Data Recovery

Hard disk drives are remarkable reliable but can still fail, and when they do it can mean the loss of important data. What can go wrong within a hard disk, and when something fails must it inevitable result in data loss or can a data recovery service rescue the data? This article details the general failures that can occur and what can be done to recover data when they do.

Tape is sometimes described as unreliable but, with perhaps 60% of the data in the world stored on tape with few problems, this is unfair and might reflect more the difficulty that some people have understanding the concepts of tape data storage, coupled with the sometimes arcane operation of certain tape backup applications. In what ways does tape data storage differ from disk, and is it a robust long term archival medium?