Getting in to data recovery

cHk4 · 13 Oct 2011 at 11:46

Hi guys, I've always wanted to get in to data recovery, you know the type of - recover your deleted files, corrupt hard drives and the data retrieval from them...

Does anyone have any tips and advice as to what to look in to for getting started? Any good books? What is the best way to learn this? I do it at work currently at a very basic level and want to further this.

Thanks

kae2 · 13 Oct 2011 at 11:48

TBH the software side of data recovery is really straight forward, dozens of guides on various sites/video sharing sites.

The hard part is physical damage. I'm currently working on a drive which was knocked over whilst in use, and has a seized motor, that's a bit more of a pain! You can go on courses, or learn the hard way.

cHk4 · 13 Oct 2011 at 11:52

kae2 said:
TBH the software side of data recovery is really straight forward, dozens of guides on various sites/video sharing sites.

The hard part is physical damage. I'm currently working on a drive which was knocked over whilst in use, and has a seized motor, that's a bit more of a pain! You can go on courses, or learn the hard way.

Any sites you would recommend for the software side of things? As I started watching stuff a few weeks ago and kept coming across conflicting info.

I'll take a look at the courses as I should imagine that being a main one actual mechanical failures of hard drives.

Also what is good software for this? Do I need to build a new PC for this? If so what kind of hardware/OS? At work we use XP and 2K - when using XP I couldn't recover someones hard drive, when using 2K I could get it all.

Sorry thought this was in GD -.- Will RTM.

cHk4 · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:10

Any further input at all?

s0ck · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:19

cHk4 said:
Any further input at all?

Data recovery isn't glamorous. You can run any bit of free software to recover anything that wasn't zeroed out. As mentioned above, it's the hardware side where all the real work is. Plenty of youtube videos on the subject but ultimately you'll need one of those vacuum style work areas if you're doing it alone.

cHk4 · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:21

s0ck said:
Data recovery isn't glamorous. You can run any bit of free software to recover anything that wasn't zeroed out. As mentioned above, it's the hardware side where all the real work is. Plenty of youtube videos on the subject but ultimately you'll need one of those vacuum style work areas if you're doing it alone.

Ok mate thanks, I guess there is going to be a fair bit of an outlay then if going down the hardware route.

jas72 · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:25

format all your drives then try to recover the data...

Perhaps your local dump has a white goods area maybe they'll be some drives there...
?

Dr House · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:44

I always wanted to be a doctor, my friend always wanted to be a police man, someone else I know wanted to be a fireman, another an astronaut.......

cHk4 always wanted to be a data recovery specialist

cHk4 · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:47

Dr House said:
I always wanted to be a doctor, my friend always wanted to be a police man, someone else I know wanted to be a fireman, another an astronaut.......

cHk4 always wanted to be a data recovery specialist

I know mate my life ambition! Actually from a young age I always wanted to learn to get back data after I deleted a few years of work my dad had done on his book! Woops

s0ck · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:52

I think Windows scandisk used to produce .chk files too!

Dr House · 14 Oct 2011 at 15:55

cHk4 said:
I know mate my life ambition! Actually from a young age I always wanted to learn to get back data after I deleted a few years of work my dad had done on his book! Woops

To me the most important thing is life is to enjoy what you do, it does not have to be sexy or glamorous so I wish you the best of luck and I will stop spamming your thread now.

SexyGreyFox · 14 Oct 2011 at 16:47

Dr House said:
I always wanted to be a doctor, my friend always wanted to be a police man, someone else I know wanted to be a fireman, another an astronaut.......

cHk4 always wanted to be a data recovery specialist

Funnily enough a mate of mine up until earlier this year was the Head Teacher in the Technology Department at his school while doing a bit of data recovery on the side and he gave his teaching job up to go data recovery full time, so there must be a bit of money in it.

Richie · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:01

dmpoole said:
Funnily enough a mate of mine up until earlier this year was the Head Teacher in the Technology Department at his school while doing a bit of data recovery on the side and he gave his teaching job up to go data recovery full time, so there must be a bit of money in it.

More and more of people's lives are migrating to a computer instead of hard copies e.g. photos (digital, not albums), videos (digital, not tapes) etc etc. This results in a lot of personal data because it is so cheap and easy to do now.

All this data is precious to a lot of people and the more instances of people storing it will result in more instances of people "losing" it accidentally hence the increase in the workload for this sector.

I would hazard a guess that an increase in data destruction is also probably on the increase. Not as easy for the technophobic people to "shred" data as it is to shred paper

Dr House · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:06

dmpoole said:
Funnily enough a mate of mine up until earlier this year was the Head Teacher in the Technology Department at his school while doing a bit of data recovery on the side and he gave his teaching job up to go data recovery full time, so there must be a bit of money in it.

Yep, if my drive went down and I did not have a backup I would be willing to pay very good money to get my data back.

I plan to use something like this for my NAS drive to keep important data.

http://iosafe.com/solutions-for-home

D.P. · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:09

As above, hardware is where it is at. People accidentally delete files is no big deal (most of the time the recycling bin will take care of this on windows), otherwise free software and any 1 with more than a spar neuron can do it.

Hardware is where the real issues lie and is where the money is. Many more people will have a HD failure and would dearly like the data back.

For this you should simply join a company that does data recovery. You can't do this yourself. to a high level.

Dr House · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:13

D.P. said:
As above, hardware is where it is at. People accidentally delete files is no big deal (most of the time the recycling bin will take care of this on windows), otherwise free software and any 1 with more than a spar neuron can do it.

Hardware is where the real issues lie and is where the money is. Many more people will have a HD failure and would dearly like the data back.

For this you should simply join a company that does data recovery. You can't do this yourself. to a high level.

will this not all change as we move to SSD drives?

Hamster · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:19

Just call a data recovery training centre and ask for course prices. You may want to reconsider after learning how much they cost unless you can get yourself a job with a specialist company who will train you.

Chaos · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:53

Think data recovery was discussed in this google video I seen a while back.

D.P. · 14 Oct 2011 at 17:53

Dr House said:
will this not all change as we move to SSD drives?

Lets moving parts to break but still control boards and lots of electronics.
Besides which, I think it will take a long time for SSD to completely take over. And although SSD get cheaper the amount of data we are storing gets bigger and bigger so I can imagine at least another 15-20 years of conventional drives.