What is new in Data Recovery?

It’s been a while since we’ve posted here.  
Work moves quickly, and sometimes the days get ahead of all of us.
But even though the blog has been quiet, the lab hasn’t been.
A lot has changed in the data-recovery world, and we wanted to share what that looks like from our side of the bench.  It is amazing how quickly time flies, and storage technology changes. Almost all storage is using encryption to protect its own operating system (System Area) or data. The first 1TB drive we worked on was 4 250GB Maxtor drives, set as a RAID 0 in a Lacie Big Disk.  Now, we have drives that are larger than 20TB and solid-state drives are quickly replacing all boot devices in PCs, Macs, etc. So, the evolution of data recovery must continue to keep pace with the emergence of new technology.

The rise of virtual offices and partner map pages. If you search “data recovery near me” today, you’ll see more companies than ever.
But many of those listings aren’t truly local.
They use virtual addresses and forwarding services.

For customers, that creates real uncertainty:
Who is handling the drive?
Where is it actually going?
What happens if something goes wrong?

This industry depends on trust — and when everything feels distant or anonymous, that trust becomes harder to find.

Sending a drive out to a data recovery company, is not a bad thing.  The problem with virtual offices and partner locations is misrepresentation and cost. Virtual offices and partner commissions are expensive, and cost gets passed on to you.

We’ve always believed that data recovery is personal.
People deserve to know where their drive is, who’s working on it, and what the real chances of recovery are.

That’s why all recoveries are still handled right here in Tampa – St. Petersburg -Clearwater.
When you call, you speak directly with the technicians doing the work — not a script, not a call center.
Your drive stays in one lab, under one team, from start to finish.

And the work itself still requires hands-on expertise:

• Repairing drives with mechanical failures
• Recovering RAID-5 and RAID-6 systems after disk loss
• Restoring NAS units with damaged or collapsed file systems
• Rebuilding APFS and BitLocker volumes after accidental deletions
• Diagnosing SSDs that fail suddenly without warning

Technology evolves, but the fundamentals remain the same: careful diagnostics, the right tools, and experienced engineers.

What We’ve Been Working On This Past Year

Even without blog updates, the recovery work has been steady. Recently we’ve seen:

• RAID cases requiring stripe alignment and virtual rebuilds
• SSDs reporting incorrect capacity or failing without warning
• Synology and QNAP systems with multi-disk corruption
• BitLocker drives with damaged metadata
• Second-opinion cases labeled “unrecoverable” that turned out not to be

Every case has its own challenges, and after 30 years, that’s still what makes this work matter to us.

If You Need Help With a Failed Drive or Storage System

Whether it’s a clicking hard drive, an offline NAS, or a server that failed at the worst time, our team is here to help.

You get honest communication, clear expectations, and a local team that handles your recovery from start to finish — no outsourcing, no surprises.

And if another company told you your data couldn’t be recovered, or quoted something that didn’t feel right, it’s always worth getting a second opinion.

We’re still here, still doing the work, and always ready to help when you need us.

If you are interested in checking out some of this years largest hard drives, tech radar is a good read