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Data Recovery by Apex Technology Ltd

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Sandbach
Data Recovery by Apex Technology Ltd

Since 2003 performing Data Recovery from Disks, Drives, NAS, Raid, Servers and Tapes. Specialising i This work is somewhat "geeky" but fitting for our skills.

Customers include BBC, Ministry of Defence, Lloyds Bank,HSBC, EDF Nuclear, British Nuclear, Police forces, Universities, Councils,and Schools. Convert, Transfer, Extract, Export data from Old Disks, Files and Databases with unknown filesystems.
5 Star Ratings on TrustPilot and Google. Early Years
The Company was started in 2003, and was based on the personal interest in electronics hardware and

computing software by the owner Howard Atherton. Apex Technology was born following start-up advice he was given years ago - if you are going to start your own business, make sure it interests you - otherwise you are not going to get out of bed in the morning! In the early years, it was more involved in Computer Forensic examination and Expert Witness services. Expertise and Core Interests
While the Forensics work was very interesting, and certainly glamorous in the public's eye given the plethora of TV programs on the subject, the core piece of work which was of most interest was the recovering of data. The main tools are pen, paper, patience, coffee and calculator (hexadecimal of course!). Two areas of expertise arose which continue to be of primary interest to the company ...

1. Extracting data from old hardware that is obsolete eg 8 inch floppy disks, Optical Disk Storage etc

2. Software engineering / reverse engineer proprietary Filesystems or Database. The modern day NAS drives, raid systems are all fairly interesting, and present a challenge. They certainly provide the company with its bread and butter income, and we can do these very successfully. But there is nothing quite like code cracking an ancient archive file system or database to get the data out and present it in a more modern format for Windows PC, Linux or Apple Mac, so it can be edited and given a new lease of life. It also enables migration of data off that platform, in most cases freeing up a significant amount of office space (think old MO disk jukeboxes the size of several filing cupboards!) and allow continued access to the data through modern NAS file servers, with say pdf viewers or Microsoft office applications.

16/05/2025

Recovery of the Day - Maxell CF2 disks for file transfer.
These disk are from around 1990 and held manuscript for a book to be published for their family tree. We saved the converted files to USB and also provided them as a download link by email.
The disks hard hard case plastic and known as 3 inch as opposed to the more common 3.5 inch. They use an old filesystem called CP/M along with Locoscript word processor files.
The Amstrad system became very popular in the 1990s, however the disks cannot be read directly in modern PC and Apple Mac computers without conversions which we do here at Apex Technology Ltd. For further information see https://disktransfer.co.uk/floppy/amstrad-3-inch-floppy-disk-pcw-cpc-word-file-conversions.php where we discuss the range we do.
Firstly we have to dismantle and clean the floppy disks BEFORE we place them in a drive to read them. This is because after years of storage, humidity, temperature changes and moisture means they grow a mold on their magnetic surface which holds the data. If we placed those disks straight into a floppy drive, the dirt becomes trapped between the drive head and disk surface, and can plough into it, causing data to be destroyed.
Following that we make a complete "disk image" of all the raw data on the disk to a single computer file. The disk image just represents every bit of information from the disk, but using this method we can control precisely the movement of heads over the fragile disk surface, and stop it if there is a problem.
We then only use this disk image file to recover the files, and finally convert the Amstrad Locoscript for use in say Microsoft Word odoc or .docx files, and other word processing packages such as those for Apple Mac computers.
The conversion is usually done to RTF or Rich Text Format, as it is very simple and well documented / understood format, and accepted by the widest range of Word Processing software, so providing some future proof access for years to come.
In fact most of out file conversions and data migration projects aim to get data in widely accepted formats such as plain text, CSV, XML or other plain text formats.

09/02/2023

Recover Wedding video from corrupt mini DVDs (Sony and TDK DVD-R ).

The Sony Handycam had about 4 recordings on it from the wedding, but when the customer went to view them, only 2 were watchable. The other two appeared to be there but continually gave an error message when trying to access those two segments.
The customer had tried a couple of local computer places, but they were unable to retrieve it.

