What are the common Reasons of Hard Disk Drive failure?

What are the common Reasons of Hard Disk Drive failure?

1. Electronic Component Failure
2. Motor Failure
3. Read / Write Head Failure
4. Media Damage
5. Firmware Corruption
6. Logical Failure

One or all of the above primary causes may be evident when diagnosing a failed hard disk drive.

Electronic Component Failure
Electronic components may fail due to voltage transients, heat or poor handling. Substitution, repair and re-programming is generally required in order to recover data stored on the hard disk. PCB assemblies are however hyper tuned at the manufacture stage and specialist re-programming and calibration is subsequently required to restore the hard disk to a working condition.

Motor Failure
Hard disk motor spindles have fluid bearings; sometimes this fluid leaks or becomes overheated and in-effective. The motor will then seize and the hard disk platters fail to rotate. Platter and component re-location to another hard disk assembly is required to effect a repair and restore data.

Read / Write Head Failure
Read / write heads are aerodynamically designed to “fly” at nanometer distances above the surface of the platters. Ceramic thin film sensors at their tip detect magnetic information (data) stored on the surface of the platter. Occasionally the atmosphere in the hard disk enclosure will become contaminated or vibration will cause the dynamic of the head to be disturbed. This disturbance will cause the read /write process to malfunction resulting in bad data read write cycles and eventual failure.
This type of failure usually manifests itself as a distinct clicking noise as the head actuator makes failed repeat attempts to locate data at the same platter track location.

Media Damage
Amazingly all computer hard disk magnetic storage media is manufactured imperfect but to acceptable and controllable levels. During normal operations imperfections will sometimes increase above the predefined acceptable level. This can be due to heat, vibration, head crash, shock or other factors. The operating system will flag errors or fail to boot and data files will then become in-accessible. Read/.Write head replacement and file repair will allow data file structures to be examined and assessed as to their validity.

Firmware Corruption
Hard disk firmware holds precise parameters relevant to the configuration of the assembly at the time of manufacture. Occasionally the firmware becomes corrupt or will “roll back” to an incorrect set of parameters. Under these conditions the location of the stored data as reported to the operating system will be lost. Simple restoration of the correct parameters will allow the hard disk to function correctly. What causes this corruption? Operating system to drive software bugs, control bus protocol failure, it is difficult to determine but failures do occur.

Logical Failure
Data files are stored at logical locations that relate to a number of physical locations on the surface of the hard disk platters. These logical locations are held in tables by the operating system and indexed when running specific software applications. Operating system errors, reloads or incorrect upgrade applications will sometimes corrupt these tables and data will become in-accessible. This is generally referred to as a logical failure. Logical errors can be repaired with software tools available from the internet. Be cautious however - if you are intending to run a fix utility on your disk you can inadvertently damage these tables irreparably and your data will be unrecoverable. This is especially true when running ScanDisk and Chkdsk on a damaged hard drive.

How to Start a Data Recovey Business

What Procedure is Data Recovery assignment involved?

The following three issues are critical for your data recovery business. They includes the first (Technical Know-How) and the last two (Marketing Plan and Financial Resources) followed only if you can handle the first.

Technical Know-How: As this industry is professional, specialized know-how is required to handle the varied types of data recovery assignments. Generally speaking, there is 3+1 work flow applicable to all data recovery case:

Of all the stages, Stage 3–data retrieval, is the most widely spread and long-running; all data recovery companies, even end users, by downloading software, can handle mission of this stage easily. But according to SalvationDATA experts only 30 to 40 percent of all data recovery cases are simply stage 3 cases. The left percentage requires an ability to handle with the stage 2 and stage plus 1 issue.

Stage 2, disk data extraction, is also widely known and adopted as “disk imaging” by data recovery services nowadays. But to SalvationDATA, according our experience with lots of potential clients, they perform this important stage using ghosting tools designed for and work on good HDDs only, not the patient HDDs that are unstable or inaccessible because of media defects and instable head, which are common challenges of Stage 2 in practice. Even more, with those traditional imaging tools, the time involved and the ordinary user-level repeated-read access to the media bring a risk of damaging the disk and head, making data lost irretrievable.

