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kmadhav asked:




There are some computer users who might think that the recovery from failed data storage units is not possible. Several users fear that when the hard drive dies, each and every information stored on it is lost. But this is not the fact as you can retrieve your lost data in majority of data loss situations. The recovery is possible using appropriate Hard Drive Recovery solutions. Depending upon the cause and type of failure, you might get an easy and quick recovery solution. No matter how the drive failure has occurred, there are some things that you should avoid to prevent further damage and permanent data loss.

The failure could occur due to two possible reasons- logical damage or physical damage. The physical damage generally occurs due to affected hard drive internals such as read/write head, spindle motor, disk platters, disk controller, PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and so forth. This failure could occur due to power surges, wear and tear, natural disaster or heat like situations. All these situations make your hard drive inaccessible and thus result into serious data loss circumstances.

The very first thing that you should remember in case of physical damage that never open affected drive in general surroundings. Exposure to any of the particulates would cause further damages only and make the disk worse. Even if you manage to fix the damaged drive, it would immediately crash because of the dust particulates entered into drive when you opened it.

When the hard drive operates normally, only the hard drive partitions and stored data become inaccessible, the problem could be due to logical failure. It might occur due to virus infection, hard drive formatting, file system corruption and any such issue. In these cases, you should not attempt any disk repair utility or install a new software on the affected hard drive. It may overwrite the stored data and cause more damage.

In case of physical hard drive failure, Data Recovery is possible with the help of recovery professionals. They deliver personalized and sophisticated recovery services to repair or replace damaged hard drive components and retrieve all lost data from damaged drive. Recovery service is carried out in safe and sterile environment of Clean Rooms.

On the other hand, logical hard drive failure can be cured using Data Recovery Tools. These are advanced third party applications, which carry out smooth and extensive scan of hard drive retrieve all the lost data from it. These Partition Recovery applications are quite easy and safe to use.

Stellar Information Systems Limited is the most experienced and trustworthy provider of high-quality recovery solutions. The software are available for Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, Linux and Novell operating systems. Recovery service is delivered through Class 100 Clean Rooms using high-end techniques.



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Elias Rizos asked:




Contrary to popular belief, if a computer does not boot due to hard drive corruption all data is not lost and the hard drive may even be repairable. There are 2 types of hard drive damage. One is fixable by you and the other requires a professional data recovery facility.

Physical Drive Damage – Physical damage is the worst. Data recovery can only be done by professionals and can cost up to $1,500 (sometimes higher). Physical damage usually consists of bad actuator arms, damaged platters or fried controller cards.

Non-Physical Drive Damage – Non-Physical damage (NPD) is what we’re going to be discussing in this article. NPD occurs when the operating system’s file system (fat or ntfs) gets corrupted due to an improper shutdown (for example). While this damage is may seem really bad (if it’s preventing you from booting your PC), it’s easily fixable with some software that’s already including in any Windows PC and a USB external hard drive enclosure.

Here are a list of items that you’ll need to follow the instructions below:

Another working computer with Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7

Find out what kind of hard drive you have. There are 2 types. SATA (small flat connector) and PATA (a.k.a IDE) which has a connector with about 30 pins. An external USB hard drive enclosure with a connector for the type of drive you’re going to be connecting to it (you can grab one of these at BestBuy for about $50 USD).

Please follow the steps below to perform a non-physical repair (software repair) on a non-bootable hard drive.

1. Take the drive out of the computer.

2. Connect the hard drive to the connector on the USB enclosure.

3. Connect a USB cable from the enclosure to the computer that’s working.

4. Power on the USB enclosure.

5. An external drive will probably load in your list of available hard drives. You can see this list by opening “My Computer” or “Computer”. Take note of the drive letter for the external hard drive.

6. Now it’s time to load a program called CHKDSK (Check Disk).

7. Click Start (if you’re on Windows XP) or click the Windows globe (on the bottom left for Vista and Windows 7).

8. On Windows XP click RUN, then type CMD. On Windows Vista and 7 type CMD where it says “Search Programs and Files”. This will open a black command prompt window.

9. In the command prompt type chkdsk “the drive letter you want to check”: /r and press enter. So here is an example chkdsk g: /r then press the enter key.

10. This process can take hours. I’ve had a few that took days.

11. If this command completes successfully your drive should be repaired enough for you to recover the data from it and you might actually be able to boot from it again.

A word of warning. If your drive ever has any errors on it (bad sectors) it’s reached the end of it’s life and should be replaced ASAP. You’ll be able to see this in the report provided to by the chkdsk command at the end of it’s scan.



