As this is the information age, most firms use other forms of media to store their valuable data. However, there is one form called the tape drive that are still used by many organizations worldwide. The notion of tape data recovery still entails mystery and how it is to be done. This type of recovery is to recover any data that has been lost on a tape.

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.

Tape data can been recovered from damages caused by water, missing and bad oxide, sliced edges, and even friction damage. These data are recovered using 2 types of recovery methods, namely physical recovery and logical recovery. Read more to understand these recovery methods can help you to maintain your data effectively.

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.

Other physical damage such as the deterioration of magnetic coatings on the actual tape surface, broken wheels or cartridge housings, folded tape, broken tape, stretched tape, and any other damages connected with the actual tape of the machinery. The damages mentioned here are not exhaustive and gives the reason why a physical recovery is needed.

Most places that are dealing in tape data recovery guarantee a high physical recovery rate of 98%. They claimed that they have trained professionals to execute this type of task.

When you have dropped your tape into mud, water or simply dropped from high levels, and felt that there could be some damaged done to the tape. It is important to get the tape to those recovery companies and get them repair as soon as possible.

What is logical recovery?

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

When the data was successfully written onto the tape, but for some unknown reasons, it cannot be read or written, or simply there is no visible form of damage to the tape on the body 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.

It is quite normal to retrieve back the lost tape data, but the success rate of using logical recovery methods is much lower than using physical recovery methods.