There are a wide range of symptoms that would typically be observed by the user of a computer that is experiencing problems with hard drives, that include any or all of the following error types:
- Computer will not boot (disk undetectable to BIOS)
- Drive is not recognised in file manager/explorer
- Drive exhibits a "clicking sound" but is spinning
- Operating systems indicates drive needs formatting
- Applications unable to run or load data ("corrupt" files)
- Systems shows slow response
- Maintenance icon on MP3 and Apple iPOD players
- Failure during fragmentation process -

The Experts at CONTENTENGINEER® have seen the development of hard disks from the early removable magnetic disks, through to washing machine size drives holding only a few hundred Megabytes (MBs) to today's micro-miniature format hard drives holding a few Gigabytes (GBs) and no larger than a fifty pence piece.

There are a variety of interfaces types, physical sizes and magnetic recording methods in-use with todays hard disks, including Parallel ATA, IDE, EIDE, USB, Firwire, Serial ATA and SCSI; 0.85inch, 1.8inch, 2.5inch a and 3.5inch; plus vertical recording head format capabilities.

It is the broad experience and knowledge base that enables the Group to offer the reassurance that it can recover a very high proportion of failures that are presented. Unlike some firms that offer an automated, de-personalised and one-size-fits-all approach to data recovery, the Group's Experts understand that the data held on the hard disk can be extremely valuable, and each failure scenario is often different from the last.

The Group has successfully recovered data from drive formats including:

As with removable media and memory sticksthere are a number range of manufacturers of hard disks, but that number is ever reducing as the market consolidates and the high cost of running the manufacturing plants to very high tolerances takes the financial toll. The very nature of the media - it being designed for mass manufacture, ensures that all manufacturers adhere to international standards FOR INTERFACE TYPES (P-ATA, SATA, SCSI etc) and therefore the only concerns are the control circuitry and the BIOS/ROM contained on the disk that can cause individual issues.

The Group has a knowledge base of information for drives from the following manufacturers [some of which are rebranded/OEM'ed from alternative manfacturers]:

ADIC, Ampex, ATL, Atto, BASF, Bull, Bull Systems, ITOH, CDC, CMS Peripherals (various), Compaq (now HP), Conner, Data General/DG (now EMC), DEC (acquired by Compaq, then HP), Dot Hill, EMC (Symmetrix, CLARiiON etc), Emulex (typically adaptors), Epson, Fuji, Fujistu, Fujistu-Siemens, GEC, HP, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Hitachi Data Systems, HDS, Hyundai, Hyosung, IBM, Iomega (disks including Jazz), JVC, Kodak, Kodak Services, K, Kingston (Memory), Maxtor, Memorex, Microdrive, Micropolis, Mini-Drive, Mitsubishi, Matsumi, NEC, Newbury Data, National Peripherals, Oki, Okidata, Olivetti, Panasonic, PTI, Quantum, Quantum Tape, Ricoh Systems, Roline, Samsung, Seagate, Siemens, Sony, StorageTek, Storage Dimensions, Sun Microsystems, SanDisk, SunDisk, Syquest, Western Digital and Xyratex.

The recovery of data from these manufacturers can involve analysis and replacement of electronics (circuit boards), physical examination (motors, heads, platters) or logical data collection (corrupt filesystems including very minor head crashes). Advanced techniques such as Magnetic [Resonance] Force Microscopy may be used to analyse the individual bits on the surface of the magnetic platters.

The next stages in the recovery of data from hard disks, RAID storage arrays or microdrives can be found here. FOR SENSITIVE MATTERS INCLUDING CRIMINAL OR CIVIL LITIGATION it is important that data recovery undertaken as part of a forensically sound process needs to be managed in line with recognised incident management guidelines. For more information on this, read the whitepaper in the downloads section of the website.