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Data recovery for Surveillance Systems

   A surveillance system is a system able to capture and compress images and videos information that can be stored or sent over communication networks. They can be integrate in any environment.  Nowadays, these systems have ceased to be part of spy stories. You can see cameras almost everywhere: in banks, supermarkets, cinemas, restaurants, etc. You might notice some of them while others are virtually unnoticeable. Set of particular surveillance system equipment depends on its purpose and features of the protected area. Usually it includes:

·        Video cameras(quantity and type may vary);

·        Signal processing devices (quad, multiplexer);

·        Recording devices;

·        Display devices (monitors, televisions, laptops, etc.);

·        Cable system.

    Analog devices in video surveillance are considered obsolete, and rarely used. Digital systems are more popular because they provide high-definition images, allow you to integrate video surveillance into the general security system and they are user friendly. Depending on the settings, the digital video recorder performs cyclic or continuous video recording.

The continuous video recording mode provides recording with one continuous video file, and the duration is limited only by the storage capacity. The main feature of this system is at the same time its own disadvantage. Large files/lengthy video recordings are much more sensitive to damage and much more difficult to recover in case of data loss.

On the other hand, the use of a cyclic video recording mode involves recording multiple clips with a user-defined duration (5, 10, 15 minutes). As soon as the storage is full, the recorder deletes the older video and replace it with the new one. Smaller video files are less susceptible to damage and easier to repair, and user always has access to previous videos.

    The millions files on one file system increase the possibility of data loss. Small NAS appliances have weak processors, which cannot handle RAID architecture, video data processing and enormous big FS at the same time.

 Data recovery due to physical damage to the media (hard disk or flash-card) is rare in surveillance systems, but, nevertheless, this happens sometimes. Often because of the appearance of the unreadable sectors in a hard drive, the failure of magnetic heads or a burned-out controller. In such cases, experts need to restore media device performance by taking a “sector-by-sector” copy and installing a new disk into the recorder, in order to extract information.

In cases of logical failures surveillance systems data recovery become more difficult. Usually, the reason for this is a human factor. For example, random disk formatting, removing the disk and connecting it to Windows OS in order to read or recover data by themselves.

All of this almost always damages the logical structure of the disk and makes the necessary data inaccessible.

As for the car security cameras - SD or micro SD memory cards are most commonly used as data storage media. Following causes of data loss can be identified: human factor (delete records, formatting media), failure of the memory card or unfinalized video recording.

    Today, when the bulk of all information is stored on virtual media devices the necessity of data recovery has become extremely important.

Lost information may affect the investigation process or become a defining factor in some forensics cases.

All problems that we talked about earlier could lead your system to become dead and all your valuable data will be gone forever. But don't panic! Fortunately, there is a solution.

      I want to assure you - in most cases, data recovery is possible! Even in utmost terrible cases, like damage by flood, fire or even gun shoot, professional data recovery expert can successfully restore and extract your valuable data.

 Is data really gone when it is deleted? When it happens, data is no longer accessible to the user. But deleting a file as well as formatting the hard disk are not enough to completely erase data.

Formatted drive will still keep data that can be retrieved. In order to permanently delete all information special software needs to be used. Destruction software overwrites the available space/blocks with random data until it is considered irretrievable.

 As for the surveillance systems – continuous recording process deletes previous data in order to write a new one. It all depends on capacity of a storage of a particular system, but most dated records get overwritten. Only in this case data can be considered unrecoverable.

      It is difficult to imagine modern protected facility without a video surveillance system, whether it is shopping malls, business centers, warehouse complexes, parking lots or some children's places. Also, investigation of any car accident becomes much more complicated in the absence of a surveillance camera in the car.

So we can surely claim that currently surveillance systems are very useful, not only for business but for personal use too.

    The truth of modern life – data is the world's most valuable resource. The one who controls it has the power. So it’s very important to do everything to protect information that is important to you and prevent data loss.

If we talk about surveillance systems, it would be a great decision to increase the storage space to keep as much records as possible, so your videos couldn’t be overwritten. Anyway, you always need to keep in mind to do backups on a regular basis. However, if something unexpected happens – don’t panic and remember that you can always get you valuable data back with professional help.

