By Glenn, The Mac Feed, 6/2/10

Recently, I had the opportunity to have a discussion with Chris Bross from Drive Savers about data protection and data recovery.

Drive Savers is a data recovery laboratory – so you can imagine that they had some pretty useful insights on the matter! This is a very lengthy interview, and we had an excellent discussion. Even though, the text below is edited for length. To listen to the full audio transcript, just follow along to the bottom of the post.

If you want to find out more about DriveSavers after reading my interview, please feel free to visit them on the web at www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/.

Q: What can you tell me about your program?

A: We are a professional secure data recovery laboratory – we provide a service – which is data recovery. We don’t sell any software or hardware – we are an engagement by crisis, engagement by need laboratory solely for the purpose of data recovery.

Q: What types of recovery do you offer for, for instance, the iPad, which I see you specifically support.

A: We service all data storage mediums, including the iPad – We have worked on all types of media, including the 5.25 inch hard drives which are now obsolete. Whether it be rotating disk, solid state, optical media.

Q: What do you charge for a typical user or incident for this type of service?

A; All costs are based on two metrics – the capacity of the media to be recovered, and the service level, or time frame in which they need the service completed. We have a variety of offerings to accommodate all customers, from a priority service in which we work around the clock on the device (We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), to less rapid services. Standard service time is 1-2 business days, where the economy package has about a week turnaround.

Q: So, let’s say I have a laptop with a 320GB hard drive. It got caught in a fire. I’m not in a big hurry, I’ve got a few days to wait, what sort of figures would I be looking at?

A: Great question. Sounds like one of the 10,000 or so phone calls we get every month here at our call center. You might be an excellent candidate for our evaluation service. This is for any user who realizes the value of their data, but is also cost and time sensitive. We set up an in-laboratory free evaluation to determine the cost, which we facilitate by sending you a re-paid shipping container. We then provide the in-la evaluation, and contact you within 3 business days to let you know if, or how much data is recoverable, as well as the cost of recovery if we can recover data. At that point, the user can then let us know if they’d like to move forward with the recovery. The standard cost of recovery for 330GB using this method is typically between $1000-$2000. This is determined by the complexity of the recovery, how long it takes to perform the recovery, as well as the success of the recovery. Further, if we fail to get back the data you were looking for, you pay absolutely nothing.

Q: That sounds like a pretty good guarantee.

A: You know, while you mentioned guarantee, we cannot guarantee data recovery. We can guarantee that the best effort by the most secured professional laboratory is going to be executed upon the drive, but if we fail to deliver the results that you, as the customer, have requested of us, well, you shouldn’t be responsible for paying for it. And that’s why we offer the No Data-No Dollar policy on that service. Those other services – I informed you a couple of minutes ago about the priority service and standard service and these services are for people who are more time sensitive, but consumers through professional enterprise use these services. If you’re calling me with a different scenario where your business was failing today because your storage was offline and you needed the data yesterday, which is also a common call for us, you’d be more likely a candidate for our priority service or our security based service, for example. But, yeah, with your request as it was that’s a very common call in the consumer space for us.

Q: Mm-hmm. So, if I’m like most users, I probably watch shows like CSI and other crime related shows and they might occasionally show somebody diligently trying to recover data from a hard drive of some criminals or something of that sort. Now, how representative is that to reality?

A: Well, the CSI example is commonly used, I think, to kind of, well, as an analogy for DriveSavers to those people who don’t really understand what’s going on in the laboratory, although I think CSI and the ten different derivatives of that particular program do a very good job of over-glamorizing it. A lot of those technology that you see being used is probably not unlike technology you see in an ISO 5 certified cleanroom, like we utilize here at DriveSavers. This is really high technology stuff. The laboratories look just like the fabrication facilities of chip or hard drive manufacturers. I don’t know if you’re – how familiar you are with cleanrooms, but the type of the environment that we work on should they work in is not only certified at a particular level of cleanliness, but we’re required to work in those environments to preserve warrantee on any of these devices that we’re working on.

So, you know, in the field, I think a lot of users have – I don’t know if they have a very clear understanding of the type of things that we are doing in a laboratory, nor should they necessarily have a very clear understanding of that. An analogy that a lot of our users use just like that CSI analogy is the emergency room. And the reason of that, you know, as really crisis response, which is what we’re doing to any customer who calls us, who looses data. It’s very much like calling 911. You don’t ever want to call it, but you surely want to know that someone’s is going to pick up the phone quickly when you do.

So, that’s how we’re engaged. It’s, you know, there’s a fire burning. We need you to have put it out. Our business is going under water, you know, we’ve lost the photos of our home-birth of child, any of these things are all critical to each individual user as it is the perception of the value of that data to the user. And so, we treat all of them the same as if they are the highest priority customer coming into the emergency room and they need help now. And we really extend that same effort to, you know, recovering the images in a digital camera through the big enterprise professional who is sitting on 20 terabytes that are offline. They all need help and they all need it right away

Q: How long have you been in business and what got you started?

