• Never physically open up your drive. Exposure to unfiltered air, and the contaminants that it carries, can permanently ruin the platters.
• Treat your drive with care. Do not drop it or toss it around after you have removed it from your computer, as it is very delicate.
• Be especially careful with laptop drives. Although these drives are designed to be jostled and moved around, they are thinner and smaller than desktop drives. If their cases are bent or broken, it may become impossible to remount the drive.
• Do not format a disk unless you are absolutely sure that the drive works and contains no data that you want or need. Formatting will completely wipe the drive of all its contents.
• If you back up data to CDs or DVDs during the recovery process, check that the burning process was successful or you may lose the files forever when you reformat your drive.

Most recovery programs work in a similar way. You need to select the disk where the lost files are located and let the program analyze the content of the disk. Then select the file you want to recover and provide a location where you want to save that file. Installing any software after data loss will increase the risk of the lost data being overwritten.

A recovery program installed now is good insurance for your data, so it may be worth while installing a data recovery program just in case! Even the best recovery software can’t guarantee 100% results.

Some parts of your files may have been overwritten, meaning that other data was saved to that location on your disk.

If you have a hard drive that has failed, be careful how you proceed. Never try to run a utility program that may write data to your hard drive. Writing data to a failed hard drive is probably the worst thing you can do. Don’t run any check disk or scandisk utilities. If you do decide to try and recover the data yourself using software, whatever you do, make sure you do not run the software from the drive you are trying to recover data from. Doing this can destroy any data that may be perfectly recoverable otherwise. If your data is valuable, don’t take any chances. Rather get in touch with Intratec and get some advice from one of our technicians.

If your drive is making clicking or grinding noises, even if it is still being seen by the system BIOS, you should shut the power down on your computer immediately. These noises are a good pointer that your drive has failed or is about to fail. Clicking hard drives, often referred to as the “Click of Death” are a sign that you have a serious problem, almost certainly a head crash, and you are going to need a data recovery professional to help recover your data.

Whatever you do, DO NOT switch back on a drive that is clicking, or you feel may have suffered a physical failure. Doing so will only reduce the chances of a successful recovery. Intratec are on hand 24/7 for such emergencies. Contact one of our technicians on 083 415 5154 for assistance.

Biological evolution can take many thousands of years, but technical evolution, especially in the world of computers, is extremely rapid. It is confidently suggested that it will soon be possible to reconstruct every single move that has ever been made on a computer.

Linux data recovery has already become an everyday occurrence. Microsoft’s apparent monopoly of the PC operating system world is slowly being eaten into by other operating systems, meaning that recovery experts such as Intratec have to keep on our toes and up to date with the latest recovery software.

If you have a problem that calls for Linux data recovery, don’t ever try to carry out data recovery yourself – you could lose everything. You should talk with one of our technicians who will evaluate the situation for you.

Earlier this month I had the misfortune of having one of my hard drives pack up on me. Actually it didn’t fail, but I had negligently allowed it to get full up. I first noticed a problem when my files started appearing in reverse alphabetical order in Explorer. Having been working with computers for the last twenty or thirty years I was able to remedy the situation myself, but it involved deleting a lot of programs that I didn’t need (oh how we accumulate useless programs!), repairing my operating system and then finding my address book and Outlook Express folders, all of which had gone missing.

Why am I telling this story? Just to illustrate how, even someone who has been working with computers for so long can become complacent. Check your hard drives regularly and if necessary get rid of some of the accumulated and never-used programs that are there.

Intratec uses the very latest hardware in the recovery of data. We are particularly well placed where Seagate hard drives are concerned, having recently opened clean rooms in our branches, and we also use the latest software available during the Seagate data recovery process. Our only goal is to recover your Seagate data as quickly, completely and economically as possible. Intratec is South Africa’s most successful data recovery company. When we have evaluated the cause of the problem with your Seagate hard drive, one of our technicians will contact you with the lab results as soon as the evaluation is complete, and will supply a quotation for your approval.

Western Digital drives have a propensity to suffer damage to the firmware zone creating an obstruction to the data stored inside and requiring expert attention for a safe recovery. Typically, when the system is booting up, it will hang for a few seconds while the BIOS tries to find the volume. Even though the hard disk may or may not be recognized correctly (if at all) the drive’s performance will slow down dramatically before it fails completely. Some Western Digital drives suffer from weak assembly – especially the AB and EB series. Western Digital data recovery is just one of our fortes, and if you have a Western Digital hard drive that is giving you problems, don’t hesitate to call us.

Whereas failed Fujitsu drives can frequently be repaired, it is essential that you do not attempt to replace a faulty controller board with one from a working drive. Information on the board is specific to the drive it has been attached to and it will not work anywhere else. What’s worse is that a different controller board can cause mechanical failure and dramatically increase the risk of making your data unrecoverable. As soon as you suspect your Fujitsu drive may be about to break down, turn the drive off and remove it from the system as soon as possible. The sooner you power down the drive the better your chances of recovering lost data once you send the drive to us for diagnosis. If you have a suspect Fujitsu Hard Drive don’t hesitate to contact us.

IBM DeskStar hard drives have an disturbing reputation for serious mechanical failure – the most notorious is known as the DeskStar “Click of Death”. You can recognize the Click-of-Death by a regular scratching noise interrupted by a click sound that comes from the hard drive. Click of Death problems are among the most onerous to recover data from, and we urgently recommend that you speak to one of our recovery technicians as soon as you suspect that your drive may be about to fail. The most common cause of failure is the hard drive’s read/write heads not lining up with the data stored on the hard drive. This causes internal contamination, which leads to the ‘Click of Death’ sound. You will recognize a pending failure either by getting the clicking sound or by a message on boot up. If you suspect you may have an IBM hard drive failure you should contact us straight away