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In this 21st century, information technology has become a part of our lives, we simply can’t do without it. The usage of tape drive has virtually lost over to other media of storage. However, for those who are curious of what is tape data recovery. This article is for you. It is the recovery of any data that has been lost on a tape, obviously, but what it involves is quite interesting.

How can a tape cartridge be damaged? It can be damaged from smoke, dropping into the water, or simply just dropping from high levels. It can also be damaged from the exposure from the sun, extreme temperature, internal mechanism failure, and errors that are located found within the tape’s file span.

There are various cases of damages namely from water damage, missing oxide, folds in the tape, blade damage, bad oxide or even frictional damage, when tape data are being recovered. The fact that there are 2 types of tape data recovery, physical and logical recovery. Read on to find out more how you too can engage in the recovery techniques, if you are using tape as a storage medium.

What is physical recovery for a tape data?

When there is a physical damage to the tape, a physical tape data recovery will then be required. It can be due to the damage done physically to the plastics, cartridge, or the tape itself from preventing the data to be read effectively.

Physical damages are needed due to the deterioration of magnetic coatings on the actual tape surface, cracked wheels, twisted tape, creased tape edges, broken tape, stretched tape, or any other damages connected with the actual tape itself.

There are lots of companies or stores promise a high recovery rate from using physical recovery methods. They claimed that they have over 98 percent success rate of their recovery techniques.

You may quickly need to bring your storage device to those highly trained recovery experts for recovery procedures, once you felt that you have damaged your tape storage device if it has been dropped in the mud, water or fall from high levels.

Can logical recovery help in tape data recovery?

Due to its complicated procedures, logical tape data recovery is much more expensive in most cases.

We need logical recovery is when the data was successfully recorded on the tape, however for some unknown reasons, if it cannot be read. You have to quickly find a way to solve this issue. Also, it does not show any visible form of damage to the tape and the exterior of the tape itself.

The recovery of datafiles in logical recovery requires the expert professional to use multiple versions of the recovery software and take many “passes” at the tape using it.

Using the recovery methods mentioned above, you can easily pieced back lost tape data. But the success rate of logical tape data recovery is much lower than the physical tape data recovery.