If you’ve lost data from a hard drive and you need to get it back, the best practice is to clone your drive — but only if the drive is in working condition.  Cloning a hard drive is an intensive...

If your internal hard disk drive (HDD) keeps disconnecting, you’ve got a potentially serious problem — and if the drive holds critically important data, we strongly recommend shutting down the affected system before taking any additional steps. In the vast...

Hard disk drives (HDDs) are mechanical devices — and unless the laws of physics suddenly change, every hard drive will eventually fail. But while some of the issues that cause drive failures are out of your control, you can take...

At Datarecovery.com, we’ve implemented controls at each of our laboratories to prevent electrostatic damage (ESD) from affecting hard drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), and other devices with exposed printed circuit boards.  When handling storage media, our staff wears electrostatic grounding straps....

The terms ransomware and social engineering are sometimes used interchangeably, particularly in news articles about major ransomware attacks.  The confusion is understandable: Many bad actors use social engineering techniques to distribute malicious software. However, social engineering is an attack vector,...

The TRIM command is an operation that enables solid-state drives (SSD) to efficiently manage garbage collection. In another article, we explain in detail how the TRIM command improves performance reliability for SSDs. SSDs generally support the TRIM command. Some...

Hard drives are magnetic storage devices, and they’re capable of holding data for extensive periods of time without losing data.  The data retention rate of a hard drive varies by manufacturer and the precise architecture used by the device. However,...

SD (Secure Digital) is a popular data storage format developed by the SD Association, a joint partnership between several major flash manufacturers.  The SD format encompasses a number of related technologies:SDHC microSD miniSD SDIO SDXC SDUCAll SD formats...

Smoke can damage a hard drive, but only in extreme circumstances.  Hard drives have pouch filters that prevent most contaminants from reaching the platters (discs coated in a thin layer of magnetic material, which store the user’s data).  Nearly all...

The infamous “blue screen of death” (or BSOD) occurs when the Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) must shut down or restart unexpectedly.  Contrary to its name, a BSOD doesn’t mean the “death” of your computer (or your data). It simply...