The latest news in hard drives
Filed under: Data Recovery Industry News | Tags: State of the Hard Drive Industry
Leave a Comment Hard drive manufacturers are battling it out to stay ahead of a rapidly declining price curve. Recent shopping visits show a 1TB WD hard drive for $99.99 at Target. With prices on drives sliding faster than the value of BP stock, hard drive manufacturers are doing all they can do to differentiate their devices.
Several manufacturers are making attempts at “hybrid” drives, which in most cases are mix of traditional exteral hard drives along with a SSD component. Basically, this combines the robust and proven storage of a traditional HDD along with the quicker loading SSD flash capabilities.
In other cases, manufacturers are pre-loading the devices with movies, or making the hard drives much more “Netflix Friendly.” For most consumers we don’t see this move toward bundling to be as logical and compelling to any consumers we have surveyed.
Today, most consumers want a few basics: 1) Simple, plug-n-play technology. Plug the device in, back-ups happen to the device almost immediately. 2) Size – given a choice between two 1TB devices, consumers seam to opt for smaller devices that are presumably easier to place in our already crowded offices, 3) Price – as prices slide, most consumers will need to see significant differentiation to justify purchasing a higher priced device.
One thing remains certain, consumers remain hesitant to sign-up for online subsciption backup services. As easy as they are to utilize, the comparative price of being able to purchase a $99 1TB drive makes better sense for most than the equivalent cloud storage of 25GB annually for $99 through Norton.
The cost for cloud computing just hasn’t quite got there yet, and until it does we don’t see a rapid shift to off-site storage. In addition to the price problems cloud computing is facing, we are seeing most consumers have a hard time identifying which sites online are “safe.” In comparison, something purchased at Target or Best Buy must be “safe,” right?
Long story short, the biggest threat consumers will face is human nature. They will forget to back up their main computers frequently, will experience technical issues they cannot resolve, or worse, their home will burn down right along with all their data.
Loving the new “flex drives”
Flex Drive Story USA Today | Flex Drive Story CNET | Flex Drive Story The Inquirer
These new Seagate hard drives mean if you decide to go from a PC to a Mac, or USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 – the hard drive will make the switch with you.
Previously, once you formatted a hard drive – it usually had to stay that way. This is a great development and one that we fully support!
SSD (USB Storage Devices) bring troubles to Data Recovery
The hard drive data recovery business of recovering data from hard drives with spinning discs has been largely mastered by data recovery companies, including Pronto Data Recovery. Today, there are only a handful of hard drive manufacturers remaining, and as such hard drives have been standardized in most every way.
However, the new solid state storage devices (called SSD, or more commonly seen as USB storage devices) are making headway in the storage market. Samsung has brought to market the new USB 3.0 technology solid state device called the Story Station 3.0 that offers blazingly fast transfer speeds of 5 Gbps, backward compatibility with USB 2.0 and earlier technology, and storage space of 1TB and beyond.
This presents an interesting dilemma for us Data Recovery companies. Solid state storage data recoveries have been a notoriously difficult for even the most sophisticated data recovery firms. Most of the hardware and software we utilize has been built to recover data from the now fairly standardized traditional spinning hard disc drive (HDD’s). The controller technology and proprietary algorithm technology on SSD’s is neither standardized nor public.
We expect a wave of transformation in the computer forensics and hard drive recovery business in the next 3-4 years. As prices come down on SSD’s, consumer uptake will increase. As consumer uptake increases, demand for recovery from such devices will increase.
The advantages of SSD’s over traditional HDD’s are numerous – including quieter operation, faster startup, lower power consumption. HDD’s still win in price, longevity and market acceptance.
We are keeping a close eye on SSD technology.
Follow ProntoData on Twitter
Filed under: Pronto Data Recovery Posts | Tags: Data recovery Twitter
Leave a Comment We post daily data recovery news links on Twitter – give us a follow @ProntoData (http://twitter.com/prontodata)
Hard Drives Contain Sensitive Data – Even After Deleted
Around the country alarm bells are going off at corporations that have recently sold or returned leased computer equipment & copy machines. Little did these firms realize, sensitive data remained on these hard drives. CBS News April 15 investigation revealed just how much information resided on photocopiers after they were returned. Since nearly every photocopier sold since 2002 contains a hard drive, many corporations and government entities were extremely shocked/suprised/apalled at how vulnerable they were. Hard drives on these photocopiers contained employee social security numbers, pay stubs, confidential company memos, arrest records and much, much more.
A similar investigation was then launched by the CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO, during which the confidential records of Tommy Bahama’s restaurant were recovered from used copiers. In nearly every case, simple data recovery software available online (including on our website www.prontodatarecovery.com) was capable of recovering the data – usually in under 20 minutes. Further forensic analysis may be capable of even revealing documents thought to have been deleted from the hard drives’ memory.
The fact of the matter is that in today’s digital world, unless extreme care is taken during disposal of an asset, data is at risk. We recommend companies such as RenovoData Services here in the Twin Cities that use multiple pass data scrubbing techniques to ensure that data is totally wiped.
