I knocked my Acer Aspire V5-573 off a table and the hard drive now makes clicks and takes me to a ‘default boot device missing or boot failed’ screen. And is then stuck on boot manager menu. I am thinking of buying a new laptop but I would like to be able to extract my documents first. Can I come to the London shop on Monday?

I have just downloaded windows 10 onto my hard drive and without realising deleted everything else from it. I had videos and photos stored on this hard drive from 2007 – present. Is there anyway that these can be recovered? I am in Manchester next week which is why I’m wanting to come to the London data recovery centre you mentioned in this post.

I used a Maxtor HX-M101TCB/GMR portable hard drive with my Acer Aspire laptop to store recordings from a Philips Freeview box which reformatted the portable drive and then died. The Maxtor isn’t recognised by my PC anymore but we would like to reuse it for my daughter’s college work. Is there any way to recover use of the hard drive and how much would that cost? I am not terribly concerned about saving the tv recordings on the hard drive, we would just like to be able to use the portable drive again.

I’ve got a Lacie 80GB hard drive which contains lots of family photos. The hard drive is quite old now, about 13 years and uses FireWire connections. I’ve tried connecting it to my iMac with a USB FireWire adaptor but the hard drive just shows an amber light and will not connect to the iMac and will not show in the Finder view. I need to get the data back on a Acer Aspire hard drive too.

I have a Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drive 1TB, model: SRD0SP0.
When I connect it to the laptop it makes a fast beeping sound and is not recognised by the laptop. I think the head is not in the parking area but I don’t know how to open it up to see. I have A LOT of data on there and I’m starting to panic. USB Drive won’t open and comes up with the message:
Location is not available
F:\ is not accessible.
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. It’s a home drive and I live just on the outskirts of Brighton, (between Hove and Lewes)

I have a Macbook Pro, model no. A1278. Issue is that it switches itself off half way through the boot up. You can hear the initial chime sound and apple logo with the progress bar appears on the dispay. When the start up progress reaches around half way, the laptop shuts itself down. Therefore I am unable to acces to my laptop and recover the data. Please could you adive on this matter and give me quotation on how much this is going to cost me to fully recover the data from this laptop.

I’ve just dropped down my external hard disc and after that I can’t open it on any computer. I can hear knocking or ticking noise when the drive is powered on. It 500GB Buffalo Inc that I bought from a computer shop in Brighton
Model HD-PVU2.

Hard Drive recently started disconnecting while using my computer and started clicking on startup.The boot is paused while the device clicks but once it stops, the boot continues but no hard drive shows up in my computer, device manager or disk manager. Got some important information I was wanting to copy over to a secondary hard drive I own but lack of connections mean that I can’t do anything. I’ve tried all 6 sata ports on the mo/bo to no avail and at this point I don’t think there’s much I can do anymore.

This New Year I found myself in Edinburgh, and a very fair city it is too. It had been 12 months since my extended family had been gathered together in one place – it’s something we do each New Year, so packed my case and travelled up north of the border.

Accompanying me on the trip was my trusty 2TB external hard drive. This thing is totally invaluable and stores all my work and music, plus the movies and photos that I was looking forward to showing everyone over the Xmas holiday. I arrived safely on a wet New Years Eve morning and in my haste to get inside and out of the rain managed to accidentally throw my external hard drive from the car. I watched in horror as it flew across the pavement and landed in my parent’s garden. Oh No! I thought, but at least it had landed on the soft grass rather than a hard pavement. I retrieved the hard drive and went inside hoping it would still work.

I plugged the drive into my parent’s Windows computer and all was looking good, I heard the beep-beep noise that you get when you attach a USB device, so far so good. I then got an error message telling me the hard drive could no longer be read and asking me whether I wanted to format the drive. I said Yes. Several minutes later I got another message saying the process had failed. Uh-oh… what do I do now I thought…

My father told me a friend of theirs had recently had a hard disk problem too. He said they had to use a data recovery company to get the data off the hard drive but couldn’t remember the name of the company. A phone call later he told me the data recovery company was called Datlabs. But they weren’t in Edinburgh they were in Glasgow. Could we not use a company in Edinburgh I asked? He told me that his friend had done exactly the same thing but the the company in Edinburgh were not very good and he got the impression that they didn’t know what they were doing.

I agreed we should then follow my father’s friend’s recommendation and drive across to Glasgow to see the Datlabs data recovery people. OMG, I’m very glad we did. They were able to look at the hard drive and tell me one of the heads was about to fail. This apparently was bad, they said there was probably only a limited amount of time before the drive failed completely and recommended they get the data from it ASAP…. To Be Continued

When you store important information on a hard disk drive, you take the chance of losing that information because hard disk drives can break for a variety of different reasons. If you’re not computer literate, losing data on a hard drive can be difficult because you don’t know what to do to recover your data. Fortunately, there are companies that can help you get that data back. These are known as data recovery companies and they can retrieve data from nearly any type of hard drive in any type of condition. So when you find yourself in a situation where you have lost valuable information you should not assume that this data can not be retrieved.

