The most reliable way to securely wipe a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) is to perform a single-pass overwrite, which writes a pattern of zeros over the entire drive. That’s sufficient to make the original data unrecoverable by even the...

While Datarecovery.com provides services for all digital storage devices, the vast majority of the cases we receive involve solid-state drives (SSDs) or hard disk drives (HDDs).  The prognosis for data recovery is strong for both device types, provided the work...

In an earlier article, we discussed a novel scam utilizing Seagate hard drives: Sellers were marketing used Exos hard drives as brand-new units, in some cases modifying the S.M.A.R.T. parameters to display lower runtime hours. The scam has spread,...

You’ve just bought a new hard drive — or did you?  On February 8th, Seagate responded to reports that Exos hard drives were being sold with S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) values reset, effectively making the used hard drives...

Southern California is experiencing record-breaking wildfires, with total losses expected to be $50 billion or more. At least five people have died, and thousands have been displaced.At Datarecovery.com, we’ve provided services to businesses, consumers, nonprofits, and state agencies following...

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...

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...