Stage 1, drive diagnosis & restoration, is the primary stage in a broad sense data recovery flow but in fact deals with the deepest level in 3+1 broad sense data recovery flow. Unfortunately this Stage 1 is missing from most of the data recovery services or even noticed but was being done in a zigzag procedure or simply incorrectly due to lack of proper tools, meaning that they are putting away customers and profits. Our data has shown that up to 40% of data recovery cases have Stage 1 issues; and that IS NOT what going to happen that we can skip Stage 1 and perform Stage 2 and 3 and still to get certain percentage of data. You CAN NOT get anything in case you are not capable for the primary stage
Plus 1, it refers to Head or Platter Exchanger when encountered with motor seizure or head crash. This kind of problem often happens where the Drive is clicking or dropping from height. Concerning this issue, you need to replace the components and fix the mechanical malfunction first.

From above 3+1 work flow, you may get know the basic guidance of data recovery.
Then let’s move the following 2 factors which are relevant to your data recovery service.

Marketing Plan: It is the same as other service you are engaged in. It needs marketing plans and strategy. You should think more about customers’ convenience, satisfaction, price setting, and target market. If possible, you need advertising on different mediums too.

Financial Resources: Of course you need budget to get the business started before you benefit from your investment. You need facilities like a Clean Room and equipments to carry out the assignments. You also need to pay expensive technicians.

Supposing the Marketing and Financial investment are not the barriers to stop you, then you need think more about the facilities and data recovery equipments.

I have to admit that Data Recovery is a game for professionals and engineers to play, it is impossible to get started without any HDD Data Recovery Equipments provider., not unacquainted name in Data Recovery Industry, is the biggest and cost-effective solution provider all over the world. Their free technical support & Remote assistance and free updates, enhance the industry beginners’ confidence greatly and assist them to enter the industry as soon as possible.

Seagate Malfunctions (Barracuda IV, V and 7200.7)

A very common flaw is disruption of protective diode along the +12V circuit and resulting outage of the computer power supply unit. In that case the external look of that component does not allow identification of the damage, because its case remains unaffected. An attempt to connect a drive so damaged to an operable power supply for diagnostics will most likely result in breakdown of the latter. Therefore if such a drive is brought for repair then first of all you should probe the 0 and +12 V circuit with a regular tester to check for a short circuit.

The protective diode originally designed using the “transil” technology at SGS Thomson is intended for protection of electronic circuitry from short power supply peaks not greater than 10 - 20 microseconds. But in that case their common failures demonstrate that HDD designers did not expect to encounter so poor quality of power supply units. Thus drive operation can be resumed after simple removal of that damaged element from its circuits but we cannot guarantee flawless HDD operation without that component.

Information on data recovery

The three most common problems seen today are: 1. The drive makes a repetitive clicking sound when power is applied (this may not always be audible to you). 2. The drive is completely dead, not spinning at all. 3. The computer bios sees the drive, but there is no boot and a boot from a floppy will not gain access or you get an error message that says ‘Invalid media type reading drive X’. Of course there are other issues such as flooding (never turn a wet drive on!), fire and other natural and unnatural disasters all of which require a top-notch data recovery company to work with.

If your drive is making a clicking sound, 9 times out of ten this means that the heads are bad and cannot read the information needed to get the drive to a ‘ready’ state. This can be due to two factors: physical head crash whereas the heads scrape some of the media off the surface of the platters thus destroying the heads in the process or the heads just go bad. The result is the same, the drive clicks. In this type of situation, you can expect an expensive data recovery because of what is needed to extract the data. The drive will have to be opened in a clean room environment, the heads will need to be replaced which requires an identical drive be purchased just for parts, and a skilled engineer will have to perform the difficult and meticulous task of aligning these new heads so they read the data properly. If indeed the media has been scored, there are many cases where there is nothing that can be done about it because so much of the recording material has been scraped off. Keep in mind that drives now sold are spinning at an incredible 7200 to 10,000 rpm, and that with this kind of speed disaster can be swift when it happens.

