Data Recovery & Computer Forensics Blog

After having, friends and employees effected by the whole week of central texas fires, we decided to begin offering assistance to the any victim of these devastating fires by providing free evaluations for all service levels and $500 off our data recovery services.  We want to do this as close to our cost as possible and then we will assist you in getting reimbursed from your insurance provider.  We can take care of your computer or storage devices including USB memory cards, camera memory cards, iPads, iPhones and other removable media that has been exposed to fire, water, or physical damage.  We can help the fire victims recover critical data including irreplaceable photos, financial records, and other important information.

We also have an employee who lives in Steiner Ranch who can assist in finding, cleaning up and transporting and damaged media to our lab for recovery if necessary.  Please call us at 512-301-5700 and we will talk you through the process.

Here is what a nice customer we helped last year with a fire posted on the Steiner Ranch Social Commities Facebook page this week:

“We lost our home in Steiner over a year ago.  For those families retrieving their computers specifically those with a hard drive, do not turn it on!  Take them immediately and have the data removed. We were very fortunate that all data was retrieved from our 3 computers that received major fire, smoke and water damage. Flashback Data @ 866-786-5700 www.flashbackdata.com  did an amazing job and all was covered by insurance.”   - Suzanne Holman Steadman

 

Once again, we are here to help.  Please call us with any questions or concerns.

For the 2nd time in 3 years Flashback Data has won the Innovation Practices Award at the 2011 Greater Austin Business Awards in the small business category.  We are honored to be recognized for our forward-thinking achievements including our highly acclaimed ASCLD Lab International and ISO 17025 Accreditations.  Flashback Data is still the only non-governmental digital forensics lab in the world to hold this accreditation.  Press Release.

For more information on the awards and a list of finalists please visit: http://www.austinchamber.com/membership/events/signature-events/business-awards.php

Back in 2004, we created one of the first client extranets in the data recovery industry.  This allowed customers to interact with the lab and see real notes from the technicians as they were working on their damaged media.  Many data recovery companies followed suit and created their own type of client portal.

As of 2 weeks ago, we have been beta testing our brand new client portal with new customers, and the response has been overwhelming.  Therefore, we are moving clients completely over to the new system this week.  We are very excited about this new way to help and interact with customers and we feel this is the most complete extranet in the data recovery industry. Continue Reading »

There is a relatively new phenom in the hard drive industry. Hard Drive enclosures have become a crucial part of the recovery process with some external USB hard drives. If your external drive encrypts the data for you, then be sure to keep the enclosure with the drive when you send it in for repair/recovery and make sure you make a note to keep the enclosure intact and with the drive. If you are unsure whether or not your dirve might be encrypted, be on the safe side and keep the enclosure.

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In forensics, one of the recurring themes we note when talking to professionals – both in the electronic evidence field and in other professions – is the calculus between client sophistication as a consumer of their profession and the quality of the service they can provide.

It’s not unusual for us to get a call from an attorney directing us to perform a specific task in a specific manner.  When the client knows (i) exactly what they’re asking for and (ii) exactly what they will get back, everyone is happy.  The challenge comes when what they’re asking for won’t result in what they want.  Too often, this is because the client wrongly believes he is asking the right question or using the right methodology to attain his goal.  Nearly every attorney is aware of electronic evidence, but often only casually so.
 
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“A plan is a list of actions arranged in whatever sequence is thought likely to achieve an objective.” - John Argenti, author and founder of the Strategic Planning Society

In military school it was taught to always have a plan, a contingency plan, and an emergency plan in place before moving forward to achieve the objective.  In business, most people understand that a business always needs a plan, but few know that a contingency plan is also needed to be put in place in case something in the plan goes wrong.  Even fewer people understand the importance of an emergency plan in case the contingency plan fails, until it is too late.

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So as most of us have witnessed, most manufactures of computers come with fancy ways to restore your computer back to its factory defaults as it shipped when you first got it.  They can have small system partitions on your hard drive that contain the files needed to restore  you computer back to the way it was when you first bought it.  On other occasions they will also send out the CD/DVD’s necessary to do the same thing.  This is very handy for when you want to start out fresh again since sometimes a system can accumulate tons of stuff you no longer want and have no idea on how to get rid of it all.

Other times your system starts to get the famous blue screen of death while booting causing you to not be able to get into windows due to corrupted system files.  System restores can fix this as well.

However, if the data on the drive is important and you do not want to lose it, DO NOT RUN A SYSTEM RESTORE.  Do not let anyone else run a system restore or tell you to run a system restore.  Even if you have a “tech” friend that says a system restore will fix it.  Oh, it will fix the problem sometimes, but at the expense of losing your data.

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If you have engine failure in your car, do you immediately turn to the internet to look for ‘how to fix my car’s engine?’  Maybe so, but do you then attempt to take the valve cover off yourself and replace the valves and head gasket yourself even though you have never done anything like that in your life?  Not likely.

Do you ever self-diagnose medical problems on the internet?  I know I do, but I have yet to try to perform surgery on myself.

So why do so many people try basically the same thing with their hard drive?

Bottom line:  If your data is really valuable, do not tinker or try internet tricks on your drive.  And here is why…

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As an industry leader in data recovery for flash media such as digital camera memory cards, we feel like we might be able to help a few of you from ever loosing your data in the first place.  If you’re on our blog because you just experienced a data disaster – you accidentally formatted your memory card, deleted important images, or the card simply stopped working – STOP immediately and set the card aside.  Continuing to use the card increases the chances that you are overwriting images, and many recovery software programs can actually make the problem worse.  Contact us for help.

Read on for some tips to prevent data loss from digital camera memory cards (such as SD, SDHC, and CF cards).

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Data Recovery and Computer Forensic Examinations are relatively new concepts compared to the Rubik’s cube.  The services we provide are incident driven and are usually only needed when a disaster occurs.  The person experiencing the disaster usually has very little time to research and explore.  Thus, it requires them to go off of a referral, scan the internet, or pull out the yellow pages without really understanding what is all involved in the service and what are the potential outcomes after the service has been provided. 

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