How To Get Your Files Back From A Data Recovery Service

1. SERT Data Recovery How To Preserve Data Integrity and Prevent Further Damage In a Data Loss Scenario www.sertdatarecovery.com 1750 N Florida Mango Rd #406 WPB, FL 33409

2. SERT Data Recovery was formed to offer affordable, reliable, and transparent data recovery services.Specialize in RAID, NAS, Mechanical and Firmware Hard Drive Repair, Broken Flash Drives, NAND RecoveryDevelopment Team With Over 25 Years ExperienceCLASS 100 ISO 5 Certified Clean Work BenchHIPAA Certified and CompliantLocal and National Services

3. Computer Repair, IT, or Data Recovery Company? Computer Repair: General PractitionerIT Company: Orthopedist/NeurologistData Recovery Company: Brain Surgeon

6. SERVICE AREA

7. Data Recovery Principle When the data is worth $400+  If you don’t know why the data is not accessible:if you don’t have the experience or technology to accurately diagnose and repair the problem… don’t try to recover the data.

8. What is Your Success Rate? We have a 100% success rate on “recoverable” cases. What are FAILURES due to: Previously Worked On: 80% Catastrophic Head Crash: 20%

9. Data Recovery Process Do Your Due Diligence – Ask The Right Questions (What happened to the drive, did it fall, was it bumped or banged, making any noises, what has been done to it so far, is it spinning, does it get power) Identify the Symptoms (Tell me what happened) Determine the Cause Develop/Implement a Plan Recover the Data

10. I Don’t Want My Drive Repaired… I Just Want My Data Back 1. Hard Drive Repair The process of bringing a failed or failing drive to a fully functional condition temporarily in order to image the drive. (Firmware or Hardware Failures) 2. Data Recovery This is where the files are actually recovered from the drive to a stable and safe environment to be delivered back to the client. (Advanced Recovery Utilities)

11. Common Disaster Areas • Recovery Software • Dropped Drives • Bad Sectors • Opening a Hard Drive • Head Swaps • Platter Swaps • Clicking Drives • Overwritten Data • Monolithic Flash Drives • RAID 0 & 5 Issues • NAS Devices (Drobo,LaCie, Synology)

12. Recovery Software 1. Deleted Data The safest time to use recovery software is when you know the data has been deleted. Most users install it on the same drive they are recovering from. HFS+ is the least forgiving in recovering data that has been deleted. 2. Failing Drives – Do Not Run Check Disk If you don’t know why the drive is failing, or if it has bad sectors, using software to recover the data is like playing Russian roulette. Depending on why it is failing, it will cause the drive to fail quicker and potentially damage the drive to the point it is not repairable or recoverable.

13. Dropped Drives The First Thing Everyone Does Is The Worst Thing When a drive experiences any shock, there is at least a 50% chance the read/write head assembly has come out of alignment or even worse, come out of its parking place. If the drive is spinning and this happens, the chance of damage rises drastically.

14. Dropped Drives What is the first thing everyone does? Internal damage?

15. Bad Sectors Causes file system and file corruption Software will get stuck in most cases Drive must be imaged using special hardware to avoid killing the drive Do not run check disk Cannot be repaired

16. Opening a Hard Drive Do you know what your looking for? Do you know how to fix it when you find it? Are you in a safe environment? Alignment Issues Last resort for professionals Don’t do it!

17. Head Swaps Needs to be done in a certified clean room. Finding a donor requires almost finding an exact match. Donor vendors know what the drives are being used for. Platter damage will ruin the donor heads.

18. Platter Swaps Can’t you just take the platters out and suck the data off? Can’t you just take the platters out and put them in another drive? The only time a recovery warrants a platter swap is when the motor/spindle is seized. Very few companies in the US can do this procedure.

19. Clicking Drives Usually a drive will click because the heads cannot read the service area on the platter and does not know where to go next. Some times this is due to corruption to the modules located in service area. Clicking drives do not automatically need a clean room, or head swap. Many firmware related issues cause clicking Platter damage will cause a drive to click Bad Heads also will cause a drive to click

20. Overwritten Data Plain and simple. GAME OVER….

21. Monolithic Flash Drives No printed circuit board All components inside the memory chip itself Requires knowing the pinout Very difficult to reverse engineer

22. RAID 0 & 5 Issues Power down immediately Do not force back online Do not reinitialize 1 & 2 drives down Need to know why the failure occurred Basically don’t do anything you would not bet your life on

23. NAS Devices • (Drobo, LaCie, Synology, Etc) Tech support is NOT your friend Do not run disk utility or check disk Do not reinitialize Do NOT use the default/proprietary array configurations BeyondRAID (Drobo), SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) Always set RAID to custom RAID 5 or 6 Need the box for recovery 90% of the time

24. Drobo Support On May 19 at 10:13 AM the disk in the 3rd slot from the top with serial number XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX was power cycled because it had become unresponsive and when it was redetected it was assigned a new logical disk number.At that point the array is down one drive so the Drobo started data protection.While trying to complete, the disk with serial number YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY started misbehaving causing the Drobo to reboot because now this disk was critical to the operation of the array.If you can get a good clone of the disk we should be able to get the array stabilized.Kind Regards,XXXX X.Technical Support Agent

25. SERT Data Recovery Free Evaluation on drives without previous attempts to recover data (includes software)24 – 48hr DiagnosticsIf we don’t recover the data – You don’t pay the recovery fee www.sertdatarecovery.com 1750 N Florida Mango Rd #406 WPB, FL 33409