It is most likely the discs were not finalized immediately after the videos were made. The finalisation process should be undertaken immediately after the video was recorded before removing it from the handycam, otherwise it cannot be finalised later.

In fact we suspect that continually trying to finalise it can sometimes make the first half of the disk unreadable in certain cameras, tehreby ruining chances of recovery forever.

The customer had recorded to 30 minute mini DVD disks, but now with the Handycam showing disc error, c:13:02, format error, Rec Disable (Record disabled), they sent them to us for recovery.

We saved the Wedding videos to USB drive. This could then be easily shared, backed up and played back on most Smart TVs, mobile phones, and computers.

So if you have something similar, email or call us, or see https://videorecovery.co.uk/mini-dvd.php

21/01/2023

Seagate SSHD 2TB (2000GB) which was working fine arrived today. The plastic data point connector attachment was broken so the SATA cable could not be connected.

The pcb had some damage around the solder connections on the pcb, and ripped off the copper pads.

The client just needed to read the data off, so a temporary repair was undertaken and data saved to a new disk. For more information either contact us or see https://data-recovery-services.uk/connector.php

20/01/2023

Transfer of two 3.5" 230 MB Magneto Optical Disk (one Verbatim 230 Optical Disk and one TDK MO-230 Magneto Optical Disk 3.5" 512bytes/sector) the the client wished to store on CD or DVD. In general these days CD and DVD are becoming obsolete, and most customers prefer the data saved to USB flash drives or download via cloud storage.

These 90mm format MO disks were commonly used in Apple Mac and PCs, but we also get them from Aircraft Flight Recorders (Black Box). The format wqas typically up to 128MB to 640MB, with Sony and Fujitsu extending this with their Gigamo branding up to 2.3GB around 2001.

For MO disk transfer, just contact us or visit https://disktransfer.co.uk/mo/3.5-inch-mo-disk-conversion-file-transfer.php

18/01/2023

Some of the 45 5.25 inch Floppy Disks that have arrived for file transfer to USB or CD.
The disks look to be stored in reasonable condition, but as usual we stripped out the inner recording disk to clean off the mildew contamination layer that will have built up due to storage variations in humidity and temperature. This prevents possible damage to the disk while in the floppy drive as it can cause the head to dig into the data layer and damage it.

The files on the disks are backups from Lotus Symphony ( WR1 WR2 file extension) and Lotus 1-2-3 (for DOS) WKS files. These will be converted to open in Microsoft Excel and MS Office. In addition there were some Multimate II files which we had to convert to Microsoft Word, and some .DRW files which we transferred to Bitmap images.

For similar conversions, just contact us or visit https://disktransfer.co.uk/floppy.php

17/01/2023

A pair of 44mb Syquest discs and pair of 100mb Zip discs for file transfer. Each of the four discs contains one art project.
The files were created on an Apple Mac and formed the cover art for an original music album cover from the 2000s.

The disks were found to be HFS formatted which is common for that era of Mac. Unlike Windows disks, they store the file in 2 parts ie a Data Fork and a Resource Fork, and both parts have to be preserved to maintain access to the file correctly on a Mac.

The data fork is commonly known as a file on the PC, like a bitmap, word document or pdf.

The resource fork is often used to hold metadata such as last position edited in a document, or the actual program or app to open a file, or perhaps a file preview image.

Very often PC users don't know these 2 forks have to be kept together when transferring files, so the result is they incorrectly back up only the file / data fork.

If you wish to have data recovered from Apple Mac formatted disks like Syquest and Zip disks, contact us or look for further information on https://disktransfer.co.uk/syquest.php or https://disktransfer.co.uk/iomega.php

16/01/2023

A set of old 3.5 inch floppy disks arrived today for extraction of Word files.

The disks were from the mid 1990s so just around Windows 95 era.
They were last used in 1996, and therefore during the intervening time, the disk surfaces have developed a contamination layer from humidity and temperature variations while in storage for 17 years.

The first thing we do is separate out the actual data recording disk which is made from mylar with magnetic oxide coating which holds the data.
This is then cleaned to remove the contamination. If this is not done, the disk runs the risk of having the floppy drive head contacting with it, and a rolling snow ball / snow plough effect develops which can dig in and destroy the data layer.

