Causes of Data Loss

In general there are two types of causes for data loss: Logical and Physical. Likewise, there are two types of recovery: Logical Data Recovery and Physical Data Recovery.

Logical Data Recovery is also referred to as Software-level File System Restoration. Logical Data Recovery does not require mechanical or physical repairs. Some examples of Logical causes are: database indexing corruption, firmware corruption, formatting, deletion, partition loss, operating system corruption, virus infection, file structure damage and clone-by-mistake. The two most difficult causes to perform Logical Data Recovery on are database indexing corruption and clone-by-mistake.

Symptoms include but are not limited to the following:

• Documents are unable to open or go missing
  
• Partitions/disks asking to be formatted
  
• “Operating system not found” errors
  
• “Device is not recognized” error messages

In contrast, Physical Data Recovery requires mechanical or physical repairs in order to retrieve data. Hard drive or device physical damage can occur from a number of ways: manufacturer's defect, a physical impact such as a device being dropped or bumped while it is running, or fire and water damage. Damaged chips or components can cause problems such as head crash, scratches on platters, motor seizure, bad track, burnt PCBA and other malfunctioning components.

Symptoms of physical damage include, but are not limited to:

• “Operating system not found” errors
  
• Computer freezes due to bad sectors
  
• Disk is recognized by system but cannot be read normally
  
• Computer/device becomes unresponsive
  
• Hard drive makes a constant "clicking" sound

Data Recovery Solutions

Our data recovery services are classified as as Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 recovery and so forth. Details and pricing of our Covina Los Angeles data recovery services can be found here.

Logical Data Recovery requires either Tier 1 and Tier 2 data recovery depending on the level of damage. In most situations, logical repairs can be performed using professional data recovery software.

Physical damages on the track of the disk (such as bad sectors) are usually caused by manufacturer defects and can be fixed by reallocating partitions and/or sectors (this is considered Tier 2 recovery).

Physical Data Recovery is the recovery of data from hard drives with internal damage on the spindle motor, Head stack, or the PCBA board. Physical data recovery procedures must be performed in a “clean room” environment free of dust and grease. The damaged components are then manually replaced using specialized tools. Using a clean room and following specific procedures are critical when performing data recovery procedures. Particles on the hard drive may compromise the success of recovery, and improper procedures during part replacement can cause a disk misalignment and destroy the data inside. Due to the complexity and the need of specialized tools and clean room environment, Physical Data Recovery is classified as Tier3 and beyond. This is most costly data recovery service we provide. Our physical data recovery service includes the prices of donor parts for the replacement of damaged components.

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