With storage capacity running in hundreds of Gigabites, with high rates of data transfer, in addition to the flexibility to plug the external drive to a Laptop , Desktop, Server , Memory cards , Camera or iPod and sold at reasonable prices have increased their popularity dramatically.
However, as the popularity of the external drives containing backups and valuable data are increasingly to accomodate the bigger Music & Photo files emerging from Apple-Mac sysytems & Xserevers. External drives are failing for no apparent reasons. Majority of these failing drives are often of well known commercial brands such as Lacie, Freecom and Omega and with the latest high capacity Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital hard disk drives models with storage capacity exceeding 320Gb or even 400Gb on a single drive.
According to a study of 100,000 drives conducted by Carnegie Mellon University, it is widely believed Hard Disk Drive vendors manipulate the (MTTF) - mean time to failure. In fact The mean time to failure (MTTF) of drives, according to their manufacturers, vary from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 hours, suggesting a nominal annual failure rate of at most 0.88%.
Whereas the study finds that "up to 13% observed on some systems.". This suggests that field replacement is a fairly different process than one might predict based on datasheet MTTF.
It has also been established that failure rate is not constant with age, and that, rather than a significant infant mortality effect, evidently a significant early onset of wear-out degradation. That is, replacement rates in research data grew constantly with age, an effect often assumed not to set in until after a nominal lifetime of 5 years. The study, also carefully point out that the study didn't necessarily track actual drive failures, but cases in which a customer decided a drive had failed and needed replacement. The study also explains that no vendor-specific failure information, and that his goal is not "choosing the best and the worst vendors" but to help them to improve drive design and testing.
Also, little difference in replacement rates between SCSI, FC and SATA drives, potentially an indication that disk-independent factors, such as operating conditions, affect replacement rates more than component specific factors. On the other hand, we see only one instance of a customer rejecting an entire population of disks as a bad batch, in this case because of media error rates, and this instance involved SATA disks.
Time between replacements, a proxy for time between failure, is not well modelled by an exponential distribution and exhibits significant levels of correlation, including autocorrelation and long-range dependence.
Generally, inside the slick casings, often are poorly ventilated or even not ventilated at all, external hard drives assemblers include the cheapest available drives such as Maxtor & Seagate, combined with badly ventilated enclosure casing, the combination is catastrophic for any given user, especially when the hard disk drive is of high capacity containing crucial back-up data
For any given Lacie with multiple drives, this can be a terrible experience with RAID drives and data in excess of 1 terabite. Often with RAID array external drives, the drive failure are more frequent and the damage is more extensive than single drives. According to Haj Majed Aziz of UniRecovery – RAID Data Recovery Labs “many of the 1 terabyte LaCie external drives contain 250Gb Maxtor IDE in RAID array, inside badly ventilated enclosures, when used on regular basis, especially within office environment, they are utter disaster."
Hitachi has unveiled a drive which has reached the new heights of one terabyte (TB). Its drive looks like any other, but uses perpendicular magnetic recording to make space for all that data.
The current technology generation of LRT-Longitudinal Recording Technology, which records the bits laying horizontally, has been superseded by the recording of the bits standing vertically. However the cost is in the region of $18,000 !
Let's face it. Life's full of ups and downs. It's full of uncertainties. Just like your precious data. If anything, data stability is not permanent. In fact, more often than not, data drives tend to crash and burn and leave you in the lurch when you least expect it.
As we know, data is delicate and is subject to loss due to many reasons. The most common reasons for data drive failure are a virus, a poorly ventilated casing, actual component failure, damage to your hard drive, a hard disk crash or a power surge. It's highly possible that your data can be lost for any of these reasons. The best way to avoid getting hurt by data loss is to regularly back-up your data. You can schedule a fixed time for this every day or at fixed regular intervals. There is a lot of software out there that allows you to do this automatically. Make sure you backup data or else you will end up needing the services of a hard disk data recovery software or a company that specializes in HDD data recovery if simple solutions fail to recover your drive's data.
Now, just in case you have somehow managed to have a serious hard disk failure, and need to call a data recovery company, here are some pointers to help you along the way. First and foremost, make sure you call in a data recovery company that is well known and known to specialize in data recovery. Make sure that it is not an additional service that they provide along with many others. When you call them in, make sure that they provide a no-fix no-charge policy. This means that they will not be able to charge you unless they can recover your data partially or completely, and is a very fair system of quoting for recovering your data.
Just a no-fix no-fee policy is not enough. Make sure you get a fixed quote in writing clearly outlining different slabs of data retrieval and the charges for the same. You should know exactly what you are getting into before they begin recovering your data. Also, make sure that the company has a clean room and qualified technicians who are capable of handling your drive without causing further damage to your data.
And yes. Never believe anyone who promises you the whole world. In fact, don't believe any company who promises great results. There's no such thing. When you are facing data loss, you have to face the bitter truth that your data is lost forever before you call in the data recovery company. The sooner you accept this the better. This is why you should never believe any company who claims they can recover your data for sure, as it is but a slim possibility in the first place.
Keep these basic rules in mind, and you will be able to find the right data recovery company to help you get your data back.
Both Unirecovery Const & Shafa are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Unirecovery Const has sinced written about articles on various topics from Data Recovery, Fighter Jets. Forensic & Hard disk Data Recovery Specialists. Unirecovery Const's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.
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