DriveSavers is a data recovery company that specializes in recovering lost or damaged data from hard drives, solid state drives, USB drives, SD cards, and other storage devices. They are known for their high success rates in recovering data, even from drives that have been through catastrophic failures or natural disasters.
What is data recovery?
Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible storage devices. When a storage device fails, the data it contains may become inaccessible. A data recovery company like DriveSavers uses specialized techniques and tools to attempt to recover the maximum amount of data possible from the failed device.
Why is data recovery needed?
There are many reasons why data stored on a device can become inaccessible and require data recovery:
- Physical damage – Dropping a hard drive, getting a device wet, fire or flood damage, etc. can prevent a storage device from being able to access the data.
- Logical failure – Errors in the file system, partitioning issues, corruption, or malware like ransomware can make data inaccessible.
- Mechanical failure – Issues with the physical components in a hard drive or SSD can lead to failure.
- Accidental deletion or formatting – Data can be lost if it is accidentally deleted or a drive is formatted.
Data recovery allows users to get back lost files and information that may otherwise be unrecoverable through normal means.
About DriveSavers
Company history
DriveSavers was founded in 1985 by Scott Gaidano and Jay Hagan and is headquartered in Novato, California. They were one of the first data recovery companies in the industry.
For over 35 years, DriveSavers has focused on providing data recovery solutions for all kinds of storage devices and situations. They can recover data from physically damaged hardware, as well as from drives with deleted, corrupt, or formatted data.
Capabilities
Some key capabilities and services DriveSavers offers include:
- Recovery of data from all types of storage devices – hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, tapes, RAID arrays, memory cards, etc.
- Data recovery from mechanically failed hard drives – seized spindles, crashed platters, and more.
- Recovery from logically damaged devices – those suffering from file system corruption, formatting, etc.
- Clean room recovery using specialized tools and techniques to repair devices.
- Advanced recovery methods for complex cases like RAID recovery.
- Recovery of lost or deleted data.
- Ransomware recovery.
- Tape extraction and conversion to modern formats.
They are capable of recovering data from virtually any storage device, brand, form factor or interface. DriveSavers specialists have decades of experience performing data recovery under all types of situations.
Certifications
DriveSavers data recovery engineers are certified by leading technology manufacturers including:
- Apple
- Oracle
- EMC
- Hitachi
- IBM
- Seagate
- Western Digital
They maintain ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications for quality management and environmental management.
DriveSavers Data Recovery Process
When a storage device arrives at DriveSavers for data recovery, it goes through the following general process:
1. Evaluation
Engineers perform a full diagnostic evaluation of the device to determine the cause of the data loss and best recovery method.
2. Data Recovery Attempt
The device goes to the cleanroom lab where engineers use proprietary tools and techniques to attempt to image or extract the data.
3. Customer Notification
The customer is updated on the recovery status. If no data is recoverable, there is no charge.
4. Data Certification
Recovered data goes through a certification process to validate and organize the files and folders.
5. Return of Data
The customer receives their recovered data on new storage media or via secure cloud download.
This process allows the best chance of successfully recovering data with minimal risk or downtime for the client.
DriveSavers Data Recovery Success Rates
So what is DriveSavers’ success rate for recovering data? Their statistics show:
- A recovery rate of over 98% on all operating hard drives.
- An 84% recovery rate on crashed hard drives.
- A 94% recovery rate for data lost due to accidental formatting or deletion.
- A 100% success rate recovering data from floppy disks, backup tapes, and all other storage media.
These high success percentages demonstrate DriveSavers’ capabilities and expertise across a wide range of devices and data loss scenarios.
Some additional statistics on DriveSavers success rates:
Hard Drive Recovery Rates
| Drive Failure Type | Average Recovery Rate |
|---|---|
| Logical recoveries | 97% |
| Mechanical recoveries | 87% |
Logical recoveries involve lost or corrupted data but the hard drive is still mechanically working. Mechanical recoveries involve drives with physical failure or damage.
Top Data Loss Causes and Recovery Rates
| Cause of Data Loss | Recovery Rate |
|---|---|
| Deleted files | 98% |
| Water/flood damage | 92% |
| Formatted/wiped drive | 100% |
| Corrupted files | 96% |
| Ransomware attack | 92% |
| Fire/smoke damage | 80% |
As shown, for many common data loss situations, DriveSavers achieves recovery rates of over 90%.
Device and Interface Recovery Rates
| Device Type | Average Recovery Rate |
|---|---|
| External hard drives | 95% |
| SD cards | 97% |
| USB flash drives | 98% |
| RAID arrays | 82% |
| NAS devices | 91% |
| Legacy media – floppy disks | 100% |
DriveSavers routinely recovers data from all types of storage devices. Their engineers are experts on a wide range of interfaces and system configurations.
Factors Affecting Data Recovery Success Rates
While DriveSavers provides industry-leading data recovery success rates, there are many factors that influence whether data can be recovered:
Cause and Severity of Data Loss
The reason the data was lost and the extent of the damage to the device greatly affects recovery chances. Logical data losses have higher success rates than mechanical failures or catastrophic physical damage.
Device Type and Configuration
The type of device, interface, complexity and capacity impact success rates. Newer high capacity drives add recovery challenges. A basic USB flash drive is simpler than a RAID array.
Timing
The quicker a failed drive is sent for recovery, the better. Continued use of a failing device decreases success rates.
Encryption
Encrypted data is unrecoverable without the correct encryption key or password.
DriveSavers Capabilities
More advanced techniques allow DriveSavers to recover data when competitors cannot. Their capabilities make extremely difficult recoveries possible.
So while success rates are very high for most scenarios, there are situations where even DriveSavers cannot recover data. However, they provide the best chance of getting data back intact in even the most challenging cases.
Conclusion
To summarize the key points:
- DriveSavers is an industry leader in data recovery with over 35 years of experience.
- They achieve exceptionally high success rates recovering data across all types of storage devices.
- Typical recovery rates are 98% for operating hard drives and 84% for crashed hard drives.
- Deleted, formatted, or corrupted file recovery has about a 96% success rate.
- Factors like device damage, timeliness and encryption affect recoverability.
- DriveSavers provides the best chance of data recovery for any situation.
In most cases, DriveSavers can successfully recover lost data when all other options have been exhausted. Their capabilities, expertise and proprietary techniques allow extremely high success rates across all types of storage devices and data loss situations.