Hard Drive Recovery Group

No Nonsense Hard Drive Facts

It really was about time. If you know the hard disk drive industry at all, you know that they have some marketing people that love to try to make a metal box look like a Corvette. This is hard drive technology, after all, which is frankly, quite amazingly dull. A lot of business owners like it that way. It’s a sturdy technology that lets you put a lot of information into a small space. Saves paper, too. Although if you were talking to a marketer, he’d tell you it was more exciting than the moon landing!

This article on hdd specifications from PC World is a great no-nonsense look at specs, and what to look for. Someone needed to say it, and I’m glad that PC World did. Take it from us: there are really only so many things that matter when it comes to hard drive storage. In essence (with perhaps the exception of SSD drives and hybrids), this is very much the same technology that has been around for 20+ years.

On the other hand, PC World still is PC World, and of course their plug of USB 3.0 drives is funny only because they RECOMMEND them as a performance boost. My friends, we can tell you that unless you’re a robot, you’re not going to “sense” the milliseconds of time savings you will get from USB 3.0. But, let’s remember that this is a magazine that survives by its advertisers, and making them happy first (after the reader, of course) is always going to be the plan.

Fake Hard Disk Failures, And Other Schemes

Yep, they’re at it again. The Trojan Horse hackers had actually seemed to have gotten lazy for a while, at least by their previous standards. But now, they’re back: in Trojan 2: Fake Frag (Electric Boogaloo). Yes, more “fakeware”, this time claiming your “SATA Drive has Failed”, along with a ton of other fake messages. Then, despite the fact that you’ve never actually downloaded it, “Windows Recovery” software comes up and starts to scan your PC for bugs. Naturally, it finds them. By the tons. So not only is hard disk failure imminent, your computer is attracting parasites galore. Soon, it will be on fire.

Of course, it isn’t on fire. These Trojans are part of a new Blackmail-ware era of con game, where a “magic program” will recover your failed hard disk, “fix” all your system errors, and leave you $80 short. These are easy Trojans to pick up, as well, as one of our techs discovered on his home machine the other week. Continual notes that “only Windows Security 2011″ will fix this, and at $80, it doesn’t seem so bad.

This is all a huge waste of your money, of course. There are a number of sites that do show you how to remove the “virus”, which is typically just a small .exe file that runs anytime you execute ANYTHING. A good way to stop the thing (and find exactly what .exe it is), of course, is by using your Windows Task Manager. Once inside, click on “Processes”, and look for something that just doesn’t look right. It’ll usually be using a ton of CPU, and can be stopped easily. Stopping it, of course, will typically then enable you to search for it in the registry.

We could go into deeper detail, but we won’t – there are a lot of other sites on the Internet that do. But just be warned: a lot of these guys suggest: “This is a difficult process for the non-advanced user, you may want to try Spyware Remover 2000 or Spyware Doctor” (or some other crappy name for an otherwise free spyware remover). So what are they doing? Yes, friends, they too are blackmailing you. Only this time it’s for less money, typically around $30. Check out a great demo video of this script in action on the Inquirer.

A smart user should know that all you really need is Regedit, and you can get the job done yourself.

Here are a few names this kind of virus goes under:

Windows Repair
Windows Recovery
Internet Defender
Security Defender
Internet Security Essentials

Click here for another decent site that still tries to blackmail you, but does let you know how to get rid of the Trojan as well.

Hard Drive Crash-Proof?

More great hard drive technology from IOSafe coming down the pipe. The 3TB “Everythingproof” hard disk drive touts itself as not only crash and failure proof, but fire and waterproof! This is one of those drives that you could take a blowtorch to and to cool it off, throw it in icy water. A “Mythbusters”-style piece of hardware, from a really innovative company.

Yep, can’t say enough about the technology at IOSafe (it isn’t good for our business, mind you ), but knowing the business of hard drive repair and recovery quite well, we would note that price, especially when it comes to storage media and hardware, is pretty much priority one when it comes to regular users. Business users can sometimes be different, but (much to their dismay when an inevitable hard drive failure occurs), more than often are also a little “by the seat of their pants” when it comes to data safety.

At $499, this is probably priced way above most personal users wallets, and is still not a “must have” for Enterprise users (which really should have a professional, consistent backup plan in place, one would think). But great technology, and despite only having 1 year of free data recovery service included (here’s where the $99 upgrade to 5 years protection comes in), a real improvement in the world of safe data storage.