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Simpson Raid asked:


iTunes, developed by Apple Inc., not only as an entertainment application but also to act as an interface between a computer and the iPod and iPhone. It is the sole software which allows you to organize data and other things on the iPod. And as with every software, it has it’s ups and downs. iTunes often faces problems which could have rather heartbreaking results. More often than not, a problem with iTunes causes our data to get deleted. Often irreversible, this is a cause for major concern to those who use iPod often and have taken the pains to set it up with all the playlists etc. One might say “so what if the songs get deleted? You can always re-load them” While this is a good idea if you have a back-up from where you can reload the songs, most people don’t keep back-ups!!! We just take it for granted that ‘nothing will go wrong if I’m careful’!! Songs are generally bought from the iTunes store. This means that along with your music, videos etc, your hard earned money has gone down the drain!! These songs, etc, can easily be recovered with the help of an iPod recovery software. For instance when the iPod is connected to the computer and you try to sync it with iTunes, you get the following error: “Attempting to copy to the disk failed. An unknown error occurred (-69)” The cause for this error is that the file(s) that are being sent to the iPod, is(are) unusable meaning that something is wrong with it(them). To resolve the problem, one needs to simply follow the steps below: Sync the iPod and iTunes using the “Sync Songs” The name of the file creating the problem will appear (just before the error occurs) on the display on top of iTunes. Remove this file from the list. Select the “ Sync only checked songs and videos” checkbox from the Summary tab. Select the songs you want to sync to the iPod and then again choose “Sync Songs” If the above steps do not work, you will need to restore the iPod. Restoring an iPod leads to file deletion. All the files in the iPod are lost for good. To resolve the problem, after restoring the iPod, use and iPod recovery software to recover iPod

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kmadhav asked:




On a Windows installed computer system with SCSI drive being used as the boot drive and no SCSI adapter BIOS enabled, NTLDR will access NTBOOTDD.SYS file for initial boot to communicate with the controller. The file is basically a SCSI miniport device driver that system renames to Ntbootdd.sys and places in root system folder. Windows uses it when Boot.ini file contains SCSI() or SIGNATURE(). You computer becomes unbootable when no or incorrect NTBOOTDD.SYS file exists, while preventing you from accessing the data stored on SCSI drive. The solution requires you to boot the system from boot disk or rename the faulty file. However if the data remains inaccessible while no valid data backup is available, apply and use an effective Data Recovery Software.

For instance, you might receive the below error message when trying to boot from a SCSI drive installed in a Windows XP based computer:

“Windows XP could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows XP (TM) documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information. Boot Failed.”

The boot process fails without allowing any access to stored data.

Cause

NTBOOTDD.SYS file is missing or incorrect.

Note: The error can also occur if an incorrect SCSI driver is selected.

Solution

Following are the basic solutions that can help you recovering from such problems:



Use Windows XP bootable disk or installation media, if available, to boot the computer



Replace or copy the Ntbootdd.sys file from the root of the boot or installation disk to the root system folder of your computer.



Try to duplicate the behavior by restarting the system from your boot SCSI drive. If the problem remains the same, try other troubleshooting steps, like formatting and reinstalling the operating system.



To recover inaccessible or lost data, consider your last good backup to restore. For any reason, if it is not available, you need a Data Recovery utility. A Disk Recovery Software proves as a valid tool to scan, locate and restore missing data from a logically crashed drive. While providing safe Partition Recovery, such tools are easy to implement with graphically rich user interface.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is an advanced utility to provide systematic recovery of lost data for Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000 based systems. It is a non-destructive Data Recovery tool with rich graphical interface and powerful disk and recovery features. The application is compatible with FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems.



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kmadhav asked:




Boot.ini is a hidden file of Windows that it uses to determine the operating systems to be displayed while starting the system. It helps system identifying on which folder, partition and hard drive, Windows is located. The file might get damaged or deleted due to several reasons. In such cases, you get errors and the system fails to start, whereby making your data inaccessible. You can replace or repair the file using Recovery Console options. But if you fail to do so, you will need to recover the lost data from backup or using effective data recovery software.

Consider an instance, you try to start a Windows XP based computer system and it fails to boot giving the below error message:

“Invalid Boot.ini”

Or

“Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: 

WindowsSystem32Hal.dll”

You might receive the above error message particularly after you upgrade your system to Windows XP.

Cause

The root cause of such errors to occur is that Boot.ini file is corrupted, missing or contains invalid entries.

