About Alandata Data Recovery
Alandata Data Recovery was founded in 1976 and has been developing data recovery applications and techniques ever since. At Alandata Data Recovery we go beyond simply fixing damaged drives � we speak the language. We dont just run utilities � we write our own data recovery software! This means that we must have a very clear and complete understanding of the entire system at the lowest level. It also means that we can easily modify a program in order to maximize the amount of data extracted from a damaged system. We have written hundreds of custom tools and tweaks. We are particularly strong in RAID, NAS and Linux Data Recovery. We have written sophisicated tools to analyze RAIDS, rebuild RAIDS, de-RAID RAIDs, test their parity etc. RAIDS have mutiple drives which leads to many possible answers. Without having really great analytical tools then it becomes easy to overlook the correct solution and not get the data.
NAS devices and Linux often go together. NAS stands for Networked Attached Storage � its just a box with a disk drive in it that you connect to your network with an ethernet cable. NAS devices are actually stand-alone computers that boot up just like your personal desktop computer � they just dont have a keboard or monitor. Almost all NAS boxes use the Linux operating system, its free which keeps the cost down. The NAS makers often tweak the system for their own purposes so that files can only be recovered by special software. Fortuantely we a masters at reverse-engineering and have written our own tools to recovery SNAP, Maxattach, Intel, G-technology, LaCie and many more.
We were actually the first company to recover data from the VMWARES VXFS files-system. VXFS is a virtual file system which features dynamically resizeable �virtual hard drives�.
We are also masters in reverse-engineering data layouts. We gained lots of experince in this area by writing tape data recovery programs. As PC disk drives started getting larger it became impractical to back-up to floppies or CD�s. Tape Backup was the solution. There were a ton of tape backup programs, Maynard, Maynstream, Norton, Conner, PC-Central. Unfortuanatley there was no standard tape layout � every manufacturer invented his own way of putting data on tapes. The manufacturers would also frequently revise the program. To compound the problem even more you can add in the number of different tape drives 4-millimeter, QIC, QIC-120 Exabyte, 8mm, DLR. We wrote dozens of recovery programs for each version of tape back. This required many hours of analyzing backups and figuring out how to get the data.
Recently we have written programs to recovery data from MODS and WORMS used in medical imaging. MODS are Magneto-Optical Disks and WORM means Write-Once-Read-Many. THis is important in medical imaging because you need the data to be permanent and uneraseable. We are also seeing more and more DVR Video systems used in surveillance applications like store security cameras. Instead of the data being written to tape it is written to a disk-drive just like a Tivo. Many of these boxes are made in China and use Linux or a home-grown file-system that they created. The founder Wayne Horner became an avid programmer while still in high school. His first business(while still in high school) was writing custom analysis reports for the local shopping malls. He earned a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from UC Irvine. Then worked at a small mini-computer manufacturer helping to develop the first disk and tape controller. This was pre-IBM-PC! He wrote the drivers for the operating system and the machine language for the firmware. This contributed to his in-depth knowledge of how operating systems, file systems and disks interact at the very lowest levels. When an important customer lost their data they they turned to Wayne. He quickly devised and wrote his first data recovery utility (in the BASIC language � wow� thats like caveman language). He has been saving peoples data ever since.