There seems to be a large number of electrical issues with drives these days, weather it be natural as in lightning strikes or man-made as in power outages and poorly manufactured power supplies. There are also known issues in many models of Maxtor, Western Digital and Quantum drives where a certain chip will simply burn up and cause the drive to stop spinning. About two years ago or more, Western Digital had a 500,000 drive recall as the result of a defective chip used in making many different models of drives. Over the last year or more, Quantum drives of many models had a similar issue, except this time, the numbers of affected drives was much higher. This was the driving force behind the acquisition of Quantum’s hard drive lines by Maxtor! Maxtor is still reeling from the huge numbers of returned drives on a daily basis. One of the big problems is that manufacturers do not put a fuse on the drives’ electronics anymore. You might say, “This would be an easy fix, I’ll just get another drive of the same model and swap the boards myself”. In an ideal world this would be the case but another factor most people do not know is that for each model drive made by a manufacturer, there can be over a dozen different revisions of the electronics even though the model is identical! This fact can make a simple problem very complex. Don’t look to the manufacturers for help with this either, they will not.

If the drive is seen by the BIOS of the computer, and you cannot access it by booting from a floppy in the case of a WIn9X or ME drive this means that for some reason the areas that define the partitions of the drive or the boot parameters have been corrupted. This can be caused by a virus, a computer or software bug, using a third party partitioning software, running Fdisk or a number of other reasons. This type of situation can be an easy fix for a professional or it can be a more difficult one depending on the extent of any additional damage to the file system or data structures. Usually, this type of problem is an easier one to deal with, because the drive at least still works. In the case of an operating system other than Win9X like NT, corruption the NT data structure can be a very complex mathematical problem and can be an expensive recovery as well due to the time it takes to solve. Operating systems like Unix and Novell as well as Spanned sets or Raid drives can definitely be an expensive recovery due to the complexity of these configurations.

It is important that you never run utilities such as scandisk, Norton disk doctor or any other such utility on a drive you suspect has a hardware failure. This can make recovery of your data difficult or even not impossible in some cases. These software tools work best on simpler types of problems and have no way of dealing with hardware issues. If your data is important, and you have doubts on what to do, call a professional. Also beware of technicians running these tools without your knowledge, as the results can be just as deadly.

When a data recovery company receives your drive, if it is possible and the drive is operational, a copy of your data is made sector by sector onto another drive (make image of your DATA) so that your data is not harmed in any way. This prevents mistakes, and allows the engineer to run utilities and make changes to a copy of your drive only and not the original.

Hard drives these days are worse than ever. You may find this a surprising statement, but it is true. Due to slimmer margins, and high competition, manufacturers are making drives as inexpensively as possible and more failures are the result. As of this moment, Fujitsu has top marks for reliability in desktop hard drives followed by IBM. In notebook drives, IBM and Toshiba have top billing. An important point to note is that Hitachi makes the absolute worst notebook drives in the industry with the highest catastrophic failure rate followed by Fujitsu. Dell has just decided to go exclusively with Hitachi now in their new notebooks, so beware!

Here is my old standby: Make believe that tomorrow when you turn your computer on that it is not going to work, and what is it that you want today that you will have to do without tomorrow! Back it up!

The basic knowledge about Hard Disk Drive

Firmware files that you can find on a site like this, contain a lot of files. First, there is the ‘loader’ file (*.LDR). This file is the ‘temporary’ firmware code, that’s being uploaded to the RAM (so, it’s not being written to disk). Then, there are a lot of ‘*.RPM’ files. These files represent the different modules, which can be written to the SA. The filenames consist of 8 numbers. The first 4 numbers specify the (hex) UBA and the second 4 numbers represent the hexadecimal module size in sectors (each sector normally contains 512 bytes, so for example, if a filename ends in 0002, then that module is 1024 bytes long). So, in short, after uploading the loader to RAM, the user can start replacing damaged modules by overwriting them with correct ones.BTW, please note that the term ‘firmware’ for the packages on this site is symantically not very well chosen, since these packages contain all needed modules to repair a HDD and not just the firmware (=code) module.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a specific firmware module, you can do 3 things:

1) rip the firmware modules from the SA of an identical HDD
2) get these modules from a friend (or for example, from the files section on this site)
3) use a firmware updater program from the vendor.