A: Okay. DriveSavers started in – back in 1985, and the data recovery industry did not exist at that time. The market was really about the production of hard drives and in fact the repair of some hard drives because hard drives were quite costly back in that day. And well, for reference, if you were to try and find a data recovery provider back in 1985, you surely couldn’t Google it because I think Larry Page and Sergey were 10 or 12 years old at that time when DriveSavers started. So, there was no way to search for it unless you’re part of a BDS or some service organization that knew about DriveSavers. The company was actually started and the principles of the company came from a hard drive manufacturer. That hard drive manufacturer actually went belly up and the concept of what you do about all those customers that you’ve stranded out in a field with product, they have no one to call. So, we required the technical support telephone number of that hard drive manufacturer and sure enough, customers started calling saying, “hey, I want my data back.” And that’s how DriveSavers was really born.

Q: Wow, great. What’s the worst case scenario that you have ever seen?

A: What is the worst case scenario that we have ever seen, well, let’s see. That’s a very good question. I mean, everyday see some pretty ugly things. Worst case scenario. Well, I can tell you a fairly recent story about a particular unit that was recovered in a fire. About a month ago or so, there was a computer that was involved in a very significant office fire and it was documented post-fire for us with walls melting literally, equipment melted to table tops and a particular computer that had been badly destroyed in this high temperature fire ended up. So, we were called in – it seemed like there was no hope for recovery of the device whatsoever. It came into our laboratory, and within a couple of days, we had 100 percent of the data recovered for the user and they were extremely pleased with that since at the onset of it, it surely appeared to be an unrecoverable scenario. And we run into a lot of these types of calls everyday here at DriveSavers and we actually kind of trademark a term for it and that term is disk-aster. You can – yeah, you can go and see it on the web and you’ll see it on our web page and a disk-aster is simply when a disk and a disaster come into contact with one another and data loss occurs.

Q: Sure. Okay, so what advise then would you give to people with sensitive data? So, I mean, of course, disasters are always going to happen, but, you know, as far as back-up, what do you recommend users take as precautions and, kind of, as a follow up to that so the unthinkable don’t happen and, you know, a terrible fire occurs or an earthquake or some kind of disaster, are there things that a user can do to minimize the damages?

A: The reality is just that most users aren’t conscious enough to ask these questions, although we educate them about it as part of the process and we’re helping them. And I think we really enlighten a lot of people about the vulnerability of their data and the requirements of security so that moving forward, you know, after we’ve helped them recover their data, they have a heightened awareness about their confidentiality, their own data security, back-up of their information and really how to protect it. And that all starts with, you know, the unfortunate awareness that comes when their media fails and then the subsequent engagement with DriveSavers through the resolution of the data recovery and kind of this education we provide to them. You know, ideally the user leaves not only with their data intact, but with a lot more knowledge about how to, you know, prevent this from ever happening again.

These are all good questions. Let me see if I can tackle each of them. Okay, so the first question was about the awareness and how customers, you know, should be protecting their data. Well, we haven’t yet talked about encryption, but encryption is a very popular topic these days and in my own personal thinking is in three to five years from now, encryption will be the default for most storage configurations. By the way, the solid-state drive market in many ways is going that way with self inflicting mechanisms as is the hard drive market right now. So, although encryption, I think, might be a little intimidating to some users, the reality is that encrypting one’s data is one of the most critical steps in protecting it if it’s out of that user’s possession. And, you know, encryption when properly deployed and managed is an excellent solution. And as I said, I think it will be the standard, you know, default configuration for most people in the future. Imagine, you know, yourself. I’m not sure what storage you carry. I’m sure you have a phone, laptop, maybe a couple of USB keys, digital camera, and desktop computer. You have probably have all of these things and I don’t know if you’re currently running encryption on all of these devices, but what would happen if something was stolen from you or went out of your possession or, you know, you never used that. You never know what’s going to happen. So encryption is a great stuff. But that’s only one part of, you know many-step process to protecting oneself and it leads to the next logical step of back-up of the data.

You know, back-up strategies can take many forms depending on what’s required for a particular user. You know, the simplest form of back-up of course is a duplicate copy of the data in another physical location that can be something as easy as CDs or DVDs or copies of photos sent to, you know, the Kodak Library online or something like that. But, you know, real back-up strategy incorporates multiple peers of storage, you know, online storage a back-up has connected to your system, possibly a nearline storage device, the thing you’ll see in facility, but that’s not connected at all times. An offsite back-up, which is geographically isolated from the facility you’re in, just in case something happens such as fire or flood, for example, in a location that’s protected, that’s securely monitored, that’s environmentally controlled and, you know, that’s three different levels of backup I just described there that do a pretty good job of protecting somebody, although it might sound like overk to some users, it surely doesn’t – I can assure you – sound like overkill once we help them out with a data recovery and they say, how can I prevent this from ever happening again? The real key is to have multiple copies at multiple locations, all secured in someway. I’m, you know, not trying to intimidate users. We’re just trying to educate them as to how to protect their information. And the last part of your question, I think, was about minimizing damage?

