Do
make sure when you ship your drive it is well protected.
Do
make sure that if your drive is exposed to natural or man-made disaster, you
seal the drive in an appropriate container until it can be examined in a professional
and controlled environment.
Do
your best to remember and disclose any pre-existing conditions that occurred
prior to data loss when submitting your device for Recovery Service. This usually
helps us to expedite the service and get data back to you quickly by taking
additional testing and guesswork out of the recovery scenario.
Do
enclose details about the data files you are most concerned about when shipping
your hard drive or media.
Do
enclose a business card or company letterhead with your media. This, along with
your tracking number assigned to your job, helps us to quickly identify the
media and contact the appropriate personnel regarding the status of the data
recovery in house.
Don't run utilities if you are not familiar with the programs! They can overwite
existing data files. If you happen to run any utility, make sure you can UNDO
any alterations if they prove unsuccessful.
Don't expose drives or media to magnetic fields that can erase data... simple
things like telephones and monitors can cause irreparable damage.
Don't read backup tapes without write protecting first. Many users overwrite
or format tapes when they accidentally type in the wrong command.
Don't forget to verify a backup once the backup process is complete.
Don't format your drive! Even a low level format can cause problems if you are
not sure what is initially wrong with your device.
Don't open the drive (crack the seal) if you are not familiar with hard drives
and are not in a controlled environment! This disturbs the hardware settings
and allows contaminants to settle internally on the media surface -- including
oils from finger tips! This can be fatal if heads and/or additional contaminants
are allowed to make contact with the platter surface.
Don't continue to execute commands in accessing your drive if you believe head-to-surface
contact has occurred. Heads can break and the storage properties of the platter
surface will be destroyed making it less likely that a successful recovery can
occur.