Are Ransomware Decryption Tools Safe?

If you’re hit by ransomware, you’re certainly not alone. By one estimate, 2,708 ransomware attacks occurred from April 2022 to March 2023 — but since many attacks aren’t reported, the true number is much, much higher. When a ransomware infection...
May 12, 2023

What to Know About Compressed vs. Uncompressed Video Formats

When you’re digitizing a large number of videos, you’ll need to choose an appropriate format for the digital files.  Most video formats use compression, which reduces the data (and consumes less space on your storage media). Without compression, a single...
May 11, 2023

5 Myths About Solid-State Drives (SSDs)

The market for solid-state drives (SSDs) was valued at over $30 billion in 2022 — and it’s continuing to grow, for somewhat obvious reasons.  SSDs are much faster than traditional hard drives, more resistant to physical damage, and capable of...
May 10, 2023

Logical Data Recovery Guide: Using Software to Recover Data

At Datarecovery.com, we discourage the use of data recovery software. Software can exacerbate issues like hard drive head crashes, potentially causing permanent damage (and preventing a successful recovery, even if the drive is treated in a professional data recovery laboratory). ...
May 8, 2023

Hard Drive Seek Error Rate What It Means (And Why It Matters)

Seek error rate is a hard drive performance metric reported through Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) tools.  Hard drives, solid-state drives, and other storage devices use SMART to monitor for issues that may indicate an impending failure. For hard...
May 3, 2023

Hard Drive Seek Time: What It Means (And Why It Matters)

A hard drive’s seek time is the time that the head assembly takes to travel to a specific track on the platters where data can be stored. Since seek time varies depending on which track it needs to access, “seek...
May 2, 2023

Don’t Trust Cheap Hard Drives — They May Be Refurbished

Recently, MaxDigitalData began selling a 14 terabyte (TB) hard drive on Amazon and other online platforms for about $120 USD. That’s an incredible deal — but as is often the case with budget storage media, there’s a catch.  As TechRadar...
May 1, 2023

Common Problems with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is data recovery software for the macOS and Windows operating systems. It features an intuitive user interface and a “free” edition that claims to restore up to 2 gigabytes (GB) of data.  Like most popular data...
April 21, 2023

Can a MacOS Computer Get a Virus?

Apple’s macOS is extremely secure, but like all operating systems, it can be infected by trojans, viruses, ransomware, and other types of malware.  This is less of a significant threat than on Windows machines for several reasons:By default, macOS...
April 20, 2023

Is It Possible to Recover Data from a Formatted SSD?

If you’ve accidentally formatted an SSD, data recovery is unlikely, but potentially possible. Here’s an overview.
April 19, 2023