Must-Have Professional Data Recovery Tool

Let’s say your computer won’t boot up, but you suspect that there’s nothing wrong with the hard drive. Or you suspect that a hard drive is failing, but you want to quickly try it in several computers before declaring it to be dead or in need of being sent to a company that specializes in hard drive data recovery.

There is one device that you simply must have to make your data recovery efforts easier. With this in your tool box (it doesn’t take up much room), you can access any drive sitting on your shelf or any drive that comes in the door to get a first look at whether or not it is failing. With this one tool, you can tell immediately what kind of data recovery job–if any–you have ahead of you.

As a professional data recovery expert, you know the rules before you get started. So if you decide that it’s time to power up that drive and have a look-see with the power on, by all means, get this tool in your toolbox as soon as possible!

Professional Data Recovery Device

So what is this one device that every data recovery professional must have?

It is the Universal Drive Adapter.

This product allows you to connect almost any hard drive to just about any computer with a USB port available.

Good Hard Drive, Bad Motherboard

If you are sure that the drive is working properly, but the computer is failing, “data recovery” is merely a case of “data restoration,” the simple process of connecting your old–but good–hard drive to a new computer and copying all of your data onto it.

This happened to me a couple years ago. The motherboard (or logic board, as it is called in the Apple world) on my iMac was failing intermittently. (I won’t go into the details here, but it was fairly obvious that the drive was not the failing part).

Once I realized that I had a problem, I immediately made a complete backup of the entire hard drive. I kept using the machine for a few days, but I began making sure that my data backups happened much more often than usual. (Normally, I use an automated backup scheme).

The decision to purchase a new iMac rather than repair the old one made the most sense to me, so when it came time to get my data off the fully backed-up drive, I just connected it to the new computer. I removed the hard drive from the old computer and used it as the “source” for my data recovery operation. Fortunately, everything worked perfectly and I didn’t have to resort to restoring from my backups. I was copying data from the very drive that I had been using all along.

What made this possible? I purchased a Universal Drive Adapter from Newer Technology (www.newertech.com). There are similar adapters on the market from other manufacturers. I have not tried many of them. I had heard about positive experiences from other people, so I purchased this one and have been very pleased with it. I have the older version (from two years ago). It does not have the nice LEDs on it to tell you what’s happening on the device.

If You Open the Case, You Need This Device

Who should own a Universal Data Adapter?

Hard Drive Data Recovery for Everyone:

• Every professional data recovery technician
• Every IT professional that works with computer hardware
• Most anybody that has opened a computer case
• Anybody that wants to be prepared to recover data from a hard drive

Not Just for Hard Drives

With the Universal Drive Adapter, in addition to just about any hard drive, many optical and removable-media drives can be connected to just about any other computer’s USB port and recover your data.

Data Recovery from Virus-Infected Hard Drive

Another use of the device is to recover data from a hard drive that is infected by a virus or worm. One strategy is to access the drive from an operating system that is not susceptible to that virus. For example, you can usually get all the data from the boot drive of a Windows machine that will not boot up by taking the drive out and using the Universal Drive Adapter to connect it to a computer that boots with Linux or Mac OS X (or another operating system).

Data Recovery Using Multiple Operating Systems

One professional data recovery technique calls for trying to access a faulty hard drive with several operating systems. For example, if the drive was originally in a Windows machine, take the drive to computers with other versions of Windows, and to computers with Mac OS X, Linux (Knoppix, etc.), FreeBSD, or other operating systems to see if any of those computers can access the hard drive. This device is perfect for data recovery technique.

Every Drive an External Hard Drive

Other uses for the Universal Drive Adapter include:

• Erasing a stack of old hard drives
• Checking a stack of hard drives for important data
• Archiving data
• Loaning to a friend to help him or her migrate data
• Recycling old drives
• Making a drive bootable to test other operating systems
• Update your operating system on an external hard drive first
• Test bench for a failing drive
• Make any drive an external hard drive

Just In Case

Data Recovery Preparedness in Advance of Trouble

If you don’t own a device that will let you connect a hard drive to another computer using the USB port, do yourself a favor and get a Universal Drive Adapter now–before trouble comes. You will be glad you have this on your shelf just waiting for that trouble! I use this adapter quite often. Usually not as an emergency device, but rather a very convenient device that makes use of all those hard drives laying around.

Professional Data Recovery “Swiss Army Knife”

Newer Technology calls their Universal Drive Adapter the “Swiss Army Knife” of Disk Connectivity. Even if you don’t buy their product, make sure you have a similar way to connect a drive to your computer so you can recover your data the moment you need it!