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Why Do Hard Drives Fail?
There are a number of factors which can cause a hard drive to fail.
Heat - can cause additional stress to internal components. Chips on the circuit board can burn out very easily.
Physical - jolts or knocks while in operation will always cause a drive to fail. It may continue to work for a few minutes but it will suffer a crash.
Electrical - power surges can travel through the circuit board and damage the read/write heads.
Dust / moisture - both can cause a drive overheat or short circuit.
Lemon - as well some drives are just lemons from the factory. Poor quality control or even damaged packaging can make it to retail shelves to the unassuming home user.
What is Data Recovery?
The process of retrieving data stored on damaged or failed media, such as hard drives, flash memory, CD/DVD, and tapes. Whether due to user damage or natural failure electronic media will eventually fail. Now more than ever this becoming a regular occurrence for today's home user. Data recovery services
Terabyte: what's next?
The terabyte can be easily explained as a unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 gigabytes (240 bytes) OR One trillion bytes
History stands testimony that no other technology can boast of being as eagerly anticipated as 1 Terabyte hard drives. These long awaited and much deserved drives have altered the digital landscape forever. Mega bytes to Giga Bytes and Giga Bytes to TeraBytes. The evolution hasn’t been as steadfast as imagined. Yet, thanks to the perpendicular magnetic recording technology, 1 TB has finally hit the floors.
Everybody knows that data is recorded on hard drives platters by a write head through magnetization and demagnetization. Usually the bits thus recorded are placed in a linear fashion. PMR records data by perpendicular arrangement of magnetic bits on the surface of the platter. The north south poles of the magnetic bits on the platters of the disk are not aligned linearly but perpendicularly which enables high density storage due to greater number of bits on the same platter. This technology offers information densities of up to 1 Tbit/sq. inch (1000 Gbit/sq. inch) as opposed to100 to 200 gigabit per square inch offered by linear recording technology.
WHY TERABYTE?
New breakthroughs in the field of digital media and recording of videos through internet and television have increased the appetite for storage. In spite of this, the need for Tera bytes was fiercely debated time and again. But with their arrival, this question seems to be out of place. Massive storage needs have forced the leading hardware companies to come out with their own 1 TB drives. Hitachi was first in this category followed by Seagate and Samsung.
WHERE TERABYTE?
Another popular application of terabytes is for NAS .ie, Network Attached Storage is the name given to network storage which facilitates centralized access to data and centralized data storage facilities for heterogeneous clients. Simply put, this means NAS is an array of hard disks including multi disk RAID systems along with software’s to map file locations on the network attached device. Within the storage network, it is possible to set user priorities using a web browser. The NAS is set up with its own network and not attached to the main server. This system of storage reduces the burden on the main network server and provides access and storage facilities to NAS network users.
1 TB drives means more space for network attached storage. This means facility for storage of about 250,000 songs, 350 movies, 1000 hrs of video, 333,300
photos, or more than 500 full version games. With the introduction of such advanced storage systems, it is possible to erase data storage limits.
TERABYTE Hard Drives – A Challenge Data Recovery Software companies?
No Doubt, terabyte hard drives is a revolution in the scenario of hard drive capacity. However, with every revolution there is a darker side of it. These high capacity hard drives would be practically toring tons of valuable data in it, and the hard failure or any software malfunction can make the hard drive data inaccessible. Leading to data Loss …
So we would be needing data recovery, and we know that nearly all the data recovery company in the market are recovering data through scanning the hard drive sector & block wise. So with this large hard drive space, Data Recovery Software would be needing a large amount of time to scan the hard drives and recover the files. So scanning high capacity hard drives is a challenge for data recovery companies. They have to come up with some new technology to face the challenge. This would be going to more tougher as there are many more companies who are coming up with more high capacity hard drives.
WHAT NEXT after 1 TB?
While we are yet to come to terms with the terabyte, computer scientists are doing massive research and development to enable larger storage platforms. Efforts are underway to create new data storage platforms having capacities upwards of 1000 TB. One Indian scientist is working on making DVD’s which can be coated with a light -sensitive protein and can store up to 50 terabytes (about 50,000 gigabytes) of data.
Going by these estimates, it is imaginable that data densities are soon set to reach unthinkable proportions and data recovery services will definitely become more complex by the day. Data backups and recovery services need an overhaul for this. But one thing is sure….no matter what…….the terabyte drives have definitely given us what we desperately needed– a peek into future of data storage technology. It is time we prepare ourselves for larger data storage and efficient data recovery methods.