About this last option: firmware updates from vendors are pretty rare, since firmware code almost never needs to be replaced. However, Maxtor for example, had some problems with the firmware code on some Diamondmax HDD models. So, they issued a firmware update. This update consists of 2 files:

1) the executable file that issues the ATA ‘download microcode’ command to upload the firmware files to the HDD
2) The firmware code, consisting of the ‘main’ firmware code and ‘overlay’ code modules.

Firmware ‘overlay’ code are specific code functions. Why not just put all firmware code into one section ? Well, since the RAM in the drive is a limited resource, they’ve put some code into ‘overlay files’, so that this specific code can be swapped into RAM when that specific function is needed. When the fuction is not needed, it can be swapped out of ram and some other function can be swapped into it again.

The firmware update files from maxtor (I think the same goes for the other vendors) are not scrambled/encrypted/packed in anyway. In fact, you can find the exact same code in these files also in the ‘*.RPM’ files that PC3K produces for example.

Maxtor distributes their firmware file in a so called “.DMC” file. This DMC file is a package of 4 files, a ‘.Bxx’ file, a ‘.cxx’ file, a ‘.bbr’ file and a ‘.cbr’ file. Like I mentioned, this DMC container is not packed or scrambled in anyway. You can just cut the files out of it. The first 0×150 bytes of this file is the header. This header contains the four filenames, the offsets at which bytes in the package these files can be found, the length of the files and a checksum (not 100% sure about the checksum though). The ‘.bxx’ file is the biggest file and contains the overlay modules. You can find all code overlay modules by looking for ‘MO’ in the file. Right after this 2 byte string, you’ll find the hexadecimal overlay module ID. The ‘.bbr’ file contains the main firmware code. The last 2 files are very small, not sure what they contain, probably some checksums for the firmware and overlay modules.

Like said, the firmware code and overlay modules can also be found in the ‘*.RPM’ files of course, since this represents the firmware code on disk. So, you can look through these RPM files and scan for the ‘MO’ string to find any specific overlay module.

So, in short, if a vendor has released a firmware uploader tool (most vendors have), BUT haven’t released a firmware file for your specific drive type, you could create your firmware, if you have the dumped modules (for example, obtained from this site). You could rip the main code and overlay modules and paste them into an existing DMC package. However, since I don’t know the checksum calculation and the meaning of these .cxx and .cbr files (probably checksums), you’d have to do more research, but in theory, it would be possible to create your own firmware files and flash them with such standard Vendor program to disk, so you wouldn’t need to buy an expensive tool like PC3000 (at least not if your sole goal was to upload a new firmware).

Modern hard disks feature an area that contains information that the CPU on the HDD logic board uses to operate the drive. That area is called the “system area” SA. This area contains for example the drive ‘microcode’ (a.k.a. firmware), HDD Configuration Tables, Defect sector tables, SMART information, Security info (drive passwords etc), Disk ID info (serial nr etc) and more. These categories of information are called ‘modules’. So the SA contains a module for the firmware code, a module for the SMART info etc.The SA is stored on ‘negative cylinders’ of the HDD and therefore is not accessible by normal read commands. However, the area can be accessed with other ATA commands. An example of a (more or less) ’standard’ ATA command that can access info on the SA is the ‘download microcode’ ATA command, which can be used to update information in the firmware code module. However, most of the commands that can be used to access the SA are vendor specific. Since vendors (obviously) don’t want users to mess around with the SA, these commands are generally not made public. However, these commands can be deduced by, for example, reverse engineering the firmware code itself.

This reverse engineering has been done and led to development of tools that can issue these (vendor specific) ATA commands and can read/write almost all sectors in the SA. One example of such tool is PC3000. A tool like this contains tables per HDD model, containing these vendor specific ATA commands and also tables with sector numbers on which the different modules are stored, also per HDD model. SA Sector numbers are counted in “UBA’s”. For example, one specific HDD might use UBA 4 to store the ‘DISK ID’ module, where another HDD model might use another sector for this module.