We then create a disk image file from the disk, which usually takes several passes to read bad sectors on the disks.
In the end the data was read ok without error, and the data was returned on USB drive.

For more information on data recovery from all sorts of floppy disks see https://disktransfer.co.uk/floppy.php

13/01/2023

A Buffalo Terastation arrived today for repair to it's raid 5 array.
As you may see later, 2 of the disks in the raid array are dead.
A raid 5 array ordinarily only allows for recovery when 1 drive is no longer working in the array, however using advanced techniques we can recover with 2 dead drives in the raid array.
If you have a similar issue with a Buffalo Terastation then contact us for a quote, repair and data recovery or see https://data-recovery-services.uk/nas/terastation-raid-array-lost-folders.php.

So the client described the problem below.
The server's Model number TS-XEL/R 5 Series, and identified on the reverse as TS-XE20TL/R5-EU.
It contains 4 hard drives each 500GB with SATA connection to the motherboad backplane.
It was configured as a RAID 5 ARRAY, and had stored years of the client's data on the Terastation server up until 3 weeks ago when they heard a squeaking noise and red flashing display on the server.
In the subsequent photos, the displayed error messages were listed as:
HDI is faulty HD1 error E23.
Operation mode I12 Degrade mode.
Raid array error E13. Raid Array1 E14 Can't Mount
Beeping and red flashing display.
No initiate file at HDD3.
They had switched it off immediately and restarted next day but same red flashing display appeared with same errors.
They bought a hard disk with the intention of replacing the faulty one, however this did not work.
It seems that two disks are faulty and so they could not use it.
They had been trying to have it repaired but could not find anyone local.
This server contained company data as well as personal data.
They had some back up off it which they could work from in the meantime.

The client is correct - we can see HD1 and HD3 are offline, so 2 drives are down. Therefore it could not mount the raid.
Often, the first the client knows is they have been running in degrqaded mode for so long that data is no longer synchronised across all 4 disks in the raid array.
We repaired the faulty hard drives, and cloned the data off them.
This cloning method is gentle to failing hard drives and produces 4 new hard drives, identical to the drives in the Terastation.
We only performed data recovery using those 4 new hdd.
Therefore if during the recovery something goes wrong, nothing is further corrupting the original disks or placing unnecessary stress on them.
As usual with these units with 2 fails, usually one fails earlier, and finally when the second drive fails the whole unit won't start.
Therefore we have to select those areas on the failed drive that hold the most up to date data / files in order to rebuild the raid and extract the files.
After we completed that, we saved the data to a new USB hard drive formatted in Windows NTFS, so the client could simply connect it up to their PC and save it to their new backup server in the office.

23/06/2020

The Akai Midi music samplers were very popular during the 1980s, but their usage stretches through the 1990's and early 2000s. They digitally stored their audio on MO, Optical, ZIP, and even floppy disks for backup.

Many musicians have got rid of their Akai unit years ago but still have their albums and tracks stored on the disks. The Akai sampler has it's own filesystem (not common FAT / EXT / NTFS/ HFS ), file formats (not common .WAV files) and their own "none-ascii" character set (would you believe it! - more on that in a moment), which makes decoding the disks and converting the tracks to WAV a challenge. In the attached photo you can see 230MB MO disks by Sony and Verbatim, but we also commonly receive Zip100, Jaz and 128mb Optical disks. These disks were from an Akai S1000 digital sampler and files from 1995.

In the next screenshot we can see the MBR data from a typical Akai disk. So it has none of the features of a Mac HFS disk eg "ER" or hex 0x4552 at offset 0, or a Windows PC disk (eg 0x55AA at offset 255), meaning neither PC or Apple Mac will recognise it when inserted and may request to format the disk or leave the "spinning beach ball" on a Mac.

As for the file names - at first there don't appear to be any, but magically by adding 54 (hex 0x36) to the characters we see in the second screenshot typical alphabetical characters appearing (as if by magic).

