-
“100% successful. Well done”
Ross Lindsay Cumbernauld
-
“A company that clearly knows exactly what it is doing, delivers exactly what it promises and does so without any fuss, just excellent service.”
Howard Wilson Bristol
-
“Over the moon with the service, and the fact that I have all my data back is an absolute lifesaver.”
John McNiff Pontefract
-
“You expect efficiency as standard and once you've got it, you realise that friendliness is extremely important too. Tierra does really well in both areas.”
Daniel Batista Millares London
-
“Definitely worthwhile using your services to get back what everyone else was telling me was lost! Those photos and accounts are priceless.”
Paul Edwards Liverpool
-
"I found Tierra to be clear, concise, straight forward, friendly, extremely professional, competent and highly knowledgeable."
Callum Donez North East Lincolnshire
-
"Tierra salvaged my backup, with persistence that I can't have imagined."
Gordon Dodds Cornwall
-
"Tierra stepped in quickly, efficiently and professionally restored all my lost data. Outstanding quick service."
Jonathan Crombie Crombies of Edinburgh
-
"The level of customer service I experienced from your company was very impressive."
Diane J Earle London
-
"This company truly understands the concept of time-critical recovery."
Professor Ben Kneller University of Aberdeen
-
"Thank you for your professionalism, speed and quality of work."
Anna Mavrogianni London
-
"No hesitation in recommending your company to anyone."
Phil Codd Doncaster
-
“Thank you again for doing what the first computer repair shop I visited told me was basically not possible.”
Kenny McLeish Carluke
-
“Tierra rocks!”
Stephan Ringer London
Hitachi Data Recovery
If you need Hitachi data recovery you’ve come to the right place. We’ve been recovering data from faulty Hitachi drives for years. In fact, we see outstanding rates of recovery on the Hitachi hard drives.
Hard drive failure is caused by physical or logical damage due to mechanical failure, electrical faults, software corruption or human error. Common symptoms of hard drive failure include:
- clicking
- irregular freezing
- computer won’t start
- hard drive not seen in BIOS
- hard drive does not spin up and remains cold to the touch
- computer starts but makes unusual noises
- blue screen on boot up
- computer stuck in reboot loop
Turnaround
If you need your data urgently go to our Emergency Data Recovery page for more information.
Standard Service analysis takes around 2 working days to complete, if not parts are required recovery can take around another three to four days. Some severe cases can take considerably more time and if replacement parts are required there may be a delay while they are shipped to us.
Example Data Recovery Procedure for a Hitachi HDT725050VLAT80 Drive
This gives an idea of the typical recovery process undertaken at Tierra Data Recovery.
In this instance the defective drive was a Hitachi HDT725050VLAT80 drive (500GB, 3.5″ IDE/P-ATA drive), manufactured in February 2007 and was fitted within a Buffalo Mini-station external hard drive enclosure. The client was in Wiltshire and reported that the drive was clicking and there was no access to the data.
We arranged for collection from the client and on arrival in the lab the Hitachi drive was removed from the Buffalo Mini-station enclosure and inspected. There were no signs that the drive had been dropped or suffered physical damage and the printed circuit board (PCB) showed nothing to suggest electrical problems.
The next stage was to try and clone the hard drive. This is always done as soon as is practicable as the process of analysis and data extraction is always hard on a drive and it is better for that drive to be in good condition, also of course if the drive is not cloned and subsequently fails that may be the end of the recovery attempt so although it is time consuming it is also essential. Cloning the defective drive is one of the procedures that separates the good data recovery services from those that are out to skim the easy jobs and reject the rest.
In this case the drive did spin up but there was a quite low-pitched buzz repeated every 1 to 2 seconds. The drive was not recognised by PC BIOS.
Subsequent testing revealed that the problem lay with the motor controller on the PCB (this controls the platter motor which spins the data platters, in this case it was unable to maintain the correct speed).
It is seldom practical to carry out PCB component repairs and so a very closely matching PCB from our stock was used to replace the original defect drive PCB. Unfortunately (life never being a straight forward business) it was also necessary to transfer the portion of the firmware that resides on the PCB from the defect PCB to the donor. Firmware is information stored on the hard drive outwith the data area which is used by the drive to boot itself up and present itself to your PC or Mac. Some of it is unique to the individual hard drive , hence the need to transfer the PCB part of it. Without this transfer a drive will typically spin-up correctly but there will be no access to the data area of the drive. The ability to work reliably with firmware is another differentiator between those who are serious about disk recovery and those who are not.
At this point we had drive access and so the defect drive was cloned. There were a few bad sectors to work around but this was to be expected with a drive of this vintage.
The next stage was to scan the cloned drive and then extract all user data.
The last stage was to verify that the data pulled during the scan was intact. Unfortunately simply because a named file appears in a file pull does not mean that it has been recovered intact. There is only one way to confirm that any file has been recovered in an undamaged state and that is to open it. Most recoveries (like this one) consist of tens of thousands of files therefore it is essential to sample the data extensively to be sure that the recovery quality is sufficiently high. Sample screen shots of the recovered data (that is contact sheets for photographs and thumbnails showing the first page for document files) were forwarded to the client along with a full file list of all recovered data. At this point we also invited the customer to ask for screen shots demonstrating any files that were particularly critical to him.
Payment was then taken. The client purchased his own external hard drive from Amazon and had it sent directly to us (for the recovered data to be put onto). This was then done in encrypted format and returned to a thankful client.
We believe that this is how a thorough and safe Hitachi data recovery should be carried out. If your lost data is critical then choose a company that cares about your data as much as you do and demonstrates that care in the procedures that they apply.
What to do next
1. Call 0845 094 0027 or 0131 663 4137 or fill out the enquiry box on the left. A data recovery expert will talk to you about your drive and the data recovery process.
2. If we believe your data is potentially recoverable, we will arrange to have your hard drive couriered to our lab
3. The drive will undergo analysis in our data recovery lab. Once the analysis is complete we will provide you with the results by email and you choose if you wish to proceed with the recovery.
4. Once your Hitachi data recovery has been successful we arrange for return of the data either on DVD or on an external hard drive.
