Logical Data Recovery

Generally speaking when a hard drive is received by a data recovery firm, the first thing they do is evaluate it, and determine what recovery solution will be necessary. If the drive failure is a logical issue then the process starts by creating either an image file of your drive, or cloning your drive sector-by-sector another drive. All recovery work is then performed on the image, or cloned copy. After the imaging is complete, a scan will be performed to try and repair the file system corruption. Logical failures usually result in major corruption of the partition and file system. They may or may not be caused by an underlying mechanical issue with the drive. Some logical failures are so bad, that no computer system will even boot with the drive attached.

Logical damage is usually caused by power outages that prevent file system structures from being completely written to the storage medium, but problems with hardware (especially RAID controllers) and drivers, as well as system crashes, can have the same effect. The result is that the file system is left in an inconsistent state. This can cause a variety of problems, such as strange behavior (e.g., infinitely recursing directories, drives reporting negative amounts of free space), system crashes, or an actual loss of data.

In most cases a logical failure is not the result of any physical problems with the drive. However, there are some instances where file structures become corrupt, or sectors become unrecoverable either due to the read - write heads being dirty, or platter coating degradation. Only a data recovery professional will be able to help you determine what exactly has occured. Even with the drive operating in a degraded state, there are many options we have available that, in most cases, will allow us to fully recover the data without having to take the drive into our clean room for a physical recovery.

One thing to avoid when you have suffered a logical failure, is running any type of program to try and correct the problem. Many times these programs try to repair file system structures by moving files around. The worst thing you can do when you have suffered a hard drive failure is to run anything that will write data to the drive. In many cases this will render at least some of your data unrecoverable, since the sectors containing that data will most likely be overwritten. For more information about our services, and to discuss your problem with one of our technicians, please call 1-800-717-8974.