the worst that can happen to a hard drive, beside damage to platter area. When an external hard drive has been dropped, whatever the height, internal components will most likely get the brunt of it.  The first component to get the brunt of it is the motor. That is why the next thing the client would say is “I plug it in and now it is not spinning”. This is where I cringe. Of all the things that can go wrong, we always hope that it is not the motor. I don’t think anybody in data recovery industry likes to hear about motor issue on a hard drive with multiple disks. Hey, if it is a single platter hard drive, we would give a sigh of relief. We welcome a laptop hard drive with multiple platter disks with motor issue. Ask why. The simple answer is alignment.

Ok. Let me explain what happen to the motor first, and then the alignment issue. The motor is the component that the platters sit on nicely and turns them at a given rpm. Inside the motor, we find motor bearings. These bearings help the motor turn smoothly with no vibration. Storage Review has a great reference guide related to the ins and outs of disk drives. You should read it if you want to know more.

Now, when an external hard drive is dropped, and the motor does not spin, the bearings most likely are dislodged from their grooves and clog the space the motor needs to spin. Many times, the motor becomes rigid that no torque force applied will do any good. In some cases, the motor is less rigid, but will not turn freely. In either case, it does not look good.

About alignment: When the motor cease or become rigid after the drop, especially when the hard drive was running, the disk platters may shift. The abrupt stop of the platters may shift them slightly off the motor. Hard drives with multiple platter disks are aligned at some time before shipment. For example, when a drive reads track 0, it reads track 0 for all surfaces. The tracks are aligned, and so the sectors on the tracks. So any shift, would misaligned the sectors from one platter to the next. So any shift, whatever small it is, will render the drive inoperable for data recovery. It is safe to say that no one can realign platters on a 3.5” form factor drives found on desktops and externals.

Even without a disk platter shift, motor issues are the Achilles’ heel of data recovery. You can’t simply remove the platters and move them on another disk. Some companies have introduced some platter tools, but there is nothing out there we know of is 100% full proof.

Another component that usually gets damaged is the read/write head stack. The read/write heads, upon the drop, would smack on the platter, or the ramp (on some drives, it is outside of the platter). The outer edge of platters with ramp sometimes gets damaged where the outer edge of platters meet the ramp.

As you can see, there are many things that can go wrong with a dropped external. Now, what are you doing to prevent that from happening to you?  It is almost an epidemic that we get this type of calls from clients, and I always feel bad for them.

Here is how I can help you. If your external hard drive sits on a stand, lay it flat. Lay it flat even without a stand. If the stand is attached with screws, remove it, and lay it flat. It may look nice on the stand on your desk, but it will look bad if you knock it off the desk. Manufactures should know by now to design all of them to be flat on the desk.

We deal with a lot of external hard drives. We used them to save client data. We tell our engineers to place them flat on their belly to copy the recovered data.

Once you put them flat, keep the power cord and USB wire out of reach of children, dogs and yourself.  Once you trip on them, the external hard drive will fly off your desk, and I will wince. We are sometimes negligent with power cords and power strips. Do not overload your outlets, it is a fire hazard. Shorten the length of your power cords by tying them neatly. It saves to be neat with your power cords.

Avoid moving your external hard drive too often. Get a 2.5” one if you have to move it often from one computer to the next.

If you have important data on your external hard drive, my wish for you is to take precautionary actions before you find yourselves uttering this phase, “I dropped my external hard drive”. I will wince, and anybody else in this business will wince. It will cost you a lot if it can be recovered; and it will cost you more when it cannot be recovered.

Accident will happen, but backing up your data will make you the wisest.

This time, I did not push on the power button; I just let it do its thing, and restarted. But this time, unlike any other time, it took a long long time for the Microsoft logo to come up.

I was praying that I have another chance at backing up my disk drive. I was really scared for my data and hard drive.

Can you imagine somebody like me, helping customers recover their data, and now I would need data recovery service.

You know, regardless how I can rely on  the engineers in DataMedia Recovery, I did not want to get in the situation where my data can be gone like that.

Besides, I did not want the hassle of reinstalling operating systems and all the software tied in to my laptop.

I was saying please, please, come on laptop, give me a last chance.

You see, since I got this HP laptop, a year ago, it has been crashing and blue-screening on me on a regular basis.

I have been saying to myself to image this drive every time it crashes on me.

It crashes when I am working on the laptop, and when I am not working on it. This laptop has been a frustration for me.  I called HP many times, they run some hardware test, but could not find anything wrong with the hard drive or the other hardware.

