MJM Data Recovery

A large number of computers sold are laptop computers. They are light and portable. Modern laptops contain very large hard disks at the time of writing this article 500Gb are often seen here for data recovery. One of the most common problems we see are drives where the heads have crashed. The main cause is actually part of the design of the computer - remember the bit where I said 'they are light and portable'? It is easy to put the computer on your lap, then when you need to get up, lift the computer up and put it to one side. This movement can cause a head crash especially if the heads are reading or writing at the time. Most manuals that we have seen recommend putting the computer on a firm surface like a desk or a table and in fact NOT putting it on your lap - strange that they are called 'laptops' when it is not recommended to use them as such. Some manufacturers have developed hardware that detects when the computer is being moved and pulls the heads to a saf...

Data Recovery from Tape . Recovering data from tapes involves first getting an binary image of the tape. We do this using our own software so as to get the best image possible. Once we have the tape image, we then work out the software that was used to create the backup tape. Again we have written our own backup recovery software so that we can get the maximum amount of data from the tape. We are able to recover data from all types of tape including: AIT,  DAT, DDS, DLT, LTO, QIC, SAIT, SDLT, Travan, Ultrium and most other tape formats. We are also able to recover from most backup software on all platforms. For more information please check out out our Tape Recovery pages.

Known issues with these hard drives came to light mid 2008 when MjM Data Recovery started receiving drives that were displaying extraordinary symptoms. Either the drive would not show in the BIOS or if it did it would show has have 0 bytes capacity. We started work straight away and found the problem to be in logs in the factory area of the drive. Data Recovery We found a method of repairing the drives and started recovering data. Seagate were made aware of the problem and issued a fix in the form of a firmware update. However, the firmware fix would not work on drives that had already failed as the built-in operating system of the drive recognises there is a problem and sets the drive into 'failsafe' mode. So users that were aware of the problem could update their firmware and fix their drives as long as they had not already become affected with the problem. The first firmware update actually made the problem worse with some drives. After applying the firmware update, th...

It happens when you least want it. You memory card for one reason or another has stopped working. You may be lucky and find that it is still working and you can run data recovery software on it to get your data back. But what if it is completely dead, the dog has bitten it in half, it's been through a 90 degree wash in the washing machine or it has just plain stopped working? Never fear, in the vast majority of cases the data is still on there. Its just that it can not be accessed in the normal way. At MjM Data Recovery we remove the physical memory chips and read them, reassemble the dumps into readable structures and then recover the data - it is not a simple process and involves considerable effort. We started our advanced memory recovery processes in 2004 and have been fine tuning them ever since, almost every week we come up against a new type of wear levelling algorythm but very few get past our techniques and we have happy customers throughout the world willing to testif...

Raid recovery is a specialist type of data recovery service. RAID is an acronym of R edundant A rray of I nexpensive D rives and consists of at least two drives that are configured as a single volume or container. The most common forms of RAID are described below. RAID 0 requires a minimum of two drives that gives the full disk size of both drives as a single volume the data is stored in stripes each stripe consisting of a block of data on each drive block sizes are typically 64kb but we have block sizes from 4kb to 2 Mb in size. This is the cheapest type of RAID but has no redundancy. If one drive fails, then access to all data on both drives is lost. RAID 1 Requires 2 drives the second drive is an identical copy of the first drive meaning that you only get the equivalent of one drive for the price of two. Expensive but offers redundancy so one drive can fail and you can still access the data on the second drive. RAID 5 Requires a minimum of three drives. Is similar to RAID 0 in...

Data recovery is the process of extracting data from broken hard disk drives. The problem can be one of a list of problems but most fall into the following categories. 1. Logical Problems: You may have accidentally formatted your disk and can no longer access your data. Other problems are not so obvious.. Virus attack, file system errors, deleted files, etc. Data Recovery from media that have logical problems can usually be recovered with commercial software. However, some computer virus attacks can encrypt the files meaning that a data recovery service will be required. 2. Electronics Problems: These problems can be caused by power spikes, static electricity (ESD), overheating or simple component failure. On most modern hard disks it is not possible to replace the circuit board as they have unique information stored in ROM or EEPROM. Data recovery from drives with electronics problems will need expert help. 3. Firmware Problems: The symptoms for a firmware problem vary from ...