In the third screenshot we can see inside a typical Akai Digital Music Sampler Audio File. The data is actually sampled from a Bass Guitar, and a good choice for understanding the structure of the file, since a Bass Guitar, like a drum, often have a repeating rythm. We can see that rythm reflected in the data highlighted in yellow, a cluster of data that repeats inside the file. Due to the inclusion of many repeating characters, we can see that the file is an uncompressed type. Investigating through the data sheets specs of the Akai Midi samplers we see they use a type of Pulse Code Modulation or PCM to store the audio, and this looks very like what we would expect to find from uncompressed data. Knowing this we were able to convert the Akai to .WAV files to allow easy import into Logic Pro X or Pro-Tools on the Mac or Windows.

For help transferring the midi audio data from ZIP/MO/Optical disks back to a computer for import into Apple Mac Logic Pro X, or Pro-Tools you can contact us and see https://disktransfer.co.uk/conversion/music-audio-disk-transfer-and-file-conversion.php

22/06/2020

Recently we were sent a few Jaz Disks from a band who were re-building their songs for a new album. The Jaz Disks were last used on a Mac in 1999, which is pre-Mac OSX ie Mac Classic OS 9, utilising Apple's HFS filesystem, and they were creating music using Pro-Tools Audio, although they now want to use Apple's Logic Pro X. Also included was a Zip100 disk which turned out to be from an Akai S3000 Sampler, which needed files saving as .WAV audio.

The goal was to export / extract the audio from pro-Tools and convert the music data to open in Logic Pro X on a 2020 iMac, and save files to a USB stick.

As an aside, the sharp eyed amongst you notice the price of the disk in the first photo - £69.99 for a 1GB disk - nowadays you can get 2000 times the storage for the same price!

Anyone who does conversions knows that if you move more than 1 or 2 generations from the original software, you generally experience some problems of opening the files on modern versions.

Examining the files in a hex-editor shows us the Mac Creator and File type code "Sd2aSd2f" - for Sound Designer II .sd2 Audio files. Digging a little deeper in the low level data I also found them to be a type of uncompressed PCM (you can tell an uncompressed file usually by the regular repeating patterns - eg in photo 2 you see a regular recurring pattern shown in yellow representing a drum beat). So, after analysing bit per sample, sample rates and number of channels, we were able to package the data as a series of WAV files with correct RIFF headers, which could be imported in Logic-Pro.

During the conversion process we also provided digital upload/download at several stages to ensure the band were being able to cope with the new file format and minimise delays.

For more on or Audio Music files conversions, especially for old Apple Mac's you can contact us by the details under "About", or via email button above, or see our website https://disktransfer.co.uk/conversion/music-audio-disk-transfer-and-file-conversion.php

19/06/2020

Sharp Font Writer Word Processor Floppy Disk Transfer.

The Sharp Font Writer was similar to many Word Processors from the 1980's and 1990s, and basically a step up from electronic typewriter.

The main rival to them was Panasonic, Olivetti, Triumph-Adler, Brother, Wang, Multimate, Xerox, Dec, Canon and Smith Corona, but all word processors worked from floppy disks, each with their own file formats eg .iwp .pwp .wp etc.

The user wrote lots of journals and needed them converting to a Windows PC and saving as Microsoft Word files. They had tried the disks in a PC and Apple Mac, but it just came up with the message ‘unknown format’ or displays weird code.

Files were of the type .wp - but these are not Word Perfect! They were proprietary word processor files. As seen in the second photograph, the file header shows us the string "SHARP FontWriter" when viewed in hex editor, and disks do not have a 0x55AA signed MBR like on DOS systems.

We managed to read, convert and transfer the contents onto a memory stick in PC friendly text format which could also be used on their Apple Mac laptop for viewing and editing.

The word processor is quite a neat little machine, and while easily outgunned by it's modern versions, has a basic charm to it and quite a nice keyboard.

Address

Manor Road
Sandbach
CW112ND

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

https://apextechnology.co.uk/

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About Us

Early Years

The Company was started in 2003, and was based on the personal interest in electronics hardware and computing software by the owner Howard Atherton. Apex Technology was born following start-up advice he was given years ago - if you are going to start your own business, make sure it interests you - otherwise you are not going to get out of bed in the morning! In the early years, it was more involved in Computer Forensic examination and Expert Witness services.