Hard Disk / Floppy Disk / Zip Drive Forensics Tweet  

Since the early days of computers, the need to store data and software was paramount. After a short but very dynamic history, the hard disks (HD) became the most popular way of permanent (or long term) storage of data. Until only a few years ago, floppy disks (FD) used to be the preferred medium for making backups, install new software or use as a mobile storage medium. Then came along the ZIP drive, a super-FD but smaller in capacity from a HD. ZIP drives were initially very popular amongst graphic designers, most of who (until the late 90s) were using Macs rather than PCs.

The floppy disks moved from the 8-inch ones to the 5.25'' down to the 3.5''. The smaller the disk, the higher the capacity. Floppy disks were handy, but not always reliable.

Hard disk drives (HDD) have gone a long way. In the mid 1980s a good hard disk would be 10Mb maximum (many PCs did not have hard disks) whereas now an average PC has a disk of 80Gb; that is an increase by a factor of 80,000. The amount of data we store is increasing exponentially and with it the cost of losing these data.

Hard disks may fail for a number of reasons. It might be the end of their useful life, it could be an overheating, a power surge, or a shock from dropping. In most cases, we can recover a large portion of the data, if not all of it. In other cases, this may not be possible.

Of course we can not guarantee in advance that 100% of a hard disk can be recovered, without a preliminary examination.

You may rest assure that if there is something to salvage from your disk, it will be recovered.

Click here to see which hard disks we can recover.