Hard Disk Recovery

<body background="../images/IntelCADBack.jpg" topmargin="20" leftmargin="20" bgproperties="fixed">  <h2>DWG files on a crashed hard disk, damaged optical disk or other corrupt storage device/media</h2> <p>Disk recovery and DWG data recovery are two totally different specialties. Disk recovery specialists have no clue about the organization of graphic data inside of the AutoCAD DWG file and our DWG recovery wizards have just the basic, common knowledge of the logical / physical organization of data on the disk. Therefore <strong>IntelCAD Systems is not fixing damaged hard disks, optical disks or magnetic tapes</strong> and a disk recovery company cannot do much with a DWG file that was rescued at OS level, but has, for example, a missing table of AutoCAD object handles.</p> <p>The first level of recovery in case of a major device crash belongs to a hard disk recovery company. After files are fixed by such a company at a hardware and operating system level, some DWG files will still be corrupt (due to missing or scrambled data) and AutoCAD will not be able to recover them. </p> <p>In case you have a hard drive crash: <ol> <li>Stop using the computer with the crashed disk immediately.</li> <li>If the data is very valuable and unique (no backup), don't use any of-the-shelf disk recovery software that works with the original device (remember, you have only one chance to rescue data; unwise action might result in losing it permanently). The software might recover some stuff and may lose some, but once you run it, the specialists from the disk recovery service will not be able to help you much, as data will get irreversibly modified.</li> <li>Contact a disk drive recovery company. They can do things like opening up a drive in a so called "class 100 clean room", removing the crashed head and reading disc contents with remaining heads (opening a hard drive in "regular" dirty air and by a non-specialist means killing data for good). For extremely valuable data they can even work at a microscopic level, bit by bit restoring previous values on a disk that was wiped clean. You will find many of these companies on the internet, talk to them and arrange for the shipping of damaged media.</li> <li>Once you have DWG files repaired at operating system level by such a service, you might get, dependent on the extents and location of damages 0% to 100% of data volume back (most often more than 95%). If the drive got physically damaged by the magnetic head crashing into the spinning platter, you might lose some files or directories. If the damage occurred in critical area of the disk (such as a File Allocation Table) the whole contents of the disk might be lost.</li> <li>Successful hard disk repair doesn't necessarily mean that your DWG files will be intact. More often then not, there will be a percentage of DWG files with missing or scrambled chunks that cannot be loaded into AutoCAD. Some of these files will be recoverable with Acad. </li> <li>For fast and accurate assessment of damages to DWG files that were rescued by a disk recovery service check out <strong><a target="_top" href="../auditdwg/">AuditDWG</a></strong>, the latest tool from IntelCAD Systems, available for free evaluation from the downloads section.</li> </ol> <p><strong><font color="#FF0000">The following advice is a preventive measure, it applies only to a healthy disk, before disaster:</font></strong><br> You will have a better chance for successful disk and DWG recovery (should disaster strike), if you minimize fragmentation of your files by running DEFRAG often. An operating system doesn't keep files in one contiguous piece, it puts them in separate clusters, wherever there is free space on a disk. When you use your computer, files are created and deleted, resulting in increasing fragmentation. Running Window defragmenter puts files back into single contiguous spaces. When a disk recovery company is trying to rescue your disk, they try to put together pieces of files scattered all over the disk, using their knowledge of physical and logical data organization on the disk. Obviously, if the file is stored in one contiguous sequence of bytes, it has better chance to be 100% rescued, then when it consists of 100 pieces in different locations on a disk.</p> <hr> <p>Data recovery companies interested in exchanging links with <a href="index.htm" target="_top"><strong>DWG Recovery Services</strong></a> , or in some other form of cooperation, please contact <a href="mailto:info@intelcad.com"><strong>info@intelcad.com</strong></a></p> <hr> <div align="center"><center> <table> <tr> <td><form NAME="Babelfish Translation" ACTION="http://www.intelcad.com/translate" target="_blank"> <p><input TYPE="submit" VALUE="Automatic Deutsche Übersetzung Traduction française Traduzione italiana Traducción española Tradução portugese"><br> </p> </form> </td> </tr> </table> </center></div> <hr> <p>Copyright (c) 1999-2004, IntelCAD Systems<br> The material on this page cannot be published in any form without written permission from IntelCAD Systems.</p> <hr> <blockquote> <p><a target="_top" href="../../index.htm">Home</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../about/index.htm">About IntelCAD Systems</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../contact/index.htm">Contacting IntelCAD Systems</a><br> <a href="../clients/index.htm" target="_top">Partial List Of IntelCAD Clients</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../ordering%20info/index.htm">Ordering Information</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../intel-rc/index.htm">Rebar Detailing (IntelCAD-RC)</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../attext/index.htm">AttExt - Standalone Tool for Attribute Extraction</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../xrepath/index.htm">xRepath - Standalone Tool for Xref Re-Pathing</a><br> <a href="../auditdwg/index.htm" target="_top">Audit DWG Tool</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../dwfin/index.htm">DWF to DWG Converter</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../viewer/index.htm">3D DWG Viewer / Virtual Walkthrough Software</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../down/index.htm">Downloads</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../consult/index.htm">Programming Services</a><br> <a target="_top" href="../autocad/index.htm">Alex's CAD Articles</a><br> <a href="../../translate/index.htm" target="_blank">Free Real-time Automatic Translation: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portugese</a><br> <a href="../../websearch/index.htm" target="_blank">Web Search</a><br> <a href="../cadlinks/index.htm" target="_top">Links to Other CADD Related Sites</a></p> </blockquote> <hr> <p>Any problems (invalid links etc), comments regarding this site, please contact <a href="mailto:webmaster@intelcad.com">webmaster@intelcad.com</a></p> <p>This page was last updated on May 24, 2004</p> <p> </p>  </body>