Mac computers use HFS as their native file system. At 24 Hour Data we have many clients that think their external hard drive has failed, because their Mac will not mount the drive. Most External Hard Drive manufacturers like Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, and more Pre-Format drives with Windows file systems. By default most externals are formatted FAT or NTFS.

Macs will see HFS, FAT, and NTFS. However, if you have a Mac you will not be able to write to NTFS formatted drives without a third party application. Many Mac users get a drive from Frys, Best Buy, Comp USA, and so on that is pre-formatted FAT. When they start using the drive they have no issues. This because Macs can read and write to the FAT file system just fine.

What many Mac users are finding out is that their external drive suddenly stops mounting when the plug it in or turn it on. Before you panic and call a Data Recovery company like 24 Hour Data try connecting your drive to a PC. We have found that once FAT formatted drives are connected to a Windows machine then brought back over to a Mac they work fine.

This is only a temporary fix and may have to be done several times. The long term fix is to backup your data on the drive and format the drive HFS. You can format the drive using Apple’s Disk Utility in the Utilites Folder. Be careful not to format any drive without backing up your data first.

If your drive does not mount after connecting it to a PC then you have a potential Data Recovery. Also, if you hear any unusual sounds like clicking or grinding always power down the drive immediately. 24 Hour Data offers a Free Quote for Data Recovery and a No Data, No Charge policy.

Solid State Drives are definitely the future of storage. The benefits of SSD are numerous. However, there are several disadvantages with this technology. Here is a list of the Pros and Cons of SSD.

Advantages

•    Fast
•    No Moving Parts equals less mechanical failures
•    Low Power Use
•    Silent
•    Ability to endure shock, vibration, temperature variations, altitude
•    Small Form Factor
•    Flash SSD have 2X Density of Hard Drives

Disadvantages

•    Expensive
•    Low Capacity
•    Encryption Issues
•    Limited Life
•    No Defragmentation

The major disadvantage to SSD technology is chances of recovery when these drives fail. Even the top Data Recovery companies in the world are recovering less than 50% of the Solid State Drives sent into them. In fact, very few Data Recovery firms even recover data from SSD.  At 24 Hour Data, we have seen a huge increase in the number of SSD recoveries in the last 6 months.

If you plan to buy SSD or if you have this technology already in place think twice about your Backup Solution. In corporations large and small we most often see that laptops slip through the cracks with data backups. Laptops are also where most Solid State Drives are being used due to size, durability, and low power consumption.

This is not our normal blog post, but check out this cool Hard Drive Clock. We couldn’t resist buying one for the 24 Hour Data lab. Our clock is made from a 40GB Western Digital Caviar PATA Hard Drive.

When a hard drive fails the most important thing to do is listen for abnormal sounds. If you hear sounds like clicking or  grinding it is time to power the drive down and call an expert.

Clicking sounds indicate that you have the symptom of a failed head assembly. The concern here is that a failed head can scratch into the platters and cause media damage.  The image above shows the effects of heads scratching into the platters. The dark rings you see are media damage. In many cases media damage can leave your hard drive unrecoverable.

Grinding sounds indicate that the hard drive has sustained media damage. The grinding you hear is the heads going over the media damage on the platters.

Media Damage is what we hope to avoid. That is why professional Data Recovery Companies always ask the same questions. If you hear either of these sounds immediately power down your hard drive. Only professionals can recover hard drives that click or grind. One of the reasons is that in most cases a clean room is needed to work with these issues. Not to mention the experience that is required to replace a head assembly or swap a platter stack.

Companies like 24 Hour Data offer a Free Quote for Data Recovery and a No Data, No Charge policy. Always avoid companies who charge to diagnose a Data Recovery.  Also, stay away from Data Recovery Services who charge you if they do not recover your data.

24 Hour Data today announced its support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In an effort to raise awareness about the importance of early detection of breast cancer, the Dallas-based company will donate 5% of its October sales to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc. (NBCF).

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True USB Flash Drives cost much less and hold less data than Hard Drives. We see clients everyday that lose data on a Flash Drive they did not back up. Most clients think since they paid $40 or less for a drive the data is also less valuable.

The truth is that a .PST Outlook email database can be only a few GBs in size, but be worth several thousand dollars. An Excel spreadsheet or a Word document can be 64KB and worth a great deal to a client.

At 24 Hour Data we see that people put more value on Photos than any other data type. Storing pictures happens to be the main use for Flash media. Photos are a moment in time. Documents can be written again, but pictures are not that easy to recreate.

Flash media can be very expensive to recover. Sometimes costing several hundreds, even thousands in rare cases. The moral to the story is Data is valuable no matter what drive or media it is stored on. Backing up important data is the only way to insure data is not lost. The alternative is a high priced Data Recovery no matter what the media costs.

24 Hour Data is looking for motivated individuals that have serious Data Recovery experience. We will only consider people that at least 3 years of physical data recovery hands on experience. Please do not apply if you are not qualified. Send your resume to info@24hourdata.com.

On July 24th @24hourdata lost over 50 Twitter Followers. Our immediate thought was did Twitter lose some servers or what. The thought of having 50 plus followers drop off was shocking.

Then we asked around and several Twitter accounts had complained of losing large numbers of followers. What we found is that Twitter is weeding out Spammers. All those accounts you see that are following 2000 people and have 0 followers.

Good for Twitter! We are glad to see Twitter is cleaning house. Also, very happy losing 50 followers was not us.