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SSHD - Hybrid Drives

Hybrid Drives: All you need to know!

SSHD is a hybrid hard drive, the new marketing term invented by Seagate. It is a combination of traditional hard disk (HDD) and new solid-state drive technology (SSD).Today we will talk about the pros and cons of this type of devices and whether or not they worth your attention.

What is the advantage of SSHD?

Seagate's advertising headlines say: “SSD Performance. Hard disk capacity. Affordable price". In fact, they are trying to say that SSHD combines the advantages of these two technologies at a reasonable price. But, if it’s true, why then this new technology of hybrid hard drives hasn't blown the market up yet? We'll talk more about this later, but for now, let us try to take an intent look at these “hybrids”.

SSHD, in fact, is a normal HDD, but with compact small capacity solid-state drive added to the controller and used as a cache for frequently used files. Therefore, it is not surprising that the capacity of SSHD is equal to classic hard drives. If you decided to use hybrid drive, you need to remember that because of its design, you still have all the potential physical hard drive problems you get with an HDD –failures are still very much possible if the SSHD is dropped or bumped. Good news is the data recovery in this case is relatively simple (as in HDD). As for the cost, the hybrid hard drives are about 10-20% more expensive than traditional HDD - because of the additional cache memory and firmware. On the other hand, they are still much cheaper than solid-state drives.

That’s all sound pretty cool and optimistic, but...

Is SSHD performance as same as SSD?

The performance of hybrid hard drives directly depends on how the system is used by the user. Limiting factor - small amount of cache memory (now it is about 8 GB), which is simply not enough to perform more or less serious tasks.

If user doesn’t overload the PC (for example- surfs the Internet, uses social networks, reads email, play solitaire or chess), then such user will have the greatest benefit from using hybrid hard drives, because in this case cache memory is enough to fully process all data with speed corresponding to the SSD.

On the other hand, you can safely say that users that often play “heavy” computer games won’t notice any difference in performance if they upgrade their PC drive from HDD to SSHD. Why? Once again – because of the cash size. The cache size is small and the files of the computer game will be constantly updated and cannot be reused (from the cache), since they will be flushed and replaced with new files. Uploading a new file into cache memory takes time which lowers the overall efficiency of hybrid approach.

The other issue is copying stored data. If you copy, for example, more than 8 GB folder of files and want to transfer it from one place to another, then usual memory on a magnetic hard disk will be used, not SSHD cache. Therefore the copy speed will be the same as in the classic HDD.

On the bright side, when you turn on the computer, the system will boot up in about 10 seconds, which is almost the same as the SSD speed.

Who needs SSHD?

The primary/main market for solid-state hybrid drives - laptops. The fact is, the limited space of a laptop case doesn’t allow to install more than one disk into the system. Installing only one SSD can provide greater performance, but limit the amount of data that can be stored on it. On the other hand, installing only HDD will provide a lot of space, but the hard disk won’t work as efficiently as a solid-state drive.

However, SSHD is an excellent compromise: it can offer a simple and affordable way to provide better performance (as SSD) with the great memory capacity (as HDD).

Since most laptops are used for work and not for games, the advantages of SSHD drives are becoming even more attractive. For desktop systems, though, I still do not recommend installing hybrid hard drives, since the case of a personal computer allows you to easily install multiple drives (SSD for system operation and HDD for data storage). It gives you great performance and large amount of disk space at the same time. The exception is mini-chassis that have internal space for only one drive.

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SSD vs. HDD: What's the Difference?

    Solid-state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD) are the two main storage types available on the market today.

​     SSD managed to become an alternative to the classic HDD. It is smaller, faster and of course more expensive.

“What is the difference?” and “Which drive to choose?”- Let’s figure it out together.

 HDD vs SSD

      What's the difference between HDD and SSD? The underlying characteristic of each type is the technology used to retrieve and store data.

Classic hard drives use magnetic storage. That means that typical HDD design consists of one or few magnetic disks and read/write heads. Magnetic disks quickly rotate inside of a metal container, while read/write heads moving over the surface in order to read and write data.

On the other hand, SSD consists of many separated built-in flash drives (same principle as used in the usb-flash drives). It means that there are no moving parts in SSD compare to HDD.

