How To Achieve Mass Storage Device Data Recovery Now

Just by looking at the description, we know mass storage device refers to the device which is equipped with a large capacity. Just because of it, mass storage device is used as the auxiliary memory to compensate for the computer’s inadequacy – the capacity of main memory is limited. Magnetic disk, tape and optical disk are three main kinds of mass storage devices people often use. But now, since tape is relatively out of date, we will focus on just magnetic disk and optical disk in this article.

In fact, mass storage device has many other alternative names, such as mass storage, mass memory, bulk storage, bulk memory, large memory and large capacity storage. The most obvious advantage of mass storage device when compared to main memory lies in its excellent portability. We can easily connect the mass storage device to or plug it out from computer so that we could do a good job in managing our personal & business data or study material.

On the contrary, we have discovered the biggest disadvantage of mass storage device – the relatively long responding time. Computers’ main memory only needs to finish electronic operations, so it has a fast running and responding speed as long as the computer is in good condition. However, for the mass storage device, the corresponding speed is a little bit slower since you know, mechanical movement is generally involved. Besides, it increases the risk of data loss, obviously, since the device may be broken during moving process.

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Based on this, plenty of users put forward the question – if the mass storage device which includes their valuable data is damaged somehow, is it possible for them to complete mass storage device data recovery without others’ help.

To be honest, there’s no specific answer to such kind of question since whether successful data recovery can be done or not largely depends on the damage degree of device and what users have done to that device after data loss happened. Based on this, our suggestions are: protecting your device carefully especially when moving it around, forming the habit of backing up important data regularly, stopping using the device immediately after discovering data loss on it and choosing the reliable product to get mass storage device data recovery done ASAP.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the two main kinds of mass storage devices – magnetic disk and optical disk.

Introduction to the Structure and Performance of Magnetic Disk

In this section, we’ll show users the structure of magnetic disk in order to lay foundation on magnetic disk recovery. So, users who have seen this will not ask questions like can you recover data from a bad hard drive or not. Then, we’ll tell users how to define a good magnetic disk by looking at 4 main parameters.

1. Magnetic Disk Structure
Note: if you have already known about this, you can skip this part.

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According to statistics, magnetic disk is the most common form of mass storage device used currently. Magnetic disk is often provided with thin rotating platter (platters), which is (are) used to save data, a magnetic head, which is used to read data and a actuator arm, which is used to help magnetic head locate the accurate location of certain data.

The magnetic read and write head is positioned above or below platter so that it will rotate along with the platter and its rotational locus forms lots of concentric circles, which are what we called magnetic tracks. The position of read and write head is changing by the actuator arm, so we can read data from different concentric tracks.

In many cases, a disk storage system is composed by a plurality of platters mounting on a common shaft: one on top of another, leaving enough space between them for read and write head sliding. A large amount of information can be saved on one track; the total size is even more than we ordinary users can imagine. Each track is subdivided into arcs, which are known as sectors.

In the same disk system, each track contains the same number of sectors and each sector contains the same number of bits. This implies: the bits in each sector which is located on the track nearing the disc center are more intensive than bits on peripheral track sectors. However, the number of tracks on each platter and the number of sectors on each track vary a lot in different disk systems.

Information is often stored on magnetic disk in the unit of block and one information block can contain either just one sector or multiple sectors. The length of access information block, platter number, track number and sector number should all be given when information is exchanging between magnetic disk and main memory. In fact, these parameters form the actual “Address” to access disk memory.

2. Magnetic Disk Performance
To tell the truth, performance of disk storage system is mainly measured by the following 4 parameters: recording density, storage capacity, addressing time and data transfer rate.

  • Recording density: recording density is also known as storage density and it is usually represented by track density plus bit density. It refers to the number of tracks per unit length along the radial direction of the disk; the unit of track density is tracks per inch (TPI). Bit density refers to the number of bits per unit length along the track direction; the unit of it is bits per inch (BPI).


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  • Storage capacity: storage capacity of magnetic disk actually refers to the amount of useful information that can be stored on the disk; the storage capacity is represented in the unit of byte and it can be calculated through this formula:
  • C=n*K*S*b
    C stands for storage capacity;
    n represents the number of platters used to store information;
    K stands for the number of tracks on each platter;
    S represents the number of sectors on each track;
    b refers to the number of bytes that can be stored on each sector.

  • Addressing time: addressing time refers to the time which is needed for the magnetic head to reach the required read/write position from the start position. It includes two parts – seek time and average latency (rotation delay or latency time); seek time refers to the time needed by head to find a certain track while average latency refers to average time spent in waiting for the desired read/write sector to rotate to just below magnetic head.

  • Since the time needed by magnetic head to wait different sectors to reach the specified position is different, so we generally take half of the time used by platter to rotate a circle as the average latency. As a result, the average latency is obviously related to the rotational speed of disk, while seek time is determined by the disk performance, which largely depends on the disk manufacturer.

  • Data transfer rate: data transfer rate refers to the number of bytes read or written by head per second after it found the correct address. Magnetic disks are divided into hard disk and floppy disk according to different storage media.

