More than 10 percent of drives sent to Kroll Ontrack for data recovery have been previously opened, hindering outcomes

Kroll Ontrack says that for the third year running, more than 10 percent of the media sent to Kroll Ontrack has been previously opened, diminishing the chances of a successful recovery by more than 45 percent. This represents a large volume of unnecessary data loss when you consider that Kroll Ontrack processes more than 50,000 recoveries a year.

“When a drive is opened, the ability to recover data from the media can be diminished,” said Paul Le Messurier, Head of Programmes and Operations at Kroll Ontrack. “Recovering data from a physically damaged hard drive is considerably more difficult than a logical failure, so opening a failed drive should only happen in a professional and certified cleanroom environment with a laminar air flo w system.”

A hard drive is a sealed unit, specifically designed to keep any debris from entering while it is in use. The read-write heads inside that drive are designed to float over the platter surface while it’s spinning, usually at speeds anywhere between 5,400 and 15,000 rpm. When dust particles enter the unit while it is spinning at full speed, the smallest of particles can make their way between the heads and the platter surface, causing the heads to crash.

Ontrack Data Recovery engineers diagnose all received drives to determine the condition of the media and data in a data recovery lab. Common discovered issues include: multiple bad sectors, damaged surfaces and malfunctioning head assembly due to instability or severe head crashes. If the media is diagnosed with a logical failure (non-physical), engineers use specialised tools to rebuild and repair damaged data structures, and then access and extract the data. In instances of physical damage, Ontrack Data Recovery engineers open the device within a cleanroom environment and assess the physical condition of the circuit boards and moving parts through a comprehensive and rigorous diagnostic process.

Clean Workbenches
A clean data recovery environment is a devised system for routing the air flow on rows of workbenches in an arrangement based on high-quality submicron particulate air filters that trap the smallest particles. These systems use special HEPA filters (high efficiency particulate air filters) that filter out suspended particles only 0.5 micrometres in diameter. Workbenches and data recovery work stations are arranged in specialised areas based on the type of media: 2.5″, 3.5″ IDE, SATA drives, USB dri ves, SAS, SCSI, SSD, flash, phones, tablets and server media. All Kroll Ontrack workbenches follow ISO 14644-1 class 5 standards.

Parts Inventory
Seventy-five percent of drives sent to Kroll Ontrack have physical failures versus logical damage. As a result, a large inventory of spare parts to address the wide inventory of drive capacities and components is also critical to any cleanroom.

“With more than 150,000 spare parts globally, Kroll Ontrack has one of the largest spare parts inventories in the world,” added Le Messurier. “Our intelligent inventory system provides all 24 offices with the ability to locate the correct part from the closest location. Kroll Ontrack customers benefit from global support for all storage devices as well as a fast recovery time.”