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Engineers laboured relentlessly to recover data at Adroit’s clean lab.
June 2008: On Christmas eve in 1998, an Australian executive appeared in front of Felix Chang, founder and director of the Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC). Looking disheveled and worried, he told Felix that he did not sleep for the last 3 days as he had lost all the data in his notebook computer (his mobile office) which contained crucial information pertaining to his work, schedules and projects.
Felix set to work on the data recovery over Christmas Day and Boxing Day and managed to retrieve 100 percent of the data to the relief of the expatriate.
New business direction
It was a defining moment for his company, says Felix, 48, who earlier that year started his new company, Adroit Systems, doing IT systems integration. Every Christmas since then, he would receive a Christamas card from his grateful first data recovery customer. This case and the many similar ones that followed motivated Felix to steer the company from being a system integrator to becoming a full-fledged data recovery centre.
Accordingly, the company underwent a name change to Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC) in 2003, as it concentrated on data recovery services and shifted to Science Park as it expanded its facilities.
Based in both Singapore and Malaysia, ADRC is also the first recovery company with its own “class 100” clean lab (this denotes the number of particles of size 0.5 µm or larger permitted per cubic foot of air) in Singapore. It has also developed proprietary tools for data recovery.
Felix compares data recovery to a rescue attempt. He explains: “Data recovery requires thinking out of the box in order to find ways to retrieve the data and information. It also requires preserverance to the very end, to get the data.”
Over the years, ADRC has built on its expertise, proprietary technology and knowledge and inventory (the centre has $1 million worth of all kinds of spare parts in stock at any time).
The process of recovering data may take from hours to weeks or months. Delays are usually due to missing spare parts and firmware. For ADRC, there is no issue with the spare parts as its inventory is well-stocked.
Felix adds that the brand and make of the hard disk will not affect the probability of success of the recovery and with its well-stocked inventory, ADRC is able to shorthen the recovery process for customers.
According to Felix, about 30 percent of file deletion or data loss is due to deliberate attempts by disgruntled employees to jeopardise or sabotage the company’s operation, while 70 percent are simply cases of system failure, carelessness, overwriting files, unintentional deletion, virus attacks and software bugs.
There are generally two methods of recovery: logical recovery by software application and physical recovery which is more complex, and which requires the hardware to be serviced in a clean lab.
Data recovery challenge
In May this year, ADRC accepted a challenge put up by Digital Life, The Straits Times, to recover data from four badly damaged hard disks. Another data-recovery company also took part.
The challenge was to recover data and information from two 2GB USB storage drives dunk in coffee and water for a minute, a 2.5-inch external hard disk being thrown down a flight of stairs three times and a 2.5-inch external hard disk being ran over by a vehicle. ADRC was the only one that recovered 100 percent of the data in all the four disks.
When assignments are not accepted
Felix says getting customers satisfied is a top priority. Consequently, he does not accept any job. He lists some factors that make data recovery impossible or impractical:
- Insufficient time given for the recovery,
- Cost – the data recovered is not worth the expense of the process which ranges from a few hundred dollars to about $1,800 per hard disk,
- Customer’s expectation – if they want a 100-percent recovery and if that cannot be met, then the assignment is not accepted,
- Physical damage to the hard disk is too severe.
Computer forensic investigation
With a steady increase in the demand for computer forensic investigation cases, ADRC has also established itself as a trusted partner in this field. It is now the leading data recovery centre and computer forensic lab in South East Asia.
ADRC is the first local data recovery firm to provide court-ready reporting of digital evidence for civil and criminal litigation. Services offered include evidence acquisition, digital evidence discovery and recovery, decryption of encrypted data, forensic image conversion, evidence verification and many others.
The company implements rigorous forensic methodologies to identify, acquire, preserve, analyze and document the retrieved digital data for use as evidence in court or other legal or administrative proceedings.
It is also among the first in Singapore to install a secure forensic-ready facility protected by CCTV and security systems with dedicated computer systems, hardware and software for digital forensic investigations. It is also one of the first employers to have US-certified EC-Council Computer Hacking Forensic Investigators. With these trained investigators, the company can conduct forensic examination in-house, without third-party involvement.
Innovative offerings
ADRC offers its DataInsure recovery plan – the first and only data recovery insurance plan in Singapore. It worked with PC vendors to do product bundling with its DataInsure recovery plan. Brands that offered DataInsure on the laptops include Acer, Asus and Lenovo.
If you want to purchase the DataInsure recovery plan directly, you can obtain more information at
http://www.adrc.com/datainsure/ or visit ADRC’s resellers.
The company offers a 3 to 5 days turnaround compared with 14 to 20 days by others. Having its own lab in Singapore also give customers peace of mind that their confidential stuff will not be travelling to labs in other countries and thus there is no prospect of them being lost or compromised.
Plans for 2008
Currently 40 percent of customers are Singapore-based. The rest are mostly from the Asia Pacific, with some from the US. ADRC has also set up a collection centre in Japan and a site office will be set up in Australia in the near future to service customers directly.
More on Adroit Data Recovery Centre Pte Ltd
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