May 28
Mad Media is a San Diego based marketing agency that specializes in action and motor sports branded advertising and web-based viral film campaigns for sponsor companies such as: Red Bull, DC Shoes, Element Skateboards, Split Clothing and Subaru of America. Last summer, as southern California wildfires destroyed homes and businesses, many others, including Mad Media, were affected by power surges that caused damage to computers and other electronic devices.
Production came to a halt for the company when its sophisticated eight terabyte RAID storage system containing two years worth of irreplaceable video clips from major sporting events and hundreds of hours of editing work became inaccessible. The company turned to Sonnet Technologies, the manufacturer of the RAID system, for help. After determining the nature of the damage, Sonnet recommended DriveSavers.
“We can’t afford to tell a client their footage is lost,” said Joshua Martelli, Director of TV & Film Production at Mad Media. “The scope of work that we execute is at a very advanced and professional level. We are competing with both large national agencies and very adept production groups. Every project we work on has a deadline that we can’t afford to miss.”
Within two days, DriveSavers fully recovered all the data on the eight terabyte system allowing Mad Media to get back on schedule. “The data was in the identical state it was before the crash. It was as if nothing had ever happened,” commented Martelli.
DriveSavers has a Digital Arts Division that caters to the growing number of artists, graphics, film and audio professionals who rely on technology to create their work. With combined expertise, proprietary tools and knowledge of the industry, DriveSavers excels in data recovery for customers working in the digital arts field and has proven success in restoring data lost in the most challenging ways.
written by Dennis
\\ tags: Driver Savers
May 28
What is the lifespan of a hard drive?
Hard drive manufacturers make their best guesses about drive longevity based on tests completed in a controlled environment. They assign an MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rating that becomes part of the drive’s specification. Ratings have risen dramatically over the years with drives expected to last 114 to 170 years!
Recently, engineers at Google conducted their own real-world tests. (A PDF copy of the study is downloadable at:http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf). The Google study identified several factors that contributed to the early death of a hard drive but the report drew no concrete conclusions.
As a data recovery service provider, DriveSavers has suggested that with daily use, replacing a hard drive about every 3-5 years. It is also worth noting that many consumers already replace their computers with larger, faster hard drives and processors to accommodate new versions of the operating systems.
written by Dennis
\\ tags: Drive Savers
Apr 30
After data is retrieved from a hard drive, is it reassembled to once again become a working drive?
Typically all source media is returned in the same condition as it arrived. Our objective is to get the drive functioning just long enough for us to acquire an image from it, not to repair the drive for future use.
Reassembling the failed source drive is part of the recovery process, but we would never recommend that a customer use that drive again after data has been recovered from it. Source drives are returned to their original state with their original parts and sent back to the customer as “nonfunctional”.
In the case of a logical recovery, however, the drive does not have to be opened and can be reformatted for future use.
written by Dennis
\\ tags: Drive Savers
Apr 30
Encrypted data storage devices are extremely common for businesses, government and individuals storing highly confidential or personal information on them. To understand and overcome the challenges of recovering data from encrypted drives, DriveSavers engineers have worked in partnership with all leading encryption software manufacturers and have been trained and certified by government-approved vendors to recover file and disk-level encrypted data safely and successfully.
As a result, government agencies with encrypted systems regularly rely on DriveSavers to recover their lost data. Recently, a US Army employee almost lost all his confidential data. His laptop over heated and began clicking, a symptom of electro-mechanical component failure. To complicate matters, the drive was encrypted.
To recover the data, the mechanical components in the 2.5″ hard drive first needed to be rebuilt by engineers in our Class 100 cleanroom. Once the mechanical repairs were completed, a file system engineer-certified in encryption data recovery protocol-successfully created a sector-by-sector image of the data on the drive.
“I can’t say enough about the professionalism that was exhibited throughout EVERY step of the recovery process,” remarked the owner.
In special cases, data is so sensitive that we return the sector image back to the customer fully encrypted. The customer can then enter the decryption key to verify the recovered data in their own protected environment.
Certain customers and data loss situations require extra security procedures. DriveSavers provides customized data recovery solutions that meet the most stringent data security requirements, including the successful recovery of data from encrypted drives.
written by Dennis
\\ tags: data recovery, Drive Savers