Mac Hard Drive Recovery Just Got Harder…

Well, color us surprised, but then, not really. Apple is up to its old tricks again, this time making it harder than ever to perform Mac hard drive recovery. Or removal. Or replacement, for that matter…

Yes, according to a note on Engadget today, the new IMac actually has a “specialized” proprietary SATA cable for its hard disk, on which features a seven prong setup as opposed to the usual four prong. This  means that if you were really techie about it (and you have to be on an IMac anyway, as removing a drive is nowhere near an easy task for the layman) and you wanted to put a new hard drive in your system, you’d be completely out of luck.

This is unless, of course, you bought a drive specifically from Apple. We’ won’t bet against the idea that this will likely be an expensive option when compared to picking up a discount drive at your local retailer. Some might call this a “war against the customer”, while others would call it “protecting Apple technology”. Whatever the case, IMac buyers may be getting a little more than they bargained for when they experience a hard drive failure. Users beware!

OSFClone – Open Source Cloning For The Masses?

Interesting tool we just came across in the blogs. OSFClone touts itself to be a free drive cloning program (which is what companies that practice “safe hard drive recovery” use), which enables you to “see-all” that is on a drive. Basically, it looks to clone a raw image from your drive so that you can analyze it. It also boots itself, which of course lets you skip your OS and get straight to the nitty-gritty.

So probably not a program for “everybody”, frankly, but at least for those of us with geekier intentions. Worth a look, and a disk imaging program for FREE is certainly nothing to complain about. Especially if it works

Self-Erasing Hard Drives? Say It Isn’t So…

Well, we suppose it was only a matter of time… Toshiba has just announced the introduction of “self-erasing” hard drives to its product portfolio, a product they’re saying is perfect to “help their customers protect sensitive data from leakage or theft”. To this, we say, thank you, Toshiba.

Thank you for the future hard drive recovery business. Because if there’s something we do know, it’s that this technology is probably going to work – perhaps a little TOO well for most users. Considering the high level of “accidental erasings” already part of our business in general, we really can’t see how this “self erasing technology” is necessary, but we can see how it’ll be pretty dangerous.

At any rate, even if security is a hyper-priority at your business, you may want to avoid these ones. We consider them to be one of the scariest technology ideas coming from the storage industry in some time!

SSD – Worth The Hassle?

Very interesting article from a storage expert at Information Week, where you might expect him to be talking his own book (or basically, pushing new technologies on companies), but he actually seems to go the opposite way.

Read Getting Real About SSD Performance and check it out for yourself.

As a hard drive recovery provider, talking our book (i.e. generating sales and jobs for our company) would mean jumping for joy at SSD, as its overall stability has been weak at best, and has already provided us with more data recovery requests than we might have thought. But, we continue to warn corporate IT managers AGAINST the technology, as its high expense, particularly at this relatively nascent time for it, far outweighs the benefits.

The “tried and true” platter system will have to suffice for now for all but the most risk-oriented IT people. But then, most IT people we know prefer “tried and true” to “rolling the dice” when it comes to their critical data!

Consolidation Reigns In The Hard Drive Industry

Recessions bring about these kind of things. The bigger, healthier storage companies end up gobbling up the smaller ones. Such is the case with Western Digital buying Hitachi, and this will continue. As the industry moves to SSD, some of the older platter-based foundries essentially become obsolete, leaving a lot of cap-ex on the balance sheets for these manufacturers.

Not a surprise to see this happen, as Hitachi is a huge company, and their storage unit merely a small piece of the pie. Western Digital has gotten better at what they do as well, as we see a lot less of them coming through for hard drive recovery than we had just a couple of years ago.

Not a lot of players left in the industry, but that, too, could change. SSD has leveled the playing field once again.

A “Promise” Of Faster RAID Technology

Intel’s Thunderbolt has quietly crept on the storage scene, promising transfers from external sources at up to 10Gb/sec. Fast transfer, to be sure. Meanwhile, Promise, one of the most respected RAID manufacturers has introduced their Pegasus RAID solution.

Claiming 20x the throughput speed of USB 2.0, this one could indeed be a smoker for administrators looking for a hot network attached storage solution. Good stuff, we say.