Be sure you are protecting yourself when it comes to your data! As firms become more aware, they will become more likely to build disposal terminology into rental agreements for photocopiers, and will take greater care in disposing or reselling used devices.
Find Pronto Data Recovery on Twitter
Filed under: Pronto Data Recovery Posts | Tags: data recovery, hard drive news, twitter, twitter data recover
Leave a Comment We have been spending more and more time connecting with peers and professionals in the data recovery industry on Twitter. We have been posting links to news we deem relevent about hard drives, storage, and data recovery on our Twitter account.
If you would like to connect with us and keep on top of industry news, please give us a follow on Twitter @ProntoData or by visiting http://twitter.com/prontodata.
Living in a Bath of Light and Sound
Not too many years ago, our bedrooms were free of all electronic noise and light – save for the wind up alarm clock. Today, light and sound is ubiquitous – especially for those of us that live in the city. For most people, blinking led lights, green led alarm clocks, blinking red blackberry message alerts, blue blinking bluetooth lights, blinking computer monitor power saver lights, and PC blue/green/orange/red lights are enough to turn our homes into a mini solar system at night.
Several of us got together to figure out if there really is a way to get some of this light to go away so that we can finally get a good night’s rest! Well, it certainly is possible, but the trouble it is worth to crack open your electronic devices or pour through Internet forums just may not be worth the work. We found that black electrical tape solved the problem for our external hard drives, PC’s, and other devices that remain stationary. As for the Blackberry – we found disabling the message alerts fairly simple to do – however each program (Twitter, News sites, each email message account, etc) needed to be disabled individually. As for the alarm clock – other than going down to dimmer – the only easy solution we found was to utilize a piece of window tint over the alarm LED – that seemed to bring the glow way down to a manageable level.
With PC’s – it is possible to remove the case and physically disconnect the LED, but for most people the simpler and more practical answer is black electrical tape. Opening up a machine requires some caution to avoid things like static electricity shocks and getting a lot of dust inside the machine. That being said – it can also be a good time if you know what you are doing to clean the interior of your machine.
Light and sound is everywhere – and getting a good night’s sleep is just not as easy as it probably used to be. Try a few easy fixes and see what a difference “lack” of light makes!
The Tough Data Recoveries
In today’s world, the toughest data recoveries are those that involve significant physical damage to hard drives. The most common case is when the heads of the hard drive make contact with the hard disks, causing actual physical contact between the two. While the data on these disks can often be partially recovered, the section of the disk where there has been physical damage in modern disks is often rendered useless.
In older disk drives, we had success recovering data even from the physically damaged sections, as we could look at the edges of the sectors for remnant data that may not have been damaged. However, in today’s drives the data is stored in much tighter defined spaces and this creates more difficult recoveries. As such, it means recovering the data takes more time or more technological resources in order to perform a proper data recovery.
Unfortunately, while we are still able to recover data in these cases, they involve significant time and resources in the cleanroom working on the hard drive. For some of our clients, the data is valuable such that the recovery still makes sense – in other cases our clients decide to hold off or proceed at a later date. We prefer to give our clients options…
For all of our clients, one thing is for certain… we never charge more than a $79 evaluation fee up front and will always offer to send the clients back their hard drives if proceeding right now is not feasible.
Choose a company that handles data recoveries professionally, honestly and with integrity. Give us a call and we will be happy to help! 888-360-3282.
Global Data Recovery and Continuity will grow from $24.3 billion to $39 billion in next 5 years
ABI Research ”forecasts that the global market for business continuity and disaster data recovery solutions will grow from $24.3 billion in 2009 to exceed $39 billion in 2015.”
The cause for this is quite apparent. As businesses increase the reliance on technology, there comes the inherent need to protect the data that is integral to the daily operations of the business. While most large Fortune 1000 firms have developed sophisticated and comprehensive data backup procedures, most small and mid-sized firms have largely neglected to implement effective data backup procedures. The end result is that such firms must rely on data recovery firms like Pronto Data Recovery in the instance of catastrophic data loss.
Prudent businesses are advised to develop simple and effective data backups as part of the standard operating procedure. The costs of not implementing backups are very real. According to research from Acronis®, 63% of organizations take a day or more to recover from system downtime, and only 10% could recover within an hour from a data disaster. This downtime can cost thousands of dollars per hour that an enterprise is left stranded without its systems. Most surprisingly, the Acronis study indicated that 19% of businesses perform no backup whatsoever.
At Pronto Data Recovery, we focus on recovering data in the aftermath of a catastrophic data loss. Until the day comes that every machine has a mirror on the cloud that is backed up in real time, the need for data recovery will exist.
Pronto Data Recovery serves the Upper Midwest and can be reached at 888-360-3282.
New Website Being Published Tonight!
Looking forward to the new web 2.0 inspired design. Our new site promises to be a lot easier on the eyes. Looking forward to having it up!
Our new site should be up by Midnight tonight – www.prontodatarecovery.com
Cheers,
The Staff at Pronto Data Recovery
