Author: <span>QUARTZ</span>

Before discussing about data recovery from helium hard drives there are a few essential issues which involve dismantling the myth according to which drives are vacuum inside.

No, no way, this is not true! Most of the drives even have an orifice in the cover, blocked with a particle filter and on their label it is written: “Breathing Hole. Do not cover”. This aspect is more than sugestive. The idea is that while it is operating, the read/write heads do not touch the platters surface but they “float” at a distance of aprox. 2-4 microns from them. This “floating” process is allowed by an air pillow which is produced because of the disks rotating speed. The breathing hole is necessary for the equalisation of the internal pressure from the disk with the one from the outside. This makes possible the correct functioning of these data carriers.

The need for increased storage capacity and higher speeds led to the development of new technologies for the manufacture of hard disk drives. The main idea was the reduction of the distance between the read/write heads and the recording surface, which allowed higher densities, as well as reducing friction during operation. These developments became possible by replacing air with helium, a gas less dense. But this has major implications on the data recovery in case of mechanical faults occur, because when the drives are open, they must be handled in the spaces filled with helium and the use a simple white room is of no help because the lack the necessary gas can cause destruction of the register and the impossibility of recovering the data.

Until this moment, QUARTZ Data Recovery never confrunted with the necessity of recovering data from such a disk. One thing is for sure: in case this will happen, it will be a challenge for our specialists.

Data security is a very important aspect, especially among companies.

The need to ensure data protection compel more and more companies and individuals to opt for the use of solutions and systems for encrypting data on their hard drives. There are a series of solutions available (Jetico BestCrypt, Microsoft Bitlocker, Check Point, Apple FileVault, PGPDisk, Symantec EndPoint, Sophos Safeguard, etc), all with an increased protection level against unauthorized access of data.

These systems assure the confidentiality desired by users, but can generate very large complications if the disks fail and data recovery is needed. If the failure of the PCB (electronic drive plate) does not raise major problems in the data recovery process, in case of failure of the read/write heads and  in case of major surface flaws, things change radically.

In such cases it is extremely important that the file system to be accessible, which allows recovery only of the essential files for the user. But, thanks to the existent encryption, often these files are not possible to locate and therefore additional operations are required, that increase recovery time and increase the cost of data recovery.

A special situation is when, due to surface defects, decryption information are no longer available. Because of this information not being available, the decryption can not be done, therefor the result is permanent data loss. The same thing happens if encrypted partitions are formatted accidentally.

Therefore, it should be noted that the recovery of data on encrypted disks is usually more difficult and more costly than for unencrypted disks. The use of an alternative data backup solution is the safest and inexpensive way to get rid of trouble.

For more details, you can contact us anytime and we will be happy to help.