Hard Drives: An Introduction
Hard disk is a non-volatile data storage device that stores electronic data on a magnetic surface layered onto hard disk platters. Word Hard is use to differentiate it from a soft, or floppy disk. Hard disks hold more data and can store from 10 to more than 100 gigabytes, whereas most floppies have a maximum storage capacity of 1.4 megabytes and in addition are faster too. Normally term hard disk is much familiar with computers only but it is widely used as network attached storage for large volume storage. Furthermore, appliance of hard disk drives spread out to video recorders, audio players, digital organizers, digital cameras, and even in latest cellular telephones.
Reynold Johnson invented the first hard disk in 1955 for IBM 305 computer with fifty 24 inch platters and total capacity of five million characters, and in 1956 - first commercial hard disk was launched with 5 megabyte capacity, the IBM 350 RAMAC disk drive. Within time frame of 50 years and rapid progress in technical enhancement, we have now reached to latest 2006 - First 750 GB hard drive from (Seagate) and First 200 GB 2.5″ Hard Drive utilizing Perpendicular recording (Toshiba).
Heart of hard disk consists of four basic components:
The Platters: Platters are the actual disks inside the drive that store the magnetized data. Conventional platters are made of a light aluminum alloy and coated with magnetize-able material but latest technology uses glass or ceramic platters as they are thinner and also heat resisting. Most drives have at least two platters and the larger the storage capacity of the drive, the more platters there are.
The Spindle Motor: Hard disk drive consists of a spindle on which the platters spin at a constant RPM. Moving along and between the platters on a common arm are read-write heads. The platters in a drive are divided by disk spacers and are clamped to a revolving spindle that turns all the platters in a uniform motion. The spindle motor is built right into the spindle and rotates the platters at a constant set rate ranging from 3,600 to 7,200 RPM.
The Read/Write Heads: Read/write heads read and write data to the platters, and each head is fixed to a single actuator shaft so that all the heads move in harmony. Typically, only one of the heads is active at a time either reading or writing data. When not in use, the heads are inactive, but when in motion the spinning of the platters generate air pressure that lifts the heads off the platters. The space between the platter and the head is so minute that even one dust particle or a fingerprint could disable the spin.When the platters cease spinning the heads come to rest, at a preset position on the heads, called the landing zone.
The Head Actuator: All the heads are attached to a single head actuator arm, which moves the heads around the platters. The Actuator arm moves the heads on an arc across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter. Contemporary hard drives use a voice coil actuator, which controls the movement of a coil toward or away from a permanent magnet based on the amount of current flowing through it. Fundamental structures of all hard disk are same, and are composed of the same physical features, but their performance depends on the quality of their inner components.
Hard Disk Failure:
Hard Disk Failure occurs when a hard disk drive malfunctions and the accumulate data cannot be accessed. It may happen in the course of normal operation due to an internal or external factor. Disk failure varies and the most common is “Head Crash” where the internal read and write head of a device touches a platter or magnetic storage surface often grinding away the magnetic surface. Head hover just micrometers from the platters plane which makes such collision a common one. This sort of crash usually invites severe data loss and unprofessional data recovery attempts results further damage to the remaining data. Hard drive also includes other controller electronics i.e., semiconductors, valves or electronic circuits, and major components such as Platters, Spindle Motor and Head Actuator. Failure of any these devices may cause a hard diskfailure. Factors causes disk failure are numerous, yet most common are power surges, voltage fluctuations, electronic malfunction, physical shock, wear and tear, corrosion, exposure to high magnetic waves, sharp impact, high temperature exposure etc.
The phenomena of hard disk failure is raising higher and higher; as to increase the read and write speed, today we have latest hard disk rotating amazingly faster and this immense revolving speed generates massive centrifugal force, a single adverse cause in the course of normal operation can cause severe hard disk failure.
Hard Disk Data Recovery:
Hard drive data recovery is the process of recovering the trapped data from the damage hard disk device, when it can not be accessed in normal circumstance.Several Techniques are used to retrieving data from damaged hard disk and techniques vary accordingly. It can be done by moving disk drive to a working CPU, or may have to open the disk drive and replace parts such as read/write heads, arms and chips and sometime the platters have to be removed and placed into another drive.Physical damage can not be repaired by the general users, as it requires clean and dust free lab environment, in addition proper hardware and technical expertise; where under microscopic examination with proper tool and techniques, the damage drive is put on to observation for data salvaging.