Factory Reset Tool - A discussion

The latest PCs and Laptops available now a days, have a useful recovery partition (sometimes called a restore partition or factory reset tool). The user can use this option to quickly restore your laptop to the same state that it was when you first bought the computer.

But please note here : it will remove you data on the hard drive so, it is suggested to be the last option.

Different manufacturers use different methods of accessing the recovery partition. Here are some of the familiar names in this regard:

Acer eRecovery:

• Plug in the AC adapter and battery, then turn the system on

• Immediately, press ALT on the keyboard and start tapping F10. Continue holding ALT and tapping F10 as the unit boots up.

• A screen stating "Starting Acer Erecovery" should appear. (Release ALT and stop tapping F10 at this point)

• There will be 4 options:
  1. Restore system to factory default
  2. Restore system from user backup
  3. Restore system from cd/dvd
  4. Exit

Asus System Recovery:

• Turn on the notebook, Press F9 when you see the ASUS logo, and then choose the second item to recover OS to the first partition.

• Press [F9] during bootup (requires a Recovery Partition)

• Press [Enter] to select Windows Setup [EMS Enabled]

• Read the “ASUS Preload Wizard” screen and click Next.

• Select a partition option and click Next.

• Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the recovery process.

Dell Restore Partition:

• Turn on the computer.

• When the Dell splash screen appears during the computer startup process, press and hold and then press . Then, release both keys at the same time.

• In the Dell PC Restore by Symantec window, click Restore. Alternatively, press to highlight Restore, and then press .

Gateway Recovery Partition:

• Turn on your computer, then press Alt+F10 during startup. Gateway Recovery Management opens.

• Click on Restore system from factory default.

• Click on Next. Your hard drive’s original, factory-loaded contents are recovered. This process will take several minutes.

HP / Compaq System Recovery:

• Turn on the comptuer and repeatedly press F10 at the HP logo until the recovery screen appears.

• When the recovery screen appears, press "Next" and then "Yes" to perform a non-destructive recovery. To perform a destructive recovery, click "Advanced" and then "Yes".

• After the recovery is finished, the computer will reboot.

Sony Recovery Partition:

• Turn off your computer.

• Restart your computer.

• When the VAIO logo appears on the computer's screen, briefly press the F10 key on the computer keyboard.

• The VAIO Recovery Wizard appears.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select one of the available menu options.

Toshiba Recovery:

• Make sure the computer is turned off.

• Press and hold the 0 (zero) key on your keyboard while powering on the computer. When the computer powers on, the TOSHIBA HDD Recovery Utility screen displays.

To recover windows data visit: http://www.hard-drive-recovery-software.com/windows-data-recovery.php

Causes and cure of hard drive failure

The hard disk fails due to to hard disk malfunctions and the stored information cannot be accessed with a properly configured computer. A disk may also fail due to an external factors like fire or water or suffering a sharp impact which can crash the head of hard disk..

The most common type of hard disk failure is head crash. It must be fixed by a hard drive recovery specialist with proper equipments. Hard drive platters are coated with an extremely thin layer of non-electrostatic lubricant, so that the read-and-write head will simply glance off the surface of the platter should a collision occur. However, this head hovers mere nanometers from the platter's surface which makes a collision an acknowledged risk. Another cause of failure is a faulty air filter. The air filters on today's hard drives equalize the atmospheric pressure and moisture between the hard drive enclosure and its outside environment.

If the filter fails to capture a dust particle, the particle can land on the platter, causing a head crash if the head happens to sweep over it. After a hard drive crash, each particle from the damaged platter and head media can cause a bad sector. These, in addition to platter damage, will quickly render a hard drive useless. A hard drive also includes controller electronics, which occasionally fail. In such cases, it may be possible to recover all data.

Since hard drives are mechanical devices, they will all eventually fail. While some may not fail prematurely, many hard drives simply fail because of worn out parts. Many hard drive manufacturers include a Mean Time Between Failures figure on product packaging or in promotional literature. These are calculated by constantly running samples of the drive for a short amount of time, analyzing the resultant wear and tear upon the physical components of the drive, and extrapolating to provide a reasonable estimate of its lifespan.

Since this fails to account for phenomena such as the aforementioned head crash, external trauma (dropping or collision), power surges, and so forth, the Mean Time Between Failures number is not generally regarded as an accurate estimate of a drive's lifespan. Hard drive failures tend to follow the concept of the bathtub curve. Hard drives typically fail within a short time if there is a defect present from manufacturing.

If a hard drive proves reliable for a period of a few months after installation, the hard drive has a significantly greater chance of remaining reliable. Therefore, even if a hard drive is subjected to several years of heavy daily use, it may not show any notable signs of wear unless closely inspected. On the other hand, a hard drive can fail at any time in many different situations.

Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_failure

How to tackle the Missing of Boot Recover Signature ?

The Windows computers which are based on Intel depend on BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) for loading and executing bootstrap code. The ‘int 0×19′ generated by Bootstrap routine of BIOS loads the first sector of hard drive in memory at 0000:7C00H segment address.

MBR (Master Boot Record), the first physical segment on hard drive , contains bootstrap loader code. Sometimes the system does not boot due to missing boot code and the system becomes inaccessible which makes all your data, stored on hard drive, inaccessible and cause serious data loss situations. In such circumstances, you need to perform hard drive recovery to fix the problem.