So in short, to create a tool that can read/write data in the SA, you need to:

A) know (and understand) the (vendor-) specific ATA commands that can be used to access this area and
B) know on which UBA sector the specific modules are stored.

If a drive has damaged data in the SA, for example in the firmware code module, it might become unusable. To repair these disks, the HDD can be switched to a so called ’safe mode’, by setting specific jumpers on the drive. If the drive is operating in safe mode, it bypasses its own firmware. Instead, it wants the user to upload firmware to its ram. If the user uploads a correct ‘temporary’ firmware to RAM, it starts executing that firmware. If this uploaded RAM code (the ‘loader’) starts operating, the user can then start to issue ATA commands to the drive to modify the damaged modules.

Of course, you could also create your own flasher program, instead of using the one supplied by the vendor. However, since vendors use specific versions of the ‘download microcode’ ATA command, you’d have to do research into this.

Furthermore, you could create a program that does EVERYTHING that a tool like PC3000 does. However, like pointed out, you’ll need very detailed information on the vendor specific ATA commands and the structure of the SA for that specific drive type and since this info is not made public by anyone, this means a LOT of work. “But hey, the PC3000 tool features a special hardware PCI card!” Yes, but as you’ll understand by now, you can think of that card as nothing more than a copy protection. They could have perfectly created the tool without it, but I guess they would have sold quite some copies less. So you really can’t blame them for it, in fact, I think it’s quite a smart move to stop piracy.

So, in short, if you want to mess around with the SA, you have 2 options: invest a lot of time and energy into learning or simply empty your pockets and buy a tool like PC3000.

Hard Disk Recovery Technology

A common misconception about hard drive data recovery is that repairing hard drives means replacing parts. If only it were that easy! Hard drive technology is always changing— manufacturers are constantly using different mechanical designs.

The mechanical precision of today’s hard drives makes head assembly replacement nearly impossible without specialized tools. Platter removal is dangerous and will affect how the drive reads the sectors. As previously mentioned if just one component is out of alignment, the drive will not find the required sectors. If the hard disk electronics cannot find the sectors requested by the controller, it may endlessly try to find those sectors or it will shut down the unit.

Mechanical precision is just one side of hard drive technology - the electronics are just as finite. Exchanging circuit boards between drives used to be a quick way to work around a failed circuit board in the past. The electronics are much more complicated, and as a result the different revisions of a circuit board are rarely compatible. The innovations of the past 15 years have made a circuit board swap as a solution a thing of the past.

Today’s hard drives have no room for errors when it comes to platter and head alignment. The tolerances are so exacting that hard drive manufacturers even design ways to keep the Base-Casting Assembly, where all the components are attached to, from shifting due to high temperature situations. For instance, one hard drive manufacturer of high performance SCSI based drives actually designs their Base-Casting Assembly with pre-stress points. The assembly does not line up from corner to diagonal corner—it’s pre-torqued. When the casting assembly heats up, the unit actually twists back (thermal expansion) into a true line-up from corner to corner. With the byte-density of most large hard drives today being 4gb to 6gb per square inch, absolute precision is required for these high capacity and high speed drives to operate reliably. Hard disk manufacturers are working to increase how many bytes can be squeezed into a square inch.

Today’s hard drives are designed from basic primary components as the foundation first and then other components are built around that. For instance, research and development improvements in platter and magnetic media require research and development improvements in head design. These designs require that the electronics be ‘custom-made’ for that drive. Hard drives are ‘fine-tuned’ to the properties of the storage media and read/write heads. Similar to how a radio is tuned to a specific radio frequency; hard drives are finely tuned to complement data signals that are read from the storage media.

Hard drive manufacturers make large batches of drives so there will be similarities between drive models. However, the Revision Code (proprietary hard drive read-only software that is used by the electronics to manage and operate the hard drive) changes frequently within the same model and batch. Hard drive innovation requires drives to be constantly improved upon. All of this requires extensive training in electronics and computer science to be able to work with these storage devices.

