Water damage: unfortunately, a customer turned on the drive after a liquid had intruded. There is no way to fix this, since even the installation of new heads won't help (they will not be able to run over the damaged area).

First, the drive has to be extracted from the computer to let the technician find the problem. There is, of course, no need to do so if you send your drive to Ontrack directly, but it is necessary if you send your computer or laptop to the data recovery specialist. Usually, you will call Ontrack to initiate contact. Ontrack has numerous branch offices worldwide and provides multilingual hotline personnel. Make sure, however, to give detailed information about what exactly happened so they know what they will be dealing with.

A remote recovery might be the most convenient option for customers. In this case, you don't even have to remove the defective drive; Ontrack provides the necessary software for you to install. Then you initiate a connection with Ontrack, enabling them to access your system. Since an "intrusion" of your computer by the data recovery people is unwanted, Kroll Ontrack chose this connection method deliberately. After connection build-up, the data recovery specialist will be able to run a remote diagnostic analysis of your drive and recover data via the Internet, if possible. Since a simple undelete might already work for you, it is worth the shot. On-site data recovery is also an option for Ontrack customers; removing a drive from large memory arrays in SANs or other memory structures is sometimes not an option.

If this doesn't work or your drive can be analyzed as defective acoustically - an experienced data recovery specialist knows what's wrong simply by listening to the sound it makes - you need to send in the drive or the complete RAID array by mail, or personally deliver it to an Ontrack branch office. In a first attempt to recover software, Ontrack connects the patient to a host computer and runs its software "Easy Recovery". This most likely helps with user-made mistakes such as accidentally deleted partitions or formatting. The primary goal is always to read existing data and copy it off the drive completely. Thereafter, the specialist works with data copied to a server.

If this doesn't work either, the circuit board can be exchanged as well. To do so, you need a compatible combination of hardware revision of your electronic board and the installed firmware. Oftentimes, you simply have to proceed by a systematic "trial-and-error" of all possible combinations. It is obvious that the data specialist needs a huge range of parts at hand. Kroll Ontrack tries to store common hard drives of all capacities and interfaces in-house, but essential hardware can also be sent between offices on short notice, since the data recovery specialist also has a list of each and every component needed for a swap.