When you get the dreaded Device not recognised or Not formatted. Would you like to format? on a USB drive, or your computer won’t boot with a No boot device available or similar message – then you may have experienced what most of us will in our lifetime – a hard drive failure.

When this happens there are options for recovery. Sometimes only part of the disk is damaged or written incorrectly and advanced recovery software can rebuild the “table of contents” of the drive and allow recovery to another drive – OJ Networks can help in these cases. We can boot your system from a USB stick or CD and run recovery tools over the drive. Sometimes we need to remove the drive and put it in a hard drive caddy to complete the recovery. Items are usually recovered to another USB drive. Often times you may lose at least some of the data because part of the drive or certain files are damaged.

In worst case scenarios – often when the drive is not recognised and is making a clicking or griding noise – the arm inside the drive has crashed into the spindle of discs. This is the hardest and most expensive recovery and as it involves a specialised service who often pull the drive apart in a vacuum sealed environment. Recovery in these cases costs over $1000.

We suggest that all important data is set to be automatically backed-up to avoid these situations.

Make sure you have two copies on different drives (or the cloud!). OJ Networks can provide backup solutions for your business.

[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]Remember that just because it is an external drive doesn’t make it a “backup”![/quote]

Authored by Ian

Ian Johnson is a Director of OJ Networks. He has been working in IT since 1995. Mentored by the best, Ian started as Technical Support Officer for an innovative dialup ISP in Brisbane “Hub Communications”. He progressed to become a Web Design and Programmer in ASP, ASP.NET and PHP during his time at “The Lab Development Group” with David Vandenberg amonst others. Ian has been working as a Consultant on the Sunshine Coast since 2001 and became a Microsoft Certified Information Technology Professional (MCITP) Server Administrator in 2010 after which he formed OJ Networks. He has assisted numerous small businesses to reach their potential through IT Infrastructure Planning and Implementation and Web design, Development and Web Marketing. You can connect with Ian on Linked In.