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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Expenses Involved in Data Recovery

Seized with such fear driven panic, data losers are known to have worked mindlessly. One such entrepreneur upon hearing weird noises from the computer opened the disk and poured lubricating gel over it. The strange noise disappeared along with the data. Fortunately, the data was recovered though the recovery costs were quite high.

Why are Data Recovery Costs High?

Data recovery from a hard drive is possible only if highly experienced engineers use specialised tools and work in a class 100 clean room. All these overheads are extremely expensive. These escalate the data retrieval costs.

Specialised Tools

The hard drive used in your computer is a highly technologically advanced device. Hard drives have been subjected to great technological revolution rapidly. Data recovery experts have to constantly update their tools for these turn obsolete quite fast. Research & Development (R&D) is a continuous process and the developed specialised tools are highly expensive. The tools used on the old hard drive can hardly be used. Every part of the hard drive is constantly bettered upon. Even the magnetic platters have turned glass or ceramic replacing the traditional aluminium platters. Such unique equipments necessitate expert handling by highly skilled engineers.

Highly Trained Engineers

When you pay for a data recovery service, you are also paying for the skill of the trained engineers. Retrieving data is an intricate process and the dexterity of the recovery expert determines the success rates. When your company?s fate hangs in a balance it is the experience and skill developed by these engineers over the years that can help prevent disaster. These experienced engineers have to work, with great concentration and put in extreme effort to make recovery a possibility.

Man Hours of Labour

To recover the data, the damaged parts of your hard drive have to be replaced. However, it is not possible to find an exact replacement always. The varied parts of the hard drive are synthesized to work in perfect alignment with each other. For example, if the circuit board of your hard drive is damaged, a re soldering has to be done carefully. It is not possible to replace it even if another hard drive shares the same model number. Thus some data recovery cases entail labour intensive techniques. The engineers are also required to work over the weekends if data requirements are immediate. Hours of labour intensive work are expensive. The engineers in the clean room work wearing specialised gloves, masks and different suits.

Class 100 Clean Room

A class 100 clean room should contain less than 100 particles of 0.5microns per cubic foot of air space. This room is enclosed within a shell to separate it from the rest of the building and has controlled temperature of 70� F and 45% RH. The walls and ceiling are made of plastic or polymer. The room contains filtered air and is externally lighted. Hard drives have to be opened in such clean rooms for the space between the read write head and magnetic platters is less than a spec of dust. Even submicron particles lodged on the platters can lead to hard crash and a permanent loss of data. It costs � 75,000.00 to construct, equip and maintain such class 100 clean rooms. Consequently the recovery rates are escalated.

However expensive the recovery rates might be they are still lower than the loss caused due to non availability of data. As an SME owner you would be aware that data loss results in monetary loss on various fronts. Costs are incurred on recreating data, losing hours of productive work and continuing without data.

The data retrieval costs are high due to expensive overheads. The specialised tools, class 100 clean rooms and the services of experienced engineers are costly. The work of recovery is complicated, even a single mistake leads to permanent loss of data beyond retrieval.

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