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Interruption in Chkdsk Process in Windows may result data loss

In Microsoft Windows , Chkdsk is used to verify logical integrity of the file system on hard drive. When there occurs any inconsistency with the file system, it corrects the error and make the things continue. Here, its also very necessary to mention that an interruption to the Chkdsk process can result in hard drive damage and cause serious data loss. One can find the solution to this problem through windows data recovery.

Mr. Robin Watson explains the phenomenon in more detail CLICK HERE

Freezing of Windows Vista at CRCDISK.SYS

The biggest disadvantage of halting of Windows boot process is inaccessibility of data saved in the hard drive. Booting can halt at any stage, for example while accessing CRCDISK.SYS. A CRCDISK.SYS is a disk block verification filter driver that performs CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) on the files stored in hard drive.

Mostly the booting process halts when CRCDISK.SYS is installing an incompatible device driver on your system. To access your data after the boot process halts at CRCDISK.SYS, you will need to restore the data from an updated backup. But in case, the backup file is or inaccessible, then you will have to opt for advanced third-party hard drive recovery software.

To illustrate the above problem, consider a practical case wherein you attempt to boot your Windows Vista based system. While the booting process was in progress, a black screen on your computer screen appeared. The screen contained no errors. Again, when you tried to boot your system in safe mode, it got stuck on CRCDISK.SYS. The boot process halted at CRCDISK.SYS every time you tried to start your system.

Cause:

The main cause for boot process halting at CRCDISK.SYS is that the system is corrupt or loading an incompatible device driver.

Resolution:

To surmount the above problem, you need to re-install Windows Vista operating system. Re-installation resolves the above problem and allows you to boot your system. But, the process deletes all the data from your hard drive. In such cases, you can restore the data from a backup. However, if no backup is available, then you need to look for an effective hard drive recovery software .

Such Hard Drive Data Recovery tools use advanced recovery methods to recoup lost files post formatting. These applications can be used by any non-technical user, having basic knowledge of computers.

Hard Drive Reliability and Time between Failures

The user cannot rely cent percent on hard drive's performance . Because even a minor careless step of its user can make the data stored it, totally inaccessible and eventually causes data loss situations. Here , all that the user needs here is hard drive recovery software to overcome the problem.

Among all the hard drive reliability specifications MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) is one of them. Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the predicted elapsed time between inherent failures of a system during operation. MTBF can be calculated as the arithmetic mean (average) time between failures of a system.

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Linux Hard Drive Recovery After Crash

Linux is a popular operating system, known as an actual techies' operating system. The robust architecture and open source coding of the operating system insures that it can't be affected by viruses and other malicious programs easily. However, even the Linux is prone to situations where you may lose hard drive volumes and data. Hard drive crash is one such kind of situation that leads to significant data loss and needs Linux Hard Drive Recovery to be sorted out.

The hard drive crash is a situation where you cannot access your data from a properly configured system, however the data is still there. The hard drive may get crashed during normal computer operations, or because of external reasons, like power outages and heat. You must have an effective backup plan to save your data, but if it is not available; commercial hard drive recovery software and services are required to overcome the problem.

Linux hard drive may crash due to numerous reasons, which are broadly categorized into two major groups: Logical Failure and Physical Failure. Irrespective of the cause of hard drive crash, your data is still recoverable from Linux hard drive.

Symptoms of Linux hard drive crash

• Computer is unresponsive or unbootable.
• You encounter error messages, which indicates hard drive is unrecognized.
• Black screen at start up.
• Grinding or clicking sounds coming from hard drive.
• System generally stops responding, restarts, or you cannot run any application.
• Error messages related to missing or damaged data structures, like file system and Superblock.

When you encounter any of the above situations with your Linux computer, the very first thing that you need to do is determine the type of problem. Whether it is logical failure or it's caused by breakdown of mechanical hard drive components.

In case of logical hard drive failure, you can recover lost data in a quick and easy way through Linux Hard Drive Recovery Software. The applications carry out extensive scan of whole hard drive using advanced scanning methods and extract all lost, missing, and inaccessible data from it.

Stellar Information Systems Limited is the foremost provider of both types of Linux Hard Drive Recovery solutions. The software is able to recover data from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32 file system volumes of all major Linux distributions.

FAT Corruption and Windows Data Recovery

Due to the performance reasons, main sectors are not allocated in FAT file system and it takes too much of effort to track all the small sized files. So, to resolve this issue the hard drive is divided clusters. And Cluster are divided into sectors. Usually, a Cluster represents 4 to 64 sector.

FAT stores information about the clusters and a description about how it is being used. It tells OS about availability of the hard drive parts and detail of the allocated parts. The details of Fat is stored in hard drive just after the VBR (Volume Boot Record). Two copies of FAT are available in each volume.

So, it can be mentioned here that Damage of FAT can damage data and lead to a data loss situation. Although the second copy of FAT can be used as backup but the problem is that the second copy is stored next to first one. And if the bad sectors affect the first copy of FAT, there are very strong chances that the second one is also affected.

These situations can easily be handled by , hard drive recovery software which use the powerful for quick and effective hard drive data recovery.