Although PC users realize the importance of data recovery, how about gadget lovers who want to retrieve files from an MP3 player or camcorder? Get the inside scoop on what you can do to find that precious data you thought you lost.
Digital Journal — The PC gets all the love. We defrag it, run anti-virus software through it, back up sensitive data, clean the keyboard, and even coo sweet nothings in its speaker ear when it chugs along slowly.
But the smart tech enthusiast should also take care of their digital devices, lest they face serious problems tracking down lost files.
There’s no need to despair if your gadget fails you suddenly. Practically anything can be recovered, asserts Bill Margeson, president of CBL Data Recovery Technologies. He points to the iPod as a device that increasingly turns up in his lab for emergency forensics.
Digital Journal continues its data-recovery series to offer consumers advice on what to do the day the music dies:
In iPod Recovery We Trust
“The most common problem, 70 per cent of the time, is hardware failure,” Margeson notes. “And we’ve come up with a non-intrusive way to read every sector of the hard-disk drive.” Margeson and his recovery crew work at the “hexadecimal level,” reading sectors one by one and piecing them back together in the lab.
So you might’ve thought you lost all 10,000 songs on your iPod, but data-recovery specialists can root through the drive, find the lost data, and keep the funky device as good-looking as it was before.
“To many people, a track’s value isn’t just worth 99 cents,” Margeson says, referring to the cost of an iTune song. “There’s a lot of time and investment put into digital data on a device like an iPod, so customers don’t just want to buy a new device.”
To avoid the hassles of getting back lost data, why not back up? A CNet post suggests media-friendly backup services like Streamload, which offers 25GBs of free online storage. An offsite backup like this one is ideal for people who travel a lot and want to access their data from a remote PC.
Audio files can also be stored on blank media. A CD can hold up to 150 MP3s, so shuttling your iPod data to a CD is recommended even before disaster strikes.
A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Precautions
It’s a nightmare scenario for every avid photographer: You shoot hundreds of photos with your digi-cam at a wedding in Hawaii, and then accidentally delete them all by the time you get home. Before you pull out your perfectly coiffed hair, let an expert in photo-recovery reassure you.
“At the micro level, specialists can find any data residing on a camera or on solid-state memory,” Margeson says. If you accidentally delete a photo, a data-recovery lab can go through a digital media’s “table of contents” and find data “page by page.”
Turning to data-recovery services isn’t the only choice. Frantic shooters can opt for software programs designed to find lost image files. Some popular choices, rating high on Download.com, include Acronis True Image Workstation 9.1 and Digital Photo Recovery 2.3.
There’s one surefire way of sabotaging photos on your media card — formatting and reformatting your card can delete photos beyond recovery, so refrain from that last resort until you’ve lost all hope.
Phoning In Security
North American phones aren’t advanced enough to require data-recovery treatment, but Margeson has spotted an Asian trend that should make it way overseas.
“Those 3G phones in China and Japan are loaded with one-inch drives holding up to 20GB,” Margeson says. “Since the phone is evolving into a portable PC, data recovery and back-up issues will surely affect future cellphones.”
Tackling lost or corrupt data on phones isn’t a huge stretch for Margeson and company. “A flash card is like any flash card, so we can just get deep into the core and liberate distressed data.”
And let’s say you deleted an important voicemail message? Data-recovery experts can find that lost data, even if a robotic voice on your cell says otherwise.
Saving the Lil’ Guy Drives
When it comes to USB or thumb drives, so small they can hang on necklace chains, Margeson treats them like he would with cameras. But this developing tech also contains a big challenge: “Firmware inside each chip contains a rule of order we need to recover data,” he says. “I need to find similar chips that contain those exact rules of order.”
Luckily for CBL and its customers, the company partnered with a Taiwanese division of Acer to access dozens of different chips to match damaged ones in North America. Any kind of solid-state small storage drive is accessible through this Taiwanese relationship.
Next time a car runs over your tiny USB drive, no need to freak out as if every piece of data had been disintegrated. Instead, take a deep breath and realize there are companies and software out there whose sole purpose is to recover your lost data, from any device.