Q: Yeah, you know, kind of the notion of, you know, if still a fire does occur and your hard drive is damaged, or an earthquake occurs and your hard drive is smashed, are there things you can do to sort of minimize the amount of damage done to that.

A: Yeah, great question and I’ll be answering – this is one question we wish we could get the message out to more users on because from the initial point of failure of any storage device until we actually get involved with the resolution, unfortunately, problems often get much worse and I think you’re kind of assumptive in your question and you know users can exacerbate a problem, basically. And so best practice is in the event of any type of a failure of a storage device is, the first thing is really, literally hands off. I mean get your hands off the keyboard. You know, you have to evaluate whatever failure has occurred and the irrational response to quickly trying to reboot the computer or download the cheapest piece of software where you can find, or start testing the disc for example, any of these things are quick in reactionary solutions that we understand people just want to get their system back up and running quickly and they just want an access to their data. However, if the storage device is suffering a failure and over 75 percent of the devices that come here to DriveSavers have an electromechanical malfunction that means the hardware is breaking. The best and safest things any user can do is to power off the system and contact us. We’re 24 hours a day with live humans on the phone and we will advise the user what is safe or not safe to do in the best interest of preserving the data on that device. The risk involved with someone continuing to work with a drive or any type of storage device that has lost data is that the problem will get worse as they are attempting to resolve it and they may in fact cause it to be unrecoverable through their efforts as good as their intentions maybe.

Q: Are there certain inherent differences between rotating and solid-state media? Is more susceptible to damage than the other?

A: That’s an excellent question. In fact, it’s asked to us quite often today in the context of, you know, should I move to solid-state, you know, from rotating hard drives. And for many people that question is automatically answered by a function of their purchase, right? The iPad for example, just like the iPhone or the iPod Touch, is a NAND-based solid-state storage device using no spinning disc. In your new MacBook Pro or your new MacBook Air, of course, you have the option of choosing solid-state disk versus hard disk and the reality today is that there is a lot of growth in that solid-state market, although it’s still makes up a very small percentage of the global storage pool. The perception in the market is of high performance, high reliability, low power consumption, long battery life, etcetera, with solid-state drives.

And the reality is that some of that information is true. The other reality of it is that we are dealing with a fair amount of failure in the field right now of solid-state storage devices and we are seeing twice field than in the laboratory here. Someone in the industry recently said to me, you know what the good news is about solid-state drives and data recovery? And I said, what’s that? And he said well, you do away with all the problems of having crashes and failed motors and mechanical issues. And I said, well, what’s the bad news? He said the bad news is you got a whole slue of new problems to figure out, right. You know, solid-state technology as far as real drives go is maybe about three years old and, you know, FAT based storage technology on the consumer side is, what, maybe about 10 years old, if you think of USB keys and things like that, you know, roughly.

Yeah. The hard drive market is about 53 years old and quite mature with a lot of skilled data and a lot of resources out there to the reliability of devices. You know, I think what we’ll see is a continued growth in the solid-state space with a continued growth in the magnetic no rotational disk space, increased reliability, you know, from both sides of it. But today, a consumer really has to decide if the solid-state is the right choice for them, given the fact that, you know, it’s 5 or 10 times the cost of rotational media. So, kind of a take-home message is, you know, this solid-state stuff, you know, you’re dealing with something that’s in it’s relative infancy in the industry and – so, there is a lot to be learned and of course dramatic improvements to be seen in the coming years.

Yeah. I believe that to be true and I am not sure that the manufacturers of SSD devices would necessary phrase it that way, but, you know, I think that you’re barking off the tree there.

I guess, I – in closing, I would say this is that our experience at DriveSavers has shows us that regardless of what technology you’re using for storage, whether it would be magneto-optical storage, whether it would be tape technology for back up tapes, whether it’s hard disk, whether it’s a RAID system, or whether it’s solid-state based storage, the one guarantee is that all is going to fail at some point. And the question is not really if, but when and are you prepared for it? So if you are using the greatest – latest greatest state-of-the-art, you know, solid-state devices where you’re gotten eight year old, you know, ATA driving your system, you should protect the data on both of them because they’re both going to die at some point and you’re probably going to loss the data from both of them. So, a back up is still the best hard drive out there. No matter what anybody says, you always need to maintain a bit verified back up of your critical data.

Interviewer: Great. Well, we certainly appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and provide this information! Thank you very much.

Read the Original Article at The Mac Feed.