There are some companies that specialise in repairing damaged hard drives. In the process of retrieving your data, theses data recovery companies can also repair your hard disk. Types of the problems data recovery companies can repair include broken boards, mechanical hard drive faults such as the ‘click of death’ and beeping hard drives. A recommended company in the UK are RAID and Server Data Recovery – you would use a hard drive recovery company when your local IT provider can no longer help you.

Sometimes when there is no damage to the hard disk, software programs can be used to help you retrieve your data by yourself. There are usually trial versions available on the internet that will tell you what they can and can’t recover first. If you decide you want to recover the data they find you’ll have to buy the program which usually costs several pounds. But at least it will get your data back for you. A word of caution though, what may at first appear to be a simple hard drive problem may be something far more serious and trying to recover the data yourself may cause many more problems. So if in doubt, you should always seek professional help as there could be problems inside your disk that prevent it from working properly.

Remember that just because your hard disk breaks or the information on it seems to have disappeared, this doesn’t mean that the data is lost forever. Skilled data retrieval companies that can find and rescue lost data on a damaged hard drive. In the process of restoring the data, the hard drive problems that caused the data to go missing in the first place will be fixed. This is helpful because it insures that it won’t happen again.

In recent times, CCTV systems have received a great deal of interest as security has become a significant issue to most people. There is a huge demand for CCTV security systems not just in the United Kingdom but also worldwide. Let us look at some of the most important considerations concerning CCTVs so that you can understand the fundamentals.

Image Resolution
An important thing to consider is the quality of video and image resolution the system records in. Resolution is generally measured in TVL (the number of television lines produced by the cameras. If you want a CCTV system that records high resolution video and still images, you’ll require one with a TVL level towards the top end. If you think there’s a chance you’ll need to use the video recorded images in court (eg. in case of robbery), be sure to buy in a high resolution camera.

The Types Of Available CCTV Camera
Avoid getting the first setup you see. It is vital that you have a basic of the different types of camera on offer so you’ll know you’re getting the correct one for your business.

1. Standard
Standard types of camera are affordable and produce decent enough quality video and still images. One downside is that a decent source of light is necessary in order to get decent quality images. This means that these types of camera are virtually useless at night.

2. Infra Red
Infrared CCTV setups are able to see in darkness. This makes them a very useful security tool. Money is will be saved on lighting and you’ll have system that provides high quality video and images regardless of the conditions.

3. DVRs (Digital Video Recorders)
DVRs produce good quality images and are ideal for finding and viewing specific moments in time. Many DVRs will let you to remotely monitor the footage recorded from anywhere using the net.

4. PTZ Setups
PTZ cameras otherwise known as Pan, Tilt and Zoom can be remotely controlled. These cameras often housed in mesh housings and are controlled by monitoring companies in the area.

Computer Crime: What Does A Computer Data Forensics Investigator Do…

Computer (or ‘cyber’) crime is growing. As reported by police briefings, the number of computer forensics cases has been progressively increasing year on year. In the beginning, the industry literature used the term of computer forensics to specify the specific part of forensic science dealing with the study and retrieval of various material discovered in computer systems. The field expanded to digital forensics to include the examination and research of all the devices that are able to store electronic data. These kind of investigations are generally conducted in relationship to a crime, which is why it is essential that the computer forensics investigator to have the required training, but also a strong experience in the field. The responsibility of such an investigator is different from that of a system or network supervisors.

The most usual application of digital forensics investigations is usually to discredit or support hypotheses before a court of law, either criminal or civil. When it comes to digital discovery, an investigator can also be beneficial in the private sector, along the lines of corporate security and internal investigations. No matter what the case, the work of a computer forensics investigator follows a standard procedure that starts with the seizure of storage devices and continues on with its acquisition, also called forensic imaging. It is very important that the investigator has as much information as is possible before going through these steps. A very first step is frequently interviewing any individuals who can supply information in connection to the case.

The specialized processes start with the acquisition of the volatile evidence, which is the data which might change or vanish swiftly if incorrectly handled. After this step, which is often difficult to conduct, depending on the amount of access the investigator has to the computer or digital equipment. After that comes the acquisition of physical storage, including memory cards, hard disks, removable disks or USB hard disks, which will be forensically imaged, in order to ensure the continuity of the operational system, whilst additionally using the devices as evidence.

The world of digital forensics is fascinating, but it is also complicated and demanding. A good computer forensics investigator should not only be highly trained and experienced in the field, but additionally ready to step out of the technical world and into the courtroom. Testifying is normally the most demanding part of an investigator’s job. In court, you need to have the ability to translate the technical forensic language to situational basics that people can fully grasp. No matter how perfect an investigation, a poor presentation in court can easily kill it.