Recovering Your Data
During service, should your computer or laptop (any platform), iPhone, iPad, iPod (or any smart device) need a hard
disk replacement or reintialisation, and your important data has not been backed up, we can possibly recover that data.
Some things you should know to avoid loss or further damage of your valuable data. Always back up your data on an external device regularly. If a problem arises (and eventually it will), the issue can be resolved and the data uploaded, no drama. If you do not have your data backed up, as a general rule, avoid (or at least minimise) any further access to the device. In particular, avoid long entries and/or writing to the device. This also means avoiding any data recovery tools that purport to repair your disk. Such tools need to use the possibly corrupted system and device drivers to access the disk, with all the inherent issues in play. Furthermore, to repair a directory, it has to overwrite what it considers wrong in that directory - which means overwriting the only B-Tree list, of what files are on the disk and which sectors of the disk belong to which file. Keep in mind that on |
a 500 GByte disk drive, there are roughly a billion sectors, so it is not realistic to attempt piecing them together manually. Arguably, the directory is the most important part of the disk. There is indeed room for such tools but they should only ever be run on a clone - not the irreplaceable original. There are two separate domains that we need to be vigilant about: Physical access to the raw data sectors on the disk (hardware) and logical meaning of that information (volume and directory structures, system and user files). The more important your data, the slower you should proceed with attempts to recover that data. Every access to a storage device can potentially overwrite something important. Once overwritten, it is gone. Even restarting the computer flushes all caches and writes temporary files. If you have erased something by mistake, just pull the plug. Something erased is internally seen as available space. The more activity, (even an orderly shutdown) the more chances to overwrite the raw sectors which still contain your data. We have seen too many cases where a minor issue with a disk drive has turned into a major problem. It’s human nature: Anyone who finds their work vanished will naturally try everything that they can think of. Then, they will usually borrow and try every tool that their friends suggest. Unfortunately, this will generally make things worse at every step. |
Background: Generally, data recovery is very labour intensive. Because of that, it has the reputation of being very expensive (to the point of being prohibitive). The reason is simple: Setting up and running a data recovery operation is expensive - it needs very specialised tools and highly skilled engineers. Our cost structure is somewhat different from the industry standard. Consequently, our prices are overall significantly lower. Our charges are calculated on a straight labour + expenses basis so, you are not paying for the “no-data-no-charge” freebies that end up not being free at all. We will always do our best and everything possible to recover your valuable data. ![]() |