ADRC unveils data recovery clinic in mall

SINGAPORE--Adroit Data Recovery Center (ADRC) on Friday launched the first data recovery clinic in a popular shopping mall cum convention center.

Dubbed 'Adroit Data Recovery Clinics @ MC2', it serves as a place where visitors can "seek free advice [on data recovery] and evaluation [of storage devices for recovery of damaged or lost data]", according to ADRC, a Singapore-based company that provides data recovery services. It has customers across the region, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The new facility is located in notebook retail store MC2 at Suntec City, which sits in the same building that houses the Suntec Convention Center.

Felix Chang, managing director at ADRC, said in a statement: "The experience of losing data, be it business or personal, can be extremely traumatic. [Often], lost data could have been prevented, minimized or even recovered completely."

However, awareness is low for data recovery and the availability of data recovery services, Chang told ZDNet Asia during a media briefing. "Data recovery is never in the mind [of IT users], and they don't even know [that] data recovery [tools] exist," he said.

As such, the new clinic will help to educate individual and business users on the importance of data recovery, according to Chang.

"When a disaster occurs, [such as] a hard-disk crash, don't think it's hopeless," he said. "There's always a chance to get your data back."

However, he noted that users have to "be very careful with what [they] do with the crashed hard-disk".

Chang said: "Don't [turn on the] power, [and] don't send it to any 'so-called' computer shop to attempt a recovery because there's only one chance to do recovery." He added that if the crashed hard-disk is turned on again for several minutes, it may get damaged along with the data platter.

"The rewrite head may crash the data platter further and damage the platter completely. Once the data platter is damaged completely, you can't recover the data," he explained. "So, you only have that one chance of [recovering the data]."