Data Recovery Digest

Apple stores nationwide offer a support service, allowing users to take in their products and get technical assistance. This can vary from guidance on using certain features to sending them off for repair. In Brooklyn, New York there is a store called The Mac Support Store; although not officially a store set up by Apple, they are certified Macintosh technicians and make use of the Apple branding.

Currently the store offer Mac, iPhone and iPad repair, Mac and iPad rentals, data recovery, onsite calls and cyber security. They officially began trading in 2005.

The store has recently announced, as of June 2014, that they now have their own clean room. Previously, all drives had to be sent out if they needed to be opened up and this caused a longer repair period. Now, however, these drives can be repaired onsite, meaning that local businesses and residents will be able to get their data back quicker.

Data is a valuable component to any consumer, let alone a business, and the time for recovery can be hugely important. If a business undergoes large amounts of downtime with key data being missing, it can have a significant effect on their service and, thusly, finances.

A clean room is important because hard drives can’t be opened up just anywhere. Hard drives are very delicate in their structure, especially the platters and read-write head. Even a small speck of dust can scratch these components and cause further damage to the drive, either by destroying more data or making recovery harder.

As such, a clean room is a specially designed location that has a much reduced amount of airborne particles. There are various different classes on clean rooms that relate to how many airborne particles are in the room. The clean rooms can also be officially certificated to ensure that they are up to standard. For example, everyone inside must wear protective clothing – the air is closely monitored so much that particles from outside clothing could cause problems.

The clean room within The Mac Support Store is a Certified ISO 5 (Class 100) clean room, meaning that their employees have access to some top facilities.

“The new cleanroom allows our recovery engineers to open each storage device to inspect for physical damage and repair delicate components, without further delays or risk,” said Jeff Graber, owner of The Mac Support Store.

Another great benefit to a clean room is that opening a sealed drive inside of one doesn’t void the warranty for all leading hardware and storage device manufacturers. If a user was to, say, just open the drive up in their own room, it would instantly void their warranty because the airborne particles present could damage the drive and there’s no way of knowing whether the fault existed beforehand or not.

Further information on the store can be found at their official website, where pictures can be found, along with contact details and opening times. Diagnostics on your Apple product is free, so be sure to check them out if in the Brooklyn area.