How to Recover a Dead Hard Disk?

Your hard drive just stopped working. It never made any odd sounds like screeching, popping, or clicking, and it didn’t crash. It just quit and it has some priceless data that isn’t backed up to another device. This guide may help you troubleshoot and correct any problems related to your drive. Note: this is much more likely to work on a newer drive than an older one, especially when searching for a sacrificial clone. Be sure to read all warnings before proceeding.

Steps:
1. Remove the hard drive from the computer or device.

2. Examine it carefully for ‘hot spots’ or other damage on the external controller board.

3. Move it gently from side to side and then front to back. Listen for metallic rattling noises. Don’t be too rough when you shake the drive. The drive’s heads are probably loose if there is a rattling sound. If so, stop here and contact your computer or drive’s manufacturer for a replacement. Data recovery is extremely expensive. If you need your data regardless of the cost, contact a data-recovery specialist.

4. Place the drive back into the computer or device.

5. Switch drive pin settings. This only applied to PATA (IDE/EIDE) drives. In a computer, if it was slave or ‘cable select’, try making it ‘master’ and plugging it in alone, or plugging it into an external drive adapter or external drive case (i.e. USB).

6. Try it on another IDE, SATA, or SCSI connection, depending upon the drive’s type.

7. Try other IDs and another controller if it is a SCSI drive.

8. Connect the drive with another data cable.

9. Attempt to access the drive on another device. If possible, connect the drive to another computer with a working drive and attempt to access it through that computer’s operating system.

10. Another option to try is to freeze the drive for several hours, let it warm to room temperature, and try the drive again. If successful, backup all data immediately and consider replacing the drive because it will probably fail again soon.

Replace Controller Board
1. Inspect the drive’s controller board carefully to see if it can be removed without exposing the drive’s platters. Most drives will have an externally-mounted controller board. If not, stop here.

2. Find a sacrificial drive. It is important to match the exact same model number and stepping.

3. Remove the controller board of the failing drive. Learn everything about how it is connected to the drive. Most drives are connected via ribbon cables and pin rows. Be gentle. Do not crimp or damage the connectors.

4. Remove the controller board from the working drive. Again, be extremely careful.

5. Attach the working board to the failing drive.

6. Connect the drive to your computer or device and test. If it works, immediately copy your data onto another form of media or a different hard disk drive. If that didn’t work, try to re-assemble the sacrificial drive with the working controller board. It should still work. Re-assemble the failing drive. If that works, it wasn’t the externally accessible board.

Tips
1. Back up your data!

2. If data comes in faster than backups, and is precious like this, consider RAID 1, RAID 5 or RAID 10 disk configurations. A RAID array will keep running when one physical drive dies. A good one will even re-write a replacement drive that’s “hot swapped” into it without stopping.

3. NEVER use RAID 0 for anything but scratch data. It’s fast, but has no redundancy, so it’s much more likely to crash than a single drive, and take your data with it in a really irrecoverable manner. Especially ‘built in’ PC motherboard RAID configurations. Virtually all motherboard RAID controllers are bad.

4. Programs like GRC’s Spin rite does an excellent job at getting down to every last bit and ensuring that everything is working on the most basic of levels, however, if it finds that a sector of a hard drive is corrupted, it will attempt a recovery of it. It has saved many hard drives from failing, and has helped recover gigabytes of data. Spin rite is in its 6th version and has proven very successful. Please note, while Spin rite and other software hard disk recovery programs work well, they will not permanently fix a problem every time. Therefore, it is recommended that software recovery only be used to backup the data.

5. Some programs, such as Spin rite mentioned above, perform maintenance on hard drives to prevent flaws from forming.

6. Putting the hard drive in the freezer has been known to revive a failing hard drive for a short time, possibly long enough to recover files.

Warnings
1. Configuring drives in a RAID 1, 5, or 10 is not a substitute for a regular backup routine. RAID controllers will fail eventually, writing bad data to the drives. RAID controller failure is difficult to detect until it’s to late.

