In this 21st century, information technology has become a part of our lives, we simply can't do without it. The usage of tape drive has virtually lost over to other media of storage. However, for those who are curious of what is tape data recovery. This article is for you. It is the recovery of any data that has been lost on a tape, obviously, but what it involves is quite interesting.



Even with a solid plastic casing protect the tape within, the tape cartridge like any other storage devices, can be damaged from smoke, water, or dropping the cartridge from high levels. Extreme exposure to high temperatures, its internal mechanism of the tape might fails, thus causing errors located within the tape's surface.

With more organizations using tape as a storage media, damages done by water, absence of oxide, folds in the tape material, sliced edges, bad oxide and even frictional damage tape data can be recovered from tapes. There are generally two types of tape data recovery. These are known as physical recovery and logical recovery.

What is actually physical tape data recovery?

When there is a physical damage to the tape, a physical tape data recovery will then be required. It can be due to the damage done physically to the plastics, cartridge, or the tape itself from preventing the data to be read effectively.

Another reason for physical recovery can be due to the deterioration of magnetic coatings on the actual tape surface, broken or cracked wheels, twisted or folded tape, creased tape edges, broken tape, stretched tape, and etc.

There are lots of companies or stores promise a high recovery rate from using physical recovery methods. They claimed that they have over 98 percent success rate of their recovery techniques.

You may quickly need to bring your storage device to those highly trained recovery experts for recovery procedures, once you felt that you have damaged your tape storage device if it has been dropped in the mud, water or fall from high levels.

Logical recovery

Did you know that logical tape data recovery is more expensive due to it complexity and lots of process to take note.

We need logical recovery is when the data was successfully recorded on the tape, however for some unknown reasons, if it cannot be read. You have to quickly find a way to solve this issue. Also, it does not show any visible form of damage to the tape and the exterior of the tape itself.

The recovery of datafiles in logical recovery requires the expert professional to use multiple versions of the recovery software and take many "passes" at the tape using it.

It is quite normal to retrieve back the lost tape data, but the success rate of using logical recovery methods is much lower than using physical recovery methods.