Lost Tape Data? Get This Recovery Tip Now

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In this 21st century, information technology has become a part of our lives, we simply can’t do without it. The usage of tape drive has virtually lost over to other media of storage. However, for those who are curious of what is tape data recovery. This article is for you. It is the recovery of any data that has been lost on a tape, obviously, but what it involves is quite interesting.

Even with a solid plastic casing protect the tape within, the tape cartridge like any other storage devices, can be damaged from smoke, water, or dropping the cartridge from high levels. Extreme exposure to high temperatures, its internal mechanism of the tape might fails, thus causing errors located within the tape’s surface.

With more organizations using tape as a storage media, damages done by water, absence of oxide, folds in the tape material, sliced edges, bad oxide and even frictional damage tape data can be recovered from tapes. There are generally two types of tape data recovery. These are known as physical recovery and logical recovery.

What is physical recovery for a tape data?

When there is a physical damage on the tape, a physical tape recovery is applicable. Physical damage such as cartridge crack, tape damage, failure in the internal mechanism of the tape and etc may prevents the data from being read efficiently.

Other physical damage such as the deterioration of magnetic coatings on the actual tape surface, broken wheels or cartridge housings, folded tape, broken tape, stretched tape, and any other damages connected with the actual tape of the machinery. The damages mentioned here are not exhaustive and gives the reason why a physical recovery is needed.

There are lots of companies or stores promise a high recovery rate from using physical recovery methods. They claimed that they have over 98 percent success rate of their recovery techniques.

If you thought you have damaged your tape storage media by accidentally dropped it in the mud, water or simply from high level, then you should immediately stopped what you are doing and head to those tape recovery offices so that those recovery professionals can help you.

What is logical recovery?

Logical tape data recovery is more complicated than physical recovery, and is also more expensive than the normal recovery techniques.

We need logical recovery is when the data was successfully recorded on the tape, however for some unknown reasons, if it cannot be read. You have to quickly find a way to solve this issue. Also, it does not show any visible form of damage to the tape and the exterior of the tape itself.

The recovery of datafiles in logical recovery requires the expert professional to use multiple versions of the recovery software and take many “passes” at the tape using it.

It is quite normal to retrieve back the lost tape data, but the success rate of using logical recovery methods is much lower than using physical recovery methods.

Tags: Data-Recovery