2. If you are not good with delicate hardware tinkering, don’t follow these instructions. Find a professional or someone who is experienced with hardware tinkering to try it for you. Don’t hold it against the person if they fail to recover your data. Most retail outlet technicians are not trained for component-level repair of this type.

3. Static electricity grounding precautions should be observed.

4. You will void both hard drive warranties. These instructions are for recovering data that is far more valuable than the drives themselves.

5. If the failing drive was sold with a computer or device, you may void the manufacturer’s warranty if you follow these instructions. Make sure the data, or your attempt to recover data, is worth voiding that warranty.

6. Do not disassemble a hard drive in a manner that will expose its disks/heads unless you plan to just throw it away afterwards. That operation must be done in a ‘very clean’ clean room. If you don’t have a completely dust-free environment and gear, opening the hard drive and exposing the platters and heads poses a great risk in ruining the drive.

7. Don’t believe you’ve “never had a problem” with RAID 0 array, or even “never had a problem” from not backing up your data. Just because the drive in question was working for a certain period of time before it failed does not mean it was configured properly.

8. After the a controller board swap, you will certainly have two failing hard drives, whether you recovered the data or not. Do not re-use these drives. Consider other identical drives you purchased from the same batch ’suspect’.

9. This procedure is not for logically erased data (i.e. ‘un-formatting’). This procedure is for physically inoperable drives with intact data.

USB Flash Drives - Instant Storage

Alternate Names: USB flash drives | USB keys | USB memory stick | USB sticks | Flash Drives | Jump Drives | Key Drives | Pen Drives | Thumb drives

What is the hottest back-to-school item this year? So red-hot that Mom and Dad will see it and want it too? It’s a tiny portable data storage device that plugs into the computer’s USB (Universal Serial Bus) port. Just a few of the brand names explain what it is. Here are some examples: TravelDrive™ from Memorex, Mini Cruzer™ from Sandisk, JumpDrive™ from Lexar. These small, pocket-sized storage devices are easy to work with, can plug in to any type of computer that is less than 8 years old or that has a USB port.

The great thing is that USB flash drives are really affordable now and for less than $100 you can get a 1GB USB storage device. Although flash drives have many uses, a common one is for transferring files from your work computer to your home computer, eliminating the need for lugging a laptop back and forth. (Although these devices go by many names, for purposes of this article, we will use the term flash drive.)

This article will take a look at this micro-technology, its history and future; you’ll be surprised to find out how prevalent this technology is and how long it has been around. As always, we will take a look at recovery options for these devices.

Flash Drives
In order to better understand the flash devices we have now, let’s take a moment and look at their history. Rudimentary flash memory began as integrated circuit chips that would come to be a standard in all electronic devices. These were known as CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor, pronounced ‘see-moss’) circuits. These small, low power, high-density circuits could be designed to perform a variety of functions and operations. Initially designed in 1963 and first produced in 1968, these little chips were the beginning of the digital integrated circuit. Perhaps you had a computer 17 years ago and remember the importance of the CMOS chip; the CMOS chip controlled the basic system settings and is similar to the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) on today’s computers.

CMOS integrated chips were a fantastic innovation; however, they were vulnerable to electro-static discharge, had to be handled carefully, and these chips always needed a constant power source to maintain the data. Did you ever have to replace the CMOS battery on your 8088 or 8086 computer? Then you remember that once the power was gone, you had to re-enter all of your computer’s settings.
A new style of chip called EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM or Read Only Memory) was the successor to the CMOS chip and had significant improvements. The major innovation was that the chips were designed to be written to and then to hold data without power. The on-board memory usually held 64k (65,536 bytes). However, the materials inside the chip would wear out over time due to the number of write operations, so the lifetime of these chips were 10,000 to 100,000 write cycles.
Flash memory was an improvement over the EEPROM circuits in that they provided faster access to the data. Originally designed by Intel in 1988 and followed up by Samsung and Toshiba in 1989, these chips started popping up everywhere as embedded memory on electronic devices. Most of the applications for this non-volatile memory storage were for devices where the chip was part of the internal electronics, for example mobile phones, VCRs, automotive electronics, and handheld devices. In fact, flash memory storage (NAND-type flash memory as it is known) could be used for any electronic application that required the storage of data without electrical current; even hard drives use flash memory chips!

