Data Recovery Process
Upon receiving a call regarding data recovery an on-site engineer will make an initial diagnosis. With hard drives the problem will fall into one of three categories, simple file recovery, logical hard drive recovery or physical hard drive recovery. Often it is not easy to tell between the last two categories upon the initial diagnosis. Generally the first category, file recovery, can be solved on-site and normally the other two categories require the drive to be taken away for a complete diagnosis.
After the drive has been diagnosed in the lab we will know whether the problem is logical or physical. If it is logical then it can fall into one of a number of sub-categories, ranging from firmware issues to bad blocks, if it is physical then it can fall into sub-categories ranging from a head crash (when one of the heads of the hard drive makes contact with the disk itself) to a burnt out motor.
The next step of the recovery process is generally to get the drive ready to create a duplicate image of it (an exact mirror), containing all (or as much as is possible) of your data. Depending upon what the initial issue affecting your drive was depends upon what steps need to be carried out prior to this, for example, if it had physical issues the necessary replacement parts must first be acquired and then either transplanted into your drive, or the platters, which contain your data, moved from your drive into the donor one.
Once the image of the faulty hard drive has been created onto a new hard drive it can then be analysed for any logical damage without running the risk of further damaging either the hard drive or the data itself.
Following this, the actual file recovery process can begin. The types of techniques employed at this stage depend greatly upon the state of the disk image (which is itself dictated by the logical and physical levels of damage on the original disk)