  • Hard disk uses the aluminum platter, which is coated with a magnetic layer, as the substrate. Read and write head of hard disk is floating on the platter and it can move along the radial direction. Even the micro dust particles are not allowed to enter the space between read and write head and platter. In addition to that, vibration proof also plays a very important role in preventing the disk scratch accident caused by read and write head contacting with platter, which is rotating at a high speed while working.

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    Yet, floppy disk uses plastic platter, both surfaces of which are coated with a magnetic layer, as the substrate. Floppy disk is very soft and it is often encapsulated in a special plastic or paper box. The commonly used 3.5-inch floppy disk has a capacity of 1.44MB and it is encapsulated with plastic box. The paper packaged 8-inch and 5.25-inch floppy disk have already become out of date. Now, there appears a kind of Zip disk, whose capacity can reach several hundred MB.


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Introduction to the Optical Disk and Its Common Types

Optical disk is also a common storage medium we can see easily in daily life; it reads and writes information by taking advantage of optical and electrical principle. Being made of reflective material, the optical disk often stores data through making some changes on the surface. When the optical disk is rotating, the laser beam will irradiate the reflective surface with information stored on. In this way, data can be recognized and read according to changes in the strength of reflected light.

Data is stored on optical disk in single spiral track and this is totally different from tracks on magnetic disks. The spiral track stretches from the inside to the outside of the disk and it is also divided into different sectors, just like in magnetic disk, and the capacity of each sector is 2KB.

3 ordinary types of optical disk:

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a. CD-ROM: CD-ROM is also known as Compact Disk-Read Only Memory; its platter has already contained programs and data which had been written by the manufacturer in advance. Therefore, users can only read data from it, having no right to modify the data or write new data into it.

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b. CD-WORM: this kind of optical disk is also called Compact Disk-Write Once Read Many; users can write data into its platter for one time. Once information is written into such disk, it will be kept there permanently until the disk is broken. Users can read those data as many times as they want, but they still have no right to modify them or add new data.

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c. CD-RW: it stands for Compact Disk-ReWritable; this kind of optical disk is similar to magnetic disk because it can be read and written repeatedly. The data writing and reading principle varies with the different materials used to make disk.

But all in all, we want to the mass storage device data recovery is feasible, though the possibility of it large depends on the degree and type of disk damage and the things users do after data loss.

How to Perform Data Recovery on Hard Drive

Considering that hard drive is the most important and commonest storage device, we’d like to share our suggestions on hard drive data recovery. If you’re one of the users who’re asking questions like this – can you recover data from a bad hard drive, the following content will be helpful.

First of all, we need you to determine which type of damage his hard drive is suffering from. If the data loss occurs because the hard drive has been damaged physically (the mechanical parts are broken), there’s little chance users can get their data back. However, they still can try turning to professional data recovery companies for help.

But if users are troubled by the data loss disaster caused just by wrong operations, virus attacks or other soft failures, we have good news to share with them – MiniTool Power Data Recovery could be an excellent assistant to help users regain the data that are valuable to them. Here’s how to do:



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1. Just choose one suitable module from the main interface of software according to the data loss causes.

2. Select and scan the drive which was used to store lost data in order to find them.

3. Check the needed files and folders and press “Save” button in the lower right corner to save them to another drive.

How to Retrieve Data from USB Mass Storage Device

If you have accidentally formatted your USB mass storage device like USB flash drive, you must be wondering how to get back the data you need. Well, how can users recover USB mass storage device? The answer is simple: just use MiniTool Power Data Recovery, which has been used and praised by large numbers of computer users.

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Complete those operations to recover data from USB flash drive (here, we take accidental formatting as an example): open the recommended powerful data recovery software -> choose “Damaged Partition Recovery” by clicking on it -> select the correct USB flash drive -> press “Full Scan” to detect the missing files -> check all the files you need from found data -> press “Save” button and set a storage path then.

When all checked files are recovered to appointed path, a prompt will appear in the software, suggesting that users can close the software to end the work to retrieve data from USB mass storage device.

Remember, if you want to recover data from SD card in cellphone or camera, you may as well move them out properly and then connect it to computer by using a card reader. This is because the Mass Storage mode is not supported by many devices now, so our software can’t read data directly from your SD card when it is still put in digital device.

How to Complete Optical Drive Data Recovery

Are you stuck in the situation when your data are accidentally deleted from optical drive, but you can’t find a suitable recovery tool to regain them? If your answer is positive, we can help you with that.

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First of all, install and run MiniTool Power Data Recovery. Secondly, click “CD/DVD Recovery” from main interface to continue. Thirdly, choose the optical disk and scan it thoroughly by clicking “Full Scan”. Finally, browse the found data and pick out what you need and then click “Save” to choose a storage location for them. Now, just wait for the completion of optical drive data recovery.

Note: you can’t install our recovery software to the drive which includes lost data you want to recover when performing mass storage device data recovery, since this operation will lead to data overwriting. After all, no overwritten data can be recovered by any means.


Common problems related to partition recovery and our solutions: