With their lightning-fast speeds and exceptional durability, solid-state drives (SSDs) are quickly replacing traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) in many applications. In fact, the SSD market is projected to reach a valuation exceeding $125 billion by 2026, though the...

A hard drive voice coil is a type of linear motor consisting of a coil of wire suspended within a strong magnetic field. When an electrical current passes through the coil, it interacts with the magnetic field, generating a force...

Stiction is a portmanteau of “static” and “friction.” In engineering, it’s used to describe the amount of force required to make something move while it’s in contact with another material.  In the data recovery industry, stiction is also used to...

If you’ve found this page, you’re probably running CHKDSK, Microsoft’s built-in utility for hard disk drives — and you’re wondering why it’s taking forever to complete.  First, a quick reminder: CHKDSK isn’t a data recovery utility. It can scan your...

Recently, we searched for “failing hard drives” to see whether the internet was dispensing bad advice regarding drive failures (and to see if our name came up). Google’s experimental A.I. answered our question — and promptly provided instructions that could...

Block erase (also referred to as “secure erase” and by other names, depending on the implementation) is an ATA command that tells the SSD’s controller to apply an erase voltage. The voltage is applied to all NAND cells of the...

We’re approaching the 70th anniversary of the hard disk drive (and despite a  popular misconception, hard drive sales are still going strong). Without HDDs, modern computing wouldn’t be possible, and when the IBM 350 was introduced in 1956, it jump-started...

Frequently, our clients will ask us about how the data recovery process works — and providing a quick answer can be difficult, because every case presents a different set of challenges.In some situations, we’re able to restore files by...

If you need to recover data from a dashcam, you’ve probably got a very good reason (and we’re guessing that it involves an insurance claim).  The good news is that dash cams aren’t magic boxes; they’re standard digital devices. They...

If your hard drive seems to “spin up,” but your computer can’t recognize it, you’ve got a problem — but in many cases, the solution is fairly straightforward (the quickest and most likely solution is to check your data connections)....