So picture this. You're firing up your PC for another day of hard work, or slacking off at work,
and nothing happens. I mean, the computer turns on, but instead of getting to the operating system,
you get some kind of recurring error message about your storage.
Then it hits you. Your hard drive or your SSD is dead, and the data is about as accessible as
the Ark of the Covenant. But all might not be lost. You can still send your drive off to a
data recovery service so that your tax documents, personal photos, or save games aren't lost to the
ether. But how do you even get started with that? Well, today we're going to tell you how,
and we'd also like to thank our friends over at Drivesavers for sponsoring this video.
First things first, if you use a professional service, it probably won't take a super long
time to get your data back if it is indeed recoverable. But it also won't be a matter of a couple
of hours before you can breathe again either. If you can afford rush service and your recovery job
ends up not being very complicated, it could be turned around in as little as a day. But you may
also end up waiting around a week, so keep your expectations reasonable. If you only need logical
data recovery, the process tends to be quicker. So this is when a drive is still in good shape
physically, but you've lost your data due to something like a problem with the operating system
or an accidental format. However, if you have a physical issue, like a head crash, you might be
waiting around for longer since they'll probably have to take your drive apart, possibly in a
clean room environment, and repair the drive just enough so that there can be a chance that you
can get some of that data back. But how do these processes work? Let's first talk about logical
data recovery, which for example, you might need if there's a problem with the master file table,
which serves as kind of like an index or a record of the physical locations that each
file occupies on your disk. Issues with the MFT can result in your computer simply not knowing
where to find the data, even though it's still on the disk. So that can often still be recovered
with tools that use strategies like bypassing corrupted file system infrastructure or scanning
the data manually and then putting it back together using signatures that are common to certain file
types. Physical recovery is obviously more complicated. Of course, if a drive is very
badly physically damaged, there might not be anything even the best data recovery companies
can do. But if that isn't the case, recovery companies do have a variety of tricks up their
sleeves. It could be repairing or replacing the drive circuit board. You could move the disk
platters to a new drive, a tricky proposition because of how close the read and write head has
to be to the platter surface. And even a drive that suffered a head crash, where the head actually
impacts the disk, it can partially be salvaged by physically moving the head out of the way
before attempting to read any data on whatever good parts of the platter are left. Though it
should be noted that the area directly under the crash is often unrecoverable. If we're talking
about SSDs, the company might actually have to remove the NAND flash that stores the data
and transplant it to a new board with the original controller chip. And then for corrupted firmware,
which also counts as physical failure, by the way, the data recovery company might have to repair
or rebuild the firmware to access your data, which can add additional time. And sometimes data can
be unrecoverable even if there's no physical damage, as is the case of a hard drive that's
overwritten with zeros or an SSD where the trim command has been run. You can learn more about
those things here and here. Now that you have an idea of how it works, how do you go about
picking a service provider? Well, one thing to keep in mind is that reputable places will often
provide some kind of results-based payment structure. You ever see those lawyer commercials
where they say, you don't pay if we don't win? Well, a good data recovery place also shouldn't
be billing you if they can't get your data back. So look out if they try to charge you large amounts
of money that you'll be on the hook for regardless of whether anything is actually recovered.
And on that note, make sure you get a quote in writing before signing anything.
Also, make sure that your provider has comprehensive security protocols in place.
They should be protecting your data and getting rid of any copies that they have
once the recovery process is complete. And of course, like anything else,
read reviews and make sure there aren't an inordinate number of complaints about a particular
company because they took two months and all they could recover was a big folder of Linus face memes.
For example, not that I speak from personal experience.
Thanks for watching guys. Like dislike, check out our other videos,
comment with video suggestions if you want to see a Techquickie topic in the future,
and don't forget to subscribe and follow.