Mac computers use HFS as their native file system. At 24 Hour Data we have many clients that think their external hard drive has failed, because their Mac will not mount the drive. Most External Hard Drive manufacturers like Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, and more Pre-Format drives with Windows file systems. By default most externals are formatted FAT or NTFS.
Macs will see HFS, FAT, and NTFS. However, if you have a Mac you will not be able to write to NTFS formatted drives without a third party application. Many Mac users get a drive from Frys, Best Buy, Comp USA, and so on that is pre-formatted FAT. When they start using the drive they have no issues. This because Macs can read and write to the FAT file system just fine. Posted on: 3/05/2010
Mac computers use HFS as their native file system. At 24 Hour Data we have many clients that think their external hard drive has failed, because their Mac will not mount the drive. Most External Hard Drive manufacturers like Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, and more Pre-Format drives with Windows file systems. By default most externals are formatted FAT or NTFS.
Macs will see HFS, FAT, and NTFS. However, if you have a Mac you will not be able to write to NTFS formatted drives without a third party application. Many Mac users get a drive from Frys, Best Buy, Comp USA, and so on that is pre-formatted FAT. When they start using the drive they have no issues. This because Macs can read and write to the FAT file system just fine. Posted on: 2/22/2010
Solid State Drives are definitely the future of storage. The benefits of SSD are numerous. However, there are several disadvantages with this technology. Here is a list of the Pros and Cons of SSD.
Advantages
Fast
No Moving Parts equals less mechanical failures
Low Power Use
Silent
Ability to endure shock, vibration, temperature variations, altitude
Small Form Factor
Flash SSD have 2X Density of Hard Drives
Disadvantages Posted on: 2/17/2010
This is not our normal blog post, but check out this cool Hard Drive Clock. We couldn’t resist buying one for the 24 Hour Data lab. Our clock is made from a 40GB Western Digital Caviar PATA Hard Drive.
Posted on: 1/12/2010
When a hard drive fails the most important thing to do is listen for abnormal sounds. If you hear sounds like clicking or grinding it is time to power the drive down and call an expert.
Clicking sounds indicate that you have the symptom of a failed head assembly. The concern here is that a failed head can scratch into the platters and cause media damage. The image above shows the effects of heads scratching into the platters. The dark rings you see are media damage. In many cases media damage can leave your hard drive unrecoverable.
Grinding sounds indicate that the hard drive has sustained media damage. The grinding you hear is the heads going over the media damage on the platters. Posted on: 10/23/2009
24 Hour Data today announced its support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In an effort to raise awareness about the importance of early detection of breast cancer, the Dallas-based company will donate 5% of its October sales to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc. (NBCF).
READ MORE
Posted on: 9/13/2009
True USB Flash Drives cost much less and hold less data than Hard Drives. We see clients everyday that lose data on a Flash Drive they did not back up. Most clients think since they paid $40 or less for a drive the data is also less valuable.
The truth is that a .PST Outlook email database can be only a few GBs in size, but be worth several thousand dollars. An Excel spreadsheet or a Word document can be 64KB and worth a great deal to a client.
At 24 Hour Data we see that people put more value on Photos than any other data type. Storing pictures happens to be the main use for Flash media. Photos are a moment in time. Documents can be written again, but pictures are not that easy to recreate.
Flash media can be very expensive to recover. Sometimes costing several hundreds, even thousands in rare cases. The moral to the story is Data is valuable no matter what drive or media it is stored on. Backing up important data is the only way to insure data is not lost. The alternative is a high priced Data Recovery no matter what the media costs.
Posted on: 8/18/2009
24 Hour Data is looking for motivated individuals that have serious Data Recovery experience. We will only consider people that at least 3 years of physical data recovery hands on experience. Please do not apply if you are not qualified. Send your resume to [email protected]
