Clean Room Data Recovery - What' do you know?

I stared blankly to the question in the title above. Certainly, I have not heard of it before but I surely know what data recovery is.

We have to recover data when we lose it due to:

·         Accidental deletion

·         Hard disk crash

·         Virus attack

·         Computer burning out

However, what are “clean rooms’?  Why is clean room data recovery important?

Clean rooms explain themselves. They are free from any dust particles that exist outside of it. Clean rooms need extensive filters. While outside air is filtered to prevent dust entering the room,  there are filters installed inside the room too to remove internally generated contaminants.

Staff would usually have to enter clean rooms through airlocks and wear protective gear while working inside the rooms.

There are different "classes" of clean rooms, with each class limiting permissible different numbers of particles per cubic meter, as well as the maximum-sized particles. Thus a Class 1 clean room is one where the number of particles should not exceed 1000 particles per cubic meter.

Clean rooms are used extensively in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor manufacturing, and biotech industries. Data recovery centers typically use a Class 100 clean room that has an allowance of 100,000 particles per cubic meter (compared to 35 million particles per cubic meter in a normal room).

Clean rooms are used for data recovery to prevent dust, electrostatic discharges, and such disturbances. These kinds of precautions become necessary because even microscopic dust particles can damage the image on the drive platters, and make data recovery difficult.

With each generation of disks, data is packed more and more densely on the disk platters. It is thus increasingly important that data recovery is attempted in exceptionally clean rooms.

Drive manufacturers usually specify that their product guarantee will become void if the drive is opened by anybody other than themselves, or their authorized agents. And typically, one of the conditions they impose on authorized agents is that the disks be opened in clean rooms meeting specified standards.

Thus clean rooms are necessary for data recovery on both performance and product warranty considerations.

Disk drives are opened only in clean rooms and kept there until the recovery is complete and the drive is closed. All devices are also protected against electrostatic discharge, physical shocks, temperature fluctuations and electrical disturbances.

Staff wear special clothing while working in the rooms and particle density is constantly monitored using particle counters. A typical objective of clean room data recovery centers is to maintain Class 10 conditions during production.

Data storage media are packed with a huge volume of data. ; it is thus extremely important to attempt data recovery in exceptionally dust-free rooms.

These days, clean room data recovery uses Class 100 clean rooms where the number of particles is reduced by some 350 times compared to normally prevailing particle density.

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