Its Gone!!!!
by Gary Woods

I've already written the "backup your data" column, but let's say you didn't listen and all your data is just gone. So, whatcha' gonna' do??? Well, sooner or later you're going to have to come into contact with a company called Ontrack http://www.ontrack.com/

This company has 11 data-recovery labs around the world with one right in Oxnard. They recover data from fire-damaged drives, drives that have spent time at the bottom of a lake, drives with wine and coffee spills and they've even recovered data from a drive with a bullet hole in it. Since they opened in 1987, Ontrack has recovered lost files from over 200,000 systems. And in the in the past year they've processed more than 30,000 hard drives.

If you've accidentally deleted a file or your disk image is corrupted in someway, engineers can often sort things out over the Internet, by tapping into your PC and employing a suite of remote data recovery tools. If your data is still on the disk Ontrack can probably recover it for you.

The problems come when the platters themselves have been damaged. When that happens it's a trip to the "Clean Room" for your drive. They will open the cover of the drive and assess the damage.

Ontrack charges an initial consultation fee of $100. For this price, engineers will tell you exactly what they recovered. Then, if you want your data recovered you have to pay an additional $400 to $2,000.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910