Legacy Data Recovery Options

Data recovery is the process of salvaging (retrieving) inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a normal way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices.

Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).

The most common data recovery scenario involves an operating system failure, malfunction of a storage device, logical failure of storage devices, accidental damage or deletion, etc. (typically, on a single-drive, single-partition, single-OS system), in which case the ultimate goal is simply to copy all important files from the damaged media to another new drive. 

Data from a failed drive can sometimes be partially or totally recovered if the platters' magnetic coating is not totally destroyed. Specialised companies carry out data recovery, at significant cost. It may be possible to recover data by opening the drives in a clean room and using appropriate equipment to replace or revitalize failed components.

The biggest headache data recovery companies have is sourcing of compatible spare parts to repair faulty hard drives. When a drive has a mechanical problem, it gets to the point where the faulty components in the drive have to be replaced with a sourced identical donor drive for the process to proceed.

The result of this is that it gets more difficult for them to complete these recovery jobs because the spare parts are either not available or they are not compatible.

If the electronics have failed, it is sometimes possible to replace the electronics board, though often drives of nominally exactly the same model manufactured at different times have different circuit boards that are incompatible. Moreover, electronics boards of modern drives usually contain drive-specific adaptation data required for accessing their system areas, so the related componentry needs to be either reprogrammed (if possible) or unsoldered and transferred between two electronics boards-this is where Tekmart Africa's Legacy Data Recovery Options come in.

Sometimes operation can be restored for long enough to recover data, perhaps requiring reconstruction techniques such as file carving. Risky techniques may be justifiable if the drive is otherwise dead. If a drive is started up once it may continue to run for a shorter or longer time but never start again, so as much data as possible is recovered as soon as the drive starts.

At Tekmart Africa, we keep in stock an impressive range of these EOL / EOS legacy options. On hard drives, be they discontinued technologies-SCSI, IDE and SAS, and in different sizes.

If you are a data recovery company who need spares you can't source- get in touch and we'll be able to help.

Check availability of your required data recovery spares with us by mailing our parts department.