SSD Advantages

      As you know SSDs slowly but surely bypass classic drives in all aspects. So that let’s take a look on SSDs benefits:

As we mentioned before, Solid drives have no moving mechanical parts, which makes them more durable than HDDs. Such devices can survive even the fall (in most cases). While with HDDs it might lead to structural defects and data loss. Over time, mechanical parts in HDDs will wear out. It’s not a question of “if”, but “when”.

 Due to the lack of moving parts, SSDs are almost silent. On the other side, HDDs constantly produce sounds. This sound can be extremely noticeable, especially while using laptop or PC with thin case.

        HDDs have to rely on spinning platters. That means there is a limit to how small they can be made. SSDs have no such limitation. Solid state drives don't have the physical constraints of HDDs. In fact, the lack of mechanical elements in SSD determines their small size and expands the possibilities of their use in cases where traditional disks could not cope.

When SSDs started replacing classic hard drives, they had to fit into laptop drive bays or computer chassis created for HDDs, so they had to match HDDs sizes.

The standard form factor for SSDs was 2.5 inch, which can fit inside a computer’s hard drive bay.

But now the main vector of SSDs development is miniaturization.

In the new generation of ultrabooks, the 2.5 inch format is gradually abandoned, making the drives more and more compact and the enclosures of the devices themselves thinner.

 The most important element of SSD form factor is the interface connector that provides communication between drive and host computer. In the early days of SSDs, that connector was typically the same SATA connector used with HDDs.

But over time SSDs became smaller and smaller (the width of some Solid-state drives became less than SATA connector itself) and appeared the needs to create new connectors. More compact form factors have been developed for solid-state drives, for example, mSATA, M.2.

 The most important advantage of SSDs: they work much faster than classic hard drives. That is the reason why PCs and laptops with a Solid State drives are about twice as faster rather than with classic hard drives. Files and programs open on such devices up to four times faster.

And of course, SSDs are lighter than HDDs and, in most cases, they consume much less energy. This makes them especially suitable for mobile devices as it increases the duration of their battery life.

 Usually modern SSDs have a hardware-based encryption. That means that encryption keys placed right into the drive controller. On this drives encryption is fully automated. That ensures that data is constantly protected by the auto -encrypting process. Despite the fact that it is convenient to users it can become problem in the case of data loss.

Unlike HDDs, SSDs break suddenly and in most cases – forever. Data recovery is a concern with SSD drives. And if we talk about encrypted drives it’s even more complicated.

  HDD Advantages

 Compared with traditional hard drives (HDD), solid-state drives have a smaller size and weight, a greater speed, but several times (6-7) higher cost per gigabyte and the main disadvantage of SSD is the limited number of rewrite cycles.

 Standard flash memory allows you to record data about 3000-10 000 times (guaranteed resource). The cheapest drives (USB, SD, uSD) use a more dense TLC memory type with a resource of about a few thousand cycles or less. Even the most expensive types of memory (SLC, Single-level cell) - have around hundreds of thousands of rewriting cycles. That means that compared to classic hard drives, due to limited amount of writes SSDs lifecycle is much lower.

 There are few more reasons why HDD still more popular than SSD:

First of all, HDDs are much cheaper than SSDs. HDD costs as low as about 3 cents per GB. This can be a decisive factor for those who need to replace the hard drive.

Classic HDD is your choice of storage if you are on a budget.

Especially considering the fact that the maximum capacity of SSD is only 4 TB, but the capacity of modern hard drives (with a 3.5-inch drive form factor) reaches 10 terabytes for less price.

 Last but not least, in a case of data loss HDDs have much more chances of successful data recovery. Due to different data write/storage methods, when it comes to SSDs data recovery is way more complicated and expensive.

 Conclusions

      Summing up, we can safely say that even though SSDs have their own drawbacks, their advantage is indisputable. However HDDs are still more popular due to price and capacity. It is possible that in the very near future SSDs will become a new standard for storing data and totally replace traditional spinning hard drives. The price of SSDs is gradually coming down, but they're still too expensive to totally replace the gigabits of data that some people have in their PCs or laptops. In case you have to choose between those two, you need to make a decision based on your special needs.

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