Hard Drive Recovery

service thumbnail

Sherlock Data Recovery Services is a certified Seagate Data Recovery partner. We provide expert data recovery and computer repair services on all Apple OS file systems(Hierarchical File System (HFS)), Redhat Linux and slackware file systems( e.g ext2, ext3 ), Microsoft Windows NTFS and FAT file systems, and on all models of Seagate, Maxtor, Fujitsu, EMC, IBM, HP, Gateway, Hitachi, Quantum, ExcelStor, Prima International, Western Digital, Dell, Samsung, Compaq, HP, Sony and Toshiba and all other USB, Firewire, SATA, IDE and SCSI disk drives.


Examples of Data Loss Situations – Hard Disk Drives

Recovery from physical and logical damage due to mechanical and electrical failure, software corruption or human error.

  • Computer will not boot
  • Hard disk crashes
  • Accidental reformatting of partitions
  • Accidental deletion of data
  • Applications are unable to run or load data
  • Corrupted data
  • Fire and water damage or crushed
  • Hard disk component failures
  • Inaccessible drives and partitions
  • Virus
  • Media surface contamination and damage

Recovery Process

Each recovery case begins with a free evaluation in order to determine the potential for retrieval and to provide a firm price-quote for your review. The initial diagnosis determines whether the media is accessible to our lab equipment. If so, the first priority is to create a raw image of the data on Sherlock Data Recovery Services media. This is a way for the logical analysis to determine the nature of the situation. If the media is inaccessible, our facilities will test the components and closely examine its internal health to determine the extent of physical damage. Recovery of crashed hard disks often involves replacing failed or damaged components in a clean environment. We use specialized hardware and software tools to create the raw image. Failed components typically include electronics, read/write heads, head assemblies, magnets and drive motors.

Logical recovery uses the raw image by examining the low-level data sectors and determining what fixes on the filesystem structures are needed to get access to the important data. Sometimes the existing filesystem structures are missing or damaged, so much that the data has to be extracted directly from one or more fragments of the raw image.

Sherlock Data Recovery Services’ programmers have created a full set of software tools used by our experts to analyze, fix, and recover data from raw images of all operating systems. Once a recovery has been successfully performed, file lists are created and data validity is checked.


Turn-Around Data Recovery Time

Sherlock Data Recovery Services has geared its entire service to recover your data as fast as possible. When dealing with such a wide variety of problems, estimating time before the problem is diagnosed can be difficult. That is why each recovery case starts with an evaluation.

The evaluation begins immediately on receipt of the media. Generally, it takes us 2 to 24 hours to complete it. The process involves several hours of work and testing. (Mirroring alone may take up to 24 hours of computer time with extensive re-tries for badly damaged devices).

Complete turn-around time, including analysis and recovery, is usually between 1 to 5 days. Some severe cases can take considerably more time.

Our hours of operation are 9am to 7pm EST Monday to Saturday (All facilities). If you have an emergency situation, we have technical staff on call for weekends and after hours in all locations.


Call (800) 267-4712 or in New York (212) 249-9888 or in Pennsylvania (800) 267-4712

Time estimates are based on procedures and expertise required to recover the data you need. You are not charged by the hour. A firm quote is provided for your approval following the evaluation.


Hard Drive Brands, Models and Interfaces Recovered From

Sherlock Data Recovery Services implements recovery on all hard drive brands, models and interfaces. What follows is a comprehensive list. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call. EIDE and IDE Hard Drives drives from all manufacturers including Western Digital, Seagate, Quantum, IBM, Maxtor, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung, Conner, Micropolis, JTS, Digital, NEC, Compaq, Digital, Kalok, Fuji, Areal and JVC using 2.5″ laptop & 3.5″ Normal 40 pin ATA through to the UDMA6 interface. SCSI drives from all manufacturers including Seagate, Quantum, IBM, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Digital, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Micropolis, Maxtor, CDC, Imprimis, Conner, Epson, Rodime, Toshiba, Samsung, Hitachi and NEC using Normal SE, UW, Differential (WD), LVD, Hot Swappable (SCA) and 2.5″ laptop interfaces. Fibre Channel drives from Seagate and IBM with FC (1Gigabit Copper) interfaces. ESDI, RLL & ST/MFM drives from all manufacturers including Seagate, Western Digital, Conner, Fujitsu, Maxtor, Miniscribe, Quantum, Tandon, Fuji, Toshiba, IBM, Kalok, Micropolis, Priam, Microscience, Tandon, JTS, Kyocera, LaPine and Tulin.
MCA drives from IBM, Western Digital and Seagate with IBM ST-506 & ESDI and 2.5″ laptop ESDI interfaces.

PCMCIA Type I, II, III hard drives from IBM, Western Digital, Integral Peripherals and Procomm.
1.8″ ATA-5 drives from Toshiba and Hitachi
CF+ Type II IBM Microdrives


Operating Systems and File Systems We Recover From

Apple OS HFS file systems Intel Platforms Windows XP Professional and Home with NTFS, FAT32 or FAT16 filesystems using standalone basic partitions or dynamic spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes.Windows 2000 Professional and Server with NTFS, FAT32 or FAT16 filesystems using standalone basic partitions or dynamic spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes. Windows NT Workstation and Server with NTFS or FAT16 filesystems using standalone, spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes.

Windows ME, 98 / 95 with FAT32 or FAT16 filesystems.

MS-DOS and variants using 12 or 16 bit FAT filesystems.

Compressed volume managers including Stacker, DoubleSpace & DriveSpace.

OS/2 with FAT and HPFS filesystems.