Solution

Windows XP Recovery Console includes a command called bootcfg that allows you to reconstruct or edit the boot.ini fil. To use the bootcfg.exe tool through Recovery Console, you need to follow these steps:



Insert the Windows XP installation disc and boot your system from it



Press any key when prompted for booting from CD



Press ‘R’ to start Recovery Console when ‘Welcome to Setup’ message appears



Select the Windows installation you desire to repair



Specify the administrator password, if any



Type bootcfg /list at the command prompt to enlist the entries of boot.ini file



Run bootcfg/rebuild command



Type ‘Y’ in response to ‘Add installation to boot list?’



At next prompt, you need to mention the operating system name as the ‘Load Identifier’



Type /fastdetect , when prompted to ‘Enter OS Load options’



Type Exit to exit from Recovery Console



If you still cannot access your data, scan the hard disk using a hard drive recovery utility to recover the lost data. Data Recovery Software are special tools to extract lost files, folders and partitions from a seemingly inaccessible drive. These tools also serve as suitable Partition Recovery tools.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is completely reliable and advanced partition recovery utility for Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000 based systems. It is a comprehensiveData Recovery services with graphically rich user interface and options. The tool provides safe data recovery from FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 based drives.



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kmadhav asked:




Volumes on dynamic disks can have simple volume layout that can use free space of a single disk. A simple volume is allowed to be extended within the same disk or onto set of additional disks, without even restarting the computer system. This is usually performed to gain more disk space. Volume thus extended across multiple disks is called a spanned volume. Spanning of simple volume is restricted to a constraint that it is possible only if the volume is formatted to NTFS file system and not FAT file system. Though, you can initially create a spanned volume across a set of disks using either of the file system, but the one formatted with FAT will not be able to extend or span further to gain more disk space. The same issue also occurs if you are using a volume that has existed as a basic disk before it is upgraded to dynamic disk. Due to these reasons, if you desire to span or extend such volume, you will need to reformat or recreate it and restore data from backup later. However, while a valid backup is unavailable, you need to use data recovery software to recover the lost data.

To illustrate the issue, consider that you try to extend or span a FAT formatted simple or spanned volume in Windows 2000, but fail to do so. You might also observe that when you attempt to FAT or NTFS formatted simple or spanned volume, you get the below error message:

“The selected volume was originally created on a basic disk and cannot be extended. Only volumes originally created on dynamic disks can be extended.”

This error is observed with the volume that has been upgraded to dynamic volume.

Cause

Such volumes lack the ability of extending or spanning because they still keep their partition table entries in MBR. Windows 2000 uses this entry to install to the dynamic volume and boot from. Only system and boot volumes are allowed to be installed or upgraded to dynamic disks by Setup.

Solution



To regain the ability of extending or spanning, you need to reformat the volume formatted to FAT



If the volume has existed as a basic disk before it is upgraded to dynamic disk, you need to delete it and recreate it on the dynamic disk



Use your recent data backup to restore the data thus lost or scan the disk using a powerful Disk Recovery Software while valid backup unavailability. Competent to perform safe Partition Recovery, these are suitable Data Recovery products in all cases of logical data loss.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a reliable and fully-featured partition recovery Software. It is a read-only tool that is compatible with Windows 7 RC1, Vista, XP, 2003 and 2000 operating systems. It provides advanced features like Drive Status, Disk Imaging, Disk Cloning and more. It supports FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file systems.



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Zoe asked:




To start with, the concept of ‘Service Area (SA) Emulation Technology’ will be explained, which is also called ‘Hard Drive Firmware Service Area Emulation Technology’.

Emulation is used to describe a technology which duplicates (provide an emulation of) the functions of one system using different system, so that the second system behaves like the first system. It also refers to the ability of a computer program or electronic device to imitate another program or device. In reality, this technology has been applied to virtual computer system networks, such as virtual partition, virtual workstation, and virtual storage system. The virtual system is designed to accomplish a certain set of commands. The command set is used to reallocate the calculative resources which also enable the isolation of software, hardware, data, network system and storage system. Basically, the emulator is achieved by the emulation of the command set defined by desired system.

Emulator can be categorized into different types according to the objective simulated layers. Currently, there are 4 main types of emulations which are hardware emulation, logical emulation, software emulation and application emulation. The Hard Drive Firmware Service Area Emulation Technology has been introduced here. This is a new technology which is used to initialize the firmware information of a specific hard drive by loading predefined SA resource file onto the memory of the external emulator. In another word, the hard drive will boot itself from the information on the emulator rather than from the native firmware information. By using the SA emulator, user can access the data area directly without repairing the corrupted firmware. This technology is quite similar to the Hot Swap operation where the emulation of SA is achieved by a donor hard drive. Because of the nature of the adaptive information, many modern hard drives are not facilitated themselves to achieve a successful Hot Swap operation. But, by using an external SA emulator, this problem can be resolved.

