Forensic recovery of hard disk data by using the spin-stand imaging technique

An ex-situ technique for the drive-independent forensic recovery of data from failed hard drives has been developed.For drives which have suffered damage from a head crash or other mechanical problems and cannot be resuscitatedusing standard software, firmware, or part-replacement techniques, there is currently no commercially available meansto recover the data, even though the files are still stored on the magnetic disks. Here, we report on the results of a spinstandimaging based technology, where the failed disk is removed from its native drive, placed on a spin-stand, andscanned with a giant magnetoresistive head. After track centering, track following, signal detection, data decoding, errorcorrection, and sector mapping, the otherwise unrecoverable data can be retrieved to the computer operating system.Spin-stand based data imaging has the potential to provide recovery at data rates approaching those in the native driveand is a truly drive-independent method to recover hard disk data in a time-efficient manner.