After flash technology had proven its reliability, retail products were the next step. M-Systems (NasdaqNM:FLSH) lead the industry with the flash disk concept in 1989 and in 1995 started to offer retail products that were designed for cameras, PDAs, and removable memory sticks or cards. Quite a long history, wouldn’t you agree? As you read this, flash storage is replacing the floppy diskette for portable, temporary data storage. The beauty of the USB flash drive is that it is universal. Remember the Great Floppy Diskette Debate? Do we install 5¼” drives? 3½” drives? Both? The manufacturers have wisely stuck to a standard this time.

What Are the Risks of Using Portable Storage?

As far as reliability goes, USB flash drives are very durable. They are “hot-swappable” (that is, removable without shutting down the computer) and “solid-state” (that is, no moving parts). They’re great for transferring data between computers. A British television program (“The Gadget Show”) decided to put flash drives to the test. They ran over them with a car, blasted them out of cannon, and baked them in a soufflé at 400° F! What was the result? The flash drives shot out the cannon suffered because they were broken into little pieces; the rest worked just fine and retained their data.

For the majority of USB flash drive users, their drives will never go through that type of punishment. It seems that the biggest risk in using these devices is simply losing them! They are so small and compact that it would be easy to misplace a USB flash drive. Most of them come with neck strap or keychain clip that allow them to be with you constantly.

Most industry sites define flash drives as a compact storage and transporting device whereas most dictionaries define flash memory as a computer chip with a read-only memory that can be electronically erased and reprogrammed without being removed from the circuit board. By definition, using a flash drive as an active storage area could pose a risk. For instance, one user used a flash drive like a second document folder. The user was creating and editing documents on the device with their word processor re-saving active documents every five minutes. This constant writing wore out the flash memory. Just like EEPROM chips, flash devices have a lifespan (this depends on the number of write cycles, check with the manufacturer find out the expectancy rates of your particular model), however, there is no limit to the number of times data can be read.

Security is the final risk. A common use for a flash drive is to transfer files from work to home. If the flash drive was lost or stolen during the transport, proprietary company information would be compromised. In fact, most small to large companies have strict policies of what types of information can leave the premises. This highlights the importance of data encryption.

There are a number of software encryption products that will maintain data security even if the flash device falls into the wrong hands. In fact, most USB flash drives come with some sort of free encryption software; however the free software may not meet your data protection requirements. If you use your flash drive for your company’s information or for your own personal information, be sure to purchase quality encryption software. The manufacturer of the flash device should have a recommendation of software on their Web site.

What if the Flash Device Is Damaged?

Data Recovery is always an option for these types of devices. The quality of the recovery depends on how much usable data there is. In the British television program mentioned earlier, after the flash drive was shot out of the cannon and damaged, the producers sent the damaged flash device it to professional data recovery company After working with the device and its pieces, the engineers were able to recover the data on the device and found the data the producers were expecting.

Never assume that the data is gone when physical damage has occurred. The experienced data recovery engineers are capable of repairing complex electronics on USB flash drives.

What about deleted or reformatted USB flash drives? Similar to hard disks, when a USB flash drive is reformatted or data is deleted, the file system addresses to the data are erased—not the data itself. Even if some files are re-saved back to the device, there may be a chance that the information is recoverable. In simple deleted recovery situations, do-it-yourself solutions by using the professional software would be able to find the data and bring it back. In more complex situations where data has been restored back to the device, a trained data recovery engineer would be able to tell the difference between the newly written data and the original data. After an evaluation, the user would know exactly which files sustained damaged and which ones did not.

As long as the flash media is not physically damaged, a quick recovery choice for USB flash drives is that chooses the Remote Data Recovery service from professional data recovery company. The remote engineers can work on your flash drive while it’s still plugged into your computer and has access to the internet or to a modem.