A Hard Drive can be compared to a small computer. It employs microprocessors to control both the physical behaviour of the various electro-mechanical components, and the logical operations that store and retrieve data as an arrangement of the magnetic particles on the disk surface. This operation is completely independent of the operation of the host PC. Like any computer, the hard drive needs its own software to control the operation of the microprocessors, but unlike a PC this software is limited to the drive’s operational functionality, and is not (and under normal circumstances cannot be) changed by the user. This hard drive ‘software’ is, as a result, more usually referred to as ‘Firmware’. The firmware carries out a range of functions, from what might be termed ‘Analogue’ functions such as controlling the spinning of the disc and positioning of the read/write heads, as well as the ‘Digital’ functions used to pass data files to and from the PC, keeping track of the location and parameters of the data files stored, and many, many more. Without firmware the drive is simply a collection of electronic components.

Just as the software on a PC can have problems, so the firmware can also cause a hard drive to fail if it becomes lost or corrupted. Statistical analysis shows that up to 60% of hard drive problems are due to firmware failure. Firmware problems can arise from a range of causes:

•        Instability or failure of electronic components

•        Accidental or inadvertent removal of power to the drive

•        Deterioration of the magnetic response of the data recording surfaces

The latter cause is virtually inevitable over time, and the deterioration will accelerate the longer or more intensively the drive is used. Additionally the disk manufacturing process is not 100% perfect and as a result disks will commonly leave the factory already having problems with certain areas of the disk. These areas where the drive has problems correctly reading data from the disk are known as ‘Bad Sectors’. Sectors that fail simply because the data stored on them has become corrupted are known as ‘Logical’ bad sectors and these can be ‘repaired’ by re-recording  the data correctly or in the correct format, however areas with problems arising from the magnetic response of the disk surface failing are known as ‘Physical’ bad sectors, and these cannot be repaired. Bad sectors of either kind can occur both in the data storage area of drive, but also in a ‘reserved’ area dedicated to storage of part of the drive firmware called the ‘Service Area’. User data area bad sectors can cause the loss or corruption of data files or reduced performance of the drive, bad sectors in the firmware area can lead to the drive failing completely. As the firmware area needs to be accessed every time the computer is switched on and every time drive is accessed, the chance of bad sectors becoming a problem in this area is consequently higher.

Part of the data stored in the firmware Service Area is the so-called ‘P-List’. This is a list of known bad sectors detected as part of the post-manufacture testing process. Any sectors recorded in the P or ‘Production’ List will not be used for the storage of data, the firmware will automatically arrange the data around them. Additionally where the drive firmware detects further bad sectors arising from the normal day-to-day use of the drive, these sectors will be progressively added to a ‘G-List’ or ‘Grown’ list (again stored within the service area) and again these sectors will be avoided, with the firmware arranging data around them. This process takes place automatically, with the user largely if not completely unaware that it is being carried out.

Where firmware has suffered logical defects, the HD Doctor range of drive restoration tools can be used to diagnose and repair such problems. However where problems arise that is mainly due to physical defects then recovery of user data will be difficult if not impossible without the use of Data Compass.

As previously stated, bad sector problems only worsen every time the disk is accessed and the intensive read actions required to attempt to recover usable files from a disk are likely to be particularly detrimental, with a vicious cycle of ever increasing risk of data loss. On common approach used to overcome this problem is that of ‘cloning’. This involves taking an exact image of the disk contents, and then recovering the data from this cloned image rather than the original disk. Data Compass is particularly effective in producing such disk ‘images’ even from disks with serious bad sector problems.

Where the firmware, or the individual portions of ‘microcode’ or ‘Modules’ that make up the firmware become corrupted, this will often be indicated by either the drive not being detected correctly by the host PC (possibly shown as incorrect drive model, or with incorrect capacity displayed), or by being not detected by the PC at all. The HD Doctor tools can be used to correctly diagnose and repair such problems. The tool will allow the firmware modules to be tested or their content examined visually for defects, and where they are found to have problems they can be reloaded using ‘good’ modules obtained either from copies taken from matched ‘donor’ drives, or from libraries of firmware available for registered customers to download. However the subject of firmware is a complex one and firmware ‘architecture’ varies widely between different drive manufacturers and even between different drive ranges from the same manufacturer. Thus it can be difficult for a technician to become proficient in firmware repair without considerable experience or training.

Instances will also arise where firmware modules have been checked and found to be faulty and where, on uploading known ‘good’ copies back to the drive and re-checking the modules, they are still shown to be faulty. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to repair such modules, it may become rapidly evident that the faulty modules are arising due to physical defects in the firmware Service Area. Such defects cannot be repaired, and would, until the arrival of Data Compass have meant that drives suffering such problems would have been thought irrecoverable.

