Data Recovery Newsletters - September 2005

Ontrack Data Recovery Opens First Facility in Australia

Due to the growing need for data recovery solutions in Australia, Ontrack Data Recovery™ has opened its first Australian facility in Brisbane, Queensland. The new facility is a fullservice recovery laboratory and cleanroom that will provide more expedient and cost-effective service for its Australian customers by performing recovery jobs in country. The Brisbane facility marks Ontrack's second office in the Asia Pacific region along with Japan.

"Because Australia is one of the most heavily populated countries in terms of computer users, Australian businesses and home users need better options to address the crisis of computer data loss," said Todd Johnson, vice president of Data Recovery Operations for Ontrack Data Recovery. "With more engineers and a full service recovery lab, Ontrack's expansion into Australia significantly enhances our ability to provide maximum data recovery in a minimal amount of
time to our growing Australian customer base." Read the complete press release

Instant Storage - in a Flash!

What is the hottest back-to-school item this year? So red-hot that Mom and Dad will see it and want it too? It's a tiny portable data storage device that plugs into the computer's USB (Universal Serial Bus) port. Just a few of the brand names explain what it is. Here are some examples: TravelDrive™ from Memorex, Mini Cruzer™ from Sandisk, JumpDrive™ from Lexar. These small, pocket-sized storage devices are easy to work with, can plug in to any type of
computer that is less than 8 years old or that has a USB port. The great thing is that USB flash drives are really affordable now and for less than $100 you can get a 1GB USB storage device. Although flash drives have many uses, a common one is for transferring files from your work computer to your home computer, eliminating the need for lugging a laptop back and forth. (Although these devices go by many names, for purposes of this article, we will use the term flash drive.) This article will take a look at this micro-technology, its history and future; you'll be surprised to find out how prevalent this technology is and how long it has been around. As always, we will take a look at recovery options for these devices. Click here to read the complete article

Tips for Handling Storm-Damaged Media

File corruption and data loss often occur when it's least expected -- as a result of a hurricane, flood, or other natural disaster. Yet even if business plans, financial spreadsheets or important emails are "lost" or appear to be "gone," they are most likely recoverable if the appropriate steps are taken from the outset. Ontrack Data Recovery™ operates data recovery labs equipped with cleanrooms to recapture data that has been corrupted or seemingly destroyed due to natural disasters like hurricanes. The following tips provide the best chance for successful recoveries with storm-damaged media:

• Never assume that data is unrecoverable, no matter what it has been through
• Do not attempt to power up visibly damaged devices
• Do not shake or disassemble any hard drive or server that has been damaged - improper handling can make recovery operations more difficult which can lead to valuable information being permanently lost
• Do not attempt to clean or dry water-logged drives or other media
• Before storing or shipping wet media, it should be placed in a container that will keep it damp and protect shipping material from getting wet. Wet boxes can break apart during transit causing further damage to the drive
• Do not use common software utility programs on broken or water-damaged devices
• For mission critical situations, contact Ontrack before any attempts are made to reconfigure, reinstall or reformat
• When shipping your hard drives, tapes or other removable media to Ontrack, package them in a box that has enough room for both the media and some type of packing material that allows for NO movement. The box should also have sufficient barrier room around the inside edges to absorb impact during shipping
• If you have multiple drives, tapes or other removable media that need recovery, ship them in separate boxes or make sure they are separated enough with packing material so there will be no contact.

Remote Data Recovery™ - A Service You Can Trust

Although Ontrack is the industry's largest and most experienced data recovery provider, many customers have a hard time putting their trust in one of our most unique recovery solutions - Remote Data Recovery™. The concept of recovering their precious data without having to remove the hard drive and send it in for lab work is difficult to grasp, so many don't even explore the option. This is a mistake, as RDR® is the fastest method of recovery for drives that have suffered no physical damage. Click here to view a Remote Data Recovery Q&A that helps explain why RDR is definitely a service that you can
trust.

Customers Say it Best

Running a grocery store is difficult enough without having to deal with computer problems. Gristedes Supermarkets, a New York City-area grocer serving customers for more than 100 years, almost discovered just how problematic data loss can be when they lost access to software that was crucial to their business. After failed recovery attempts by another provider, Gristedes made one last effort with Ontrack - a decision that had them back in
business in no time.

"Our company had extremely critical business process software on a developer's workstation that experienced a disk failure on a system reboot. We figured it was no problem since we perform daily backups. However, we quickly came to learn that a third party software package that we had been intensively developing within for the past 6 months, stored their source development libraries in an obscure directory proprietary to the vendor. We now had major production processes running with no corresponding source modules. Needless to say, we were panic stricken.

We immediately sent our disk out to a data recovery firm in the hopes that all would be well. After 2 weeks of diagnostics and clean room attempts, we were told that they were unsuccessful in accessing any of the data, let alone recovering anything for us. With time pressure mounting, we figured we would try Ontrack Data Recovery in a "Hail Mary" attempt. Within 2 days, we received the best email ever. Ontrack provided us with a listing of files that they would
be able to recover and the list contained everything that we needed. Needless to say, Ontrack has our most grateful thanks along with our unending appreciation. Given our experience with Ontrack, their services are the very best testimonial to their claim that they are the best in the data recovery business."

- Don Winant, Gristedes Supermarkets