ACE Announces Data Recovery Solution for Failed WD Self-Encrypted Drives - Press Release

ACE Announces Data Recovery Solution for Failed Western Digital Self-Encrypted Drives

Dallas, TX - January 05, 2016 - ACE Data Recovery, the leader in hard drive data recovery, announced technology that can recover data from failed encrypted Western Digital hard drives. ACE adds an ability to extract self-encrypted data from not only external My Book and Passport hard drives with well-known USB-SATA bridge encryption, but also any WD internal self-encrypting drives (SED).

When a part of a hard drive becomes unstable for any reason, modern hard disk drives employ G-List to remap unstable sectors. It works well for the user area of the hard drive, but if errors occur in the system area of the drive, the G-List and other service data become inaccessible. Data recovery companies can get access and repair the system area of unencrypted drives using special hardware. However, Western Digital SED restrict access to the system area.
"In most cases, hard drives work perfectly until a customer powers off or reboots his computer. And this is when the system area, that is mostly used at the reboot time, becomes corrupted," said Igor Samuilik, ACE senior encryption specialist. "ACE Data Recovery has developed a custom hardware/software solution to get access to the system area of Western Digital SED. When it becomes accessible, engineers make the hard drive stable by repairing corrupted system modules and tables. At this point, there are two ways to extract clients’ data. Engineers can either disable a built-in encryption feature or get an image of encrypted data and decrypt it after the copying process is finished."

"We neither break AES security encryption nor recover lost passwords," continued Samuilik. "Our services are not for people who illegally take possession of hardware. To prevent potential data breach, we require customers to provide us with passwords to extract data from their self-encrypted or password protected drives. For forensic cases, a court order is mandatory to decrypt data. Clients’ data confidentiality is our main goal."

About ACE Data Recovery:
ACE Data Recovery, the leader in enterprise data recovery, provides services to businesses and individuals who experience data loss due to hard drive failures, software corruption, human error or natural disasters. Since 1981, the company has recovered data from all types of media including HDD, SSD, RAID, SAN, NAS, flash drives, and tapes. Headquartered in Dallas, TX, with additional labs in Houston, TX, and Chicago, IL, the company also has service centers in 25 major metropolitan areas. For additional information visit https://www.datarecovery.net or call 877-304-7189. A dedicated number is also available to Spanish-speaking customers: 844-863-9573.