Novell NetWare with FAT and NSS filesystems using standalone, spanned, striped or fault-tolerant important data. Sometimes the existing filesystem structures are missing or damaged so much that data has to be extracted directly from one or more fragments of the raw image. Sherlock Data Recovery Services Data Recovery programmers have created a full set of software tools used by our experts to analyze, fix and recover data from raw images of all operating systems. Once a recovery has been successfully performed, file lists are created and data validity is checked.


Call For a Free Quote

Turn-Around Data Recovery Time

Sherlock Data Recovery Services has geared its entire service to recover your data as fast as possible. When dealing with such a wide variety of problems, estimating time before the problem is diagnosed can be difficult. That is why each recovery case starts with an evaluation.

The evaluation begins immediately on receipt of the media. Generally, it takes us 2 to 24 hours to complete it. The process involves several hours of work and testing. (Mirroring alone may take up to 24 hours of computer time with extensive re-tries for badly damaged devices).

Complete turn-around time, including analysis and recovery, is usually between 1 to 5 days. Some severe cases can take considerably more time.

Our hours of operation are 9am to 7pm EST Monday to Saturday (All facilities). If you have an emergency situation, we have technical staff on call for weekends and after hours in all locations.


Call (800) 267-4712 or in New York (212) 249-9888 or in Pennsylvania (800) 267-4712

Time estimates are based on procedures and expertise required to recover the data you need. You are not charged by the hour. A firm quote is provided for your approval following the evaluation.


Hard Drive Brands, Models and Interfaces Recovered From

Sherlock Data Recovery Services implements recovery on all hard drive brands, models and interfaces. What follows is a comprehensive list. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call. EIDE and IDE Hard Drives drives from all manufacturers including Western Digital, Seagate, Quantum, IBM, Maxtor, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung, Conner, Micropolis, JTS, Digital, NEC, Compaq, Digital, Kalok, Fuji, Areal and JVC using 2.5″ laptop & 3.5″ Normal 40 pin ATA through to the UDMA6 interface. SCSI drives from all manufacturers including Seagate, Quantum, IBM, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Digital, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Micropolis, Maxtor, CDC, Imprimis, Conner, Epson, Rodime, Toshiba, Samsung, Hitachi and NEC using Normal SE, UW, Differential (WD), LVD, Hot Swappable (SCA) and 2.5″ laptop interfaces. Fibre Channel drives from Seagate and IBM with FC (1Gigabit Copper) interfaces.ESDI, RLL & ST/MFM drives from all manufacturers including Seagate, Western Digital, Conner, Fujitsu, Maxtor, Miniscribe, Quantum, Tandon, Fuji, Toshiba, IBM, Kalok, Micropolis, Priam, Microscience, Tandon, JTS, Kyocera, LaPine and Tulin.

MCA drives from IBM, Western Digital and Seagate with IBM ST-506 & ESDI and 2.5″ laptop ESDI interfaces.

PCMCIA Type I, II, III hard drives from IBM, Western Digital, Integral Peripherals and Procomm.

1.8″ ATA-5 drives from Toshiba and Hitachi

CF+ Type II IBM Microdrives


Operating Systems and File Systems We Recover From

Apple OS HFS file systems Intel Platforms Windows XP Professional and Home with NTFS, FAT32 or FAT16 filesystems using standalone basic partitions or dynamic spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes. Windows 2000 Professional and Server with NTFS, FAT32 or FAT16 filesystems using standalone basic partitions or dynamic spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes.Windows NT Workstation and Server with NTFS or FAT16 filesystems using standalone, spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes.

Windows ME, 98 / 95 with FAT32 or FAT16 filesystems.

MS-DOS and variants using 12 or 16 bit FAT filesystems.

Compressed volume managers including Stacker, DoubleSpace & DriveSpace.

OS/2 with FAT and HPFS filesystems.

Novell NetWare with FAT and NSS filesystems using standalone, spanned, striped or fault-tolerant (RAID) volumes.

Unix Operating systems including:
SCO OpenServer and Xenix,
UnixWare from Novell and SCO,
Solaris,
Linux with ext2fs, xfs, reiserfs & jfs filesystems on standalone & RAID volumes,
BSD-based systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, BSDI,
LynxOS,
QNX.

Non-Intel Platforms Apple Macintosh
OS 9 with HFS and HFS+ filesystems,
OS X with HFS, HFS+ and Unix ufs filesystems
All Macintosh hardware using SCSI, IDE & Firewire interfaces, including software RAID drivers such as SoftRaid & FWB Raid.
Unix Systems including:
Solaris on Sun/SPARC equipment, with ufs and Veritas VxFS filesystems
HPUX on Hewlett-Packard workstations with hfs and Veritas VxFS filesytems on standalone and LVM volumes,
IRIX on SGI workstations with efs and xfs filesystems,
equipment using ODS filesystems,
AIX on IBM RS/6000 with jfs filesystems on LVM volumes.
Legacy Systems:
VMS & OpenVMS running on HP/Compaq & DEC


Preserving your Warranty

Sherlock Data Recovery Services has established agreements with most manufacturers regarding preserving warranty during data recovery service. Please inquire whether or not your manufacturer is included in this agreement.

If the seals on a media must be broken in order to extract data, Sherlock Data Recovery Services will re-seal the media upon completion of service with a tamper resistant sticker, which the manufacturer will accept for warranty purposes. You will also receive an invoice receipt to indicate you have pursued data recovery services with Sherlock Data Recovery Services.

When in doubt, inquire with the manufacturer about keeping your warranty before pursuing data recovery.