I bought this HP laptop for business for a lot of money; and I am not sure if the HP hardware is at cause or the Vista. We all know the story of Vista. I will be forced to upgrade to Windows 7 in the coming months.

I have so much tied in to this laptop that I can’t even go back to XP. This laptop has become a critical part in my work that I do not know what I would do if it would ever crash without a good backup.

When the Microsoft logon came on and was able to sign in, I said to myself that I would not let the day pass by without imaging the drive.

Why is it now I want to backup my data and operating system? I am like you, lazy. I am either impatient to image the drive, or backup the data or think data loss cannot happen to me.

As of now, I have not rushed to backup my data and operating system. I am finishing writing this post and get the hard disk out of the laptop and start imaging it.

You know the problem? I just can’t sit waiting for my hard drive to be imaged while I do nothing on my laptop.

I know what I will do. I will image and backup my hard drive before I retire for the day. Just let it image overnight.

The thing I want to prevent here is us being complacent about backing up our data. Yes, you can send your hard drive to be recovered when you get a blue screen, but reinstalling software and settings can be a hassle.

It costs to recover data. The price of doing data recovery is not cheap. Setup a backup system can save all of us the aggravation of waiting to see if our data is recoverable and the pain of reinstalling our settings, emails, etc.

There is no guarantee that if my hard drive would have crashed, that the data would be recovered. There is no guarantee in data recovery.

Data backup is better than data recovery (Prevention is better than healing)

Get off your lazy self and BACKUP YOUR DATA!

Or else, you will need my help in recovering your data from your hard disk. Good for me, but bad for you.

But for me, I will backup my hard drive tonight. Are you doing the same?

These habits can cause incident where you will need data recovery on your laptop’s hard drive.

When we spend 8 hours or more in front of our laptops, we tend to want to do everything else around it. It is not our fault, it is a force of habit; we eat, drink, dose off around our laptops.

For us who drinks water on a regular basis, we will not help but drink it around our laptops when we are actually doing work.

It is the laziness or the comfortableness in us that get us to do things around our laptop when we should know better.

Or sometimes, we are not even aware that we have liquid bottles around our laptop.

As much as I know the danger of liquid spill on laptop, my behavior around my laptop is the same as anybody.

I should know better since my main job is recovering data off failed hard drive, and many of our clients have had that kind of disk drive issue.

But nevertheless, I continue to drink and eat around my laptop; It is  like I am immune to a spill on my laptop, that most likely will damage my hard disk, and  my data.

I feel bad every time for a customer that calls and tells me that they had a liquid spill on their laptop and their hard drive is making some clicking sound.

I think sometimes we are not aware that liquid spill on a laptop will affect the hard disk.  Hard drive media is the first hardware to get the brunt of the liquid spill.

If we are not aware of the danger of liquid spill on laptop’s hard drive, we are of the damage of the laptop itself.

We know that electronic media will suffer some type of damage when bathe in liquid.

Ok, like I said, it is a force of habit. Some of us, regardless what we know, will drink and eat around our laptop. I will be honest; I spent most of my day in front of my laptop, so I get comfortable at doing almost everything else around it.

But one thing I am aware of at all times is where my bottle of liquid is. I make sure that my bottles are under my desk.

Yes, I will drink around my laptop, but I am hardwired to place the bottle on the floor next to my feet as I work on my laptop.

Coffee cup on a desk is a no-no. I would not put any cup on my desk. It is simply not me to do that.

If you like to place your cup of liquid on your desk next to your opened laptop, I can tell you that the spill on your laptop hard drive is a disaster that is ready to happen.

I can understand that a hard drive fails because of degradation of sectors or firmware corruption; I also understand the liquid spill accident on the laptop’s hard drive. But, does it have to happen?

As much we come to create habits around our laptop’s usage, we should create another habit. Place all liquid bottles on the floor by your feet. DO NOT USE CUPS OF LIQUID ON YOUR DESK AROUND YOUR LAPTOP.

Some of us will learn the hard way. It is life. For you that need data recovery services on your laptop spill incident, I surely can help you recover the data.

If laptop spill happens, and you turn on the laptop and hears a weird noise coming off the hard disk, shut it off. Continual weird noise will make the data in your disk drive not recoverable.

It is best to leave the data recovery process to the professionals to do.

Hope I was able to help you avoid getting into the accident of spilling liquid on your laptop.