In Hitachi/IBM hard drives, once the corresponding resource files are loaded onto the RAM of the computer manually, the emulator (Data Compass) will stimulate the crucial firmware modules (e.g. PSHT, RSVD, RESF, RAMO, ZONE, SRVP) from the defective drive and try to create a link between the resource files and all the working modules. Once the link is established successfully, the emulator will enable the access of the user data area, in which case the drive will behave working properly.

You may see 2 different diagnostic results if you use the HD Doctor to diagnose the Hitachi drive with one of the firmware failures mentioned above. The HD Doctor will check the integrity of the modules of Hitachi drives by looking at the header and footer. The actual content of the modules will not be gone through due to there is no CRC checksum algorithm exists on Hitachi drives. There is no way to tell if the actual content of modules is good or bad unless checking manually. In another word, either logical defects or physical defects in service area will not be detected by any diagnostic tools. Figure 1 shows the situation when the headers and/or footer of the modules are corrupted where the HD Doctor is able to detect. Figure 2 shows the situation when there is nothing wrong with the headers and footers. In figure 2, it doesn’t imply that the actual content of the modules are good if the drive is not recognized.

The general diagnostic procedure for checking and restoring firmware modules of Hitachi drives is:

•        Load the defective drive from external resource file (HD Doctor has integrated the resource files for all the series of Hitachi/IBM laptop and desktop drives);

•        Do a complete firmware scan;

•        If the scan result shows the error modules, try to replace the corrupted modules from a donor drive;

•        If the scan result shows no error modules but the drive is still not being recognized, it implies that there are physical defects in one or more of the modules. Manually going through each module is required to find out which one is damaged. When it is found, try to replace it from a donor drive;

•        After the replacement, if the drive is still not being recognized, then do a firmware scan or manual checking again. You may find the damaged module contains the ‘4040’ in a certain area, as shown in figure 3. We classified this area as physical defect in service area.

•        Load the drive from file again and try to view sector, as show in figure 4. You may find that the user data area is accessible even without any replacement of damaged modules.

There is no way to restore the files from this kind of failure Hitachi drives until the SA Emulation Technology has been introduced. As the arrival of Data Compass, it provides a complete solution for data recovery from Hitachi drives.  It also brings you into a new generation of recovering data without firmware repair.

To learn much more about hard drive data recovery solutions, please visit http://www.salvationdata.com/data-recovery-equipment/data-compass.htm where you can get more free information on specialized data recovery equipments and firmware repair tools.



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John Peter asked:




You can use iTunes to sync the calendars and contacts from Microsoft Outlook to any iPod or iPhone. The supported versions for this operation are Outlook 2003 and later. Each time when you sync contacts from Outlook, you need to give iTunes access to Outlook address book and calendar. But the application can sometimes cause problems to Outlook data file, which can even corrupt it. At this point, you should consider to restore the file from backup or run Inbox Repair Tool (Scanpst.exe). If these fail, the only option is to use a Microsoft Outlook Recovery product that can scan and repair the file using high-end procedures.

For better understanding of such problems, consider the following problem that you might encounter when syncing Outlook data using iTunes. After setting up iTunes to sync your Outlook contacts or calendars with your iPhone or iPod, you notice that whenever you open Outlook, you receive an error that is similar to below:

“The data file ‘file_name’ was not closed properly. The file is being checked for problems”

The check runs for sometime but finds no issues. In some case, you might experience that PST file size grows unexpectedly. The issue is typically associated with Outlook 2003 or 2007 data file.

Cause

Most of the times, the problem is related to iTunes add-in that might be interrupting with the working of Outlook. If this is not the case, the PST file might be corrupted.

Solution

To solve the given problem, you should try suggestions like:



1-You should disable the iTunes add-in

2-If the issue persists, you can delete the original .pst file provided a suitable backup is present to restore it

3-You can try repairing the corrupted file by Scanpst.exe utility

4-In case when no valid backup exists, check if you can open the .pst file well. If yes, you can create a new .pst file and try to import uncorrupted items

5-If all these measures don’t seem to work, you should repair the file using PST Recovery tools. These are special Microsoft Outlook Recovery utilities built with safe and advanced technology that brings complete .pst file repair results.



Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is a comprehensive tool to repair the damaged Outlook .pst file. The tool serves as an advanced PST Recovery tool for files created with Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002 and 2000. It can restore all PST objects, which include emails, notes, journals, tasks and calendar events.



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