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How Are Clean Room Used In Data Recovery?

June 15, 2009

Clean rooms used are rooms that have been designed to reduce the level of particulates in the air like dust and airborne microbes. Clean room construction employs filters extensively. Staff would usually have to enter clean rooms through airlocks and wear protective gear while working inside the rooms.

For professional data recovery companies a clean room is an essential asset as hard drive repair often requires the use of exceptionally clean working conditions.

Outside air is filtered to prevent dust entering the room. Filters and processes will be in place inside the room to remove internally generated contaminants during production and working areas are often further filtered locally such as laminar flow bench.

There are different “classes” of clean rooms, with each class limiting permissible different numbers of particles per cubic meter, as well as the maximum sizes particles. Thus a Class 1 clean room is one where the number of particles should not exceed 1000 particles per cubic meter.

Clean rooms are not only used in data recovery operations though, they are widely found in all manner of industries ranging from medical labs to pharmaceutical manufacturing plants and of course electronics manufacturing plants. Rooms can be a few feet square or can encompass an entire manufacturing plant area depending on the operation in question.

Why Are Clean Rooms Essential For Hard Drive Repair?

The internal components of a hard drive and in particular the disk platters (many drives have more than one) are exceptionally susceptible to further damage from airborne particulates once opened. Even the most microscopic particles can further damage the extremely sensitive platter surfaces as can damage from ESD, so a clean room environment is essential for a success repair in many instances.

With each generation of disks, data is packed more and more densely on the disk platters. It is thus increasingly important that data recovery be attempted in exceptionally clean rooms.

Drive manufacturers usually specify that their product guarantee will become void if the drive is opened by anybody other than themselves, or their authorized agents. And typically, one of the conditions they impose on authorized agents is that the disks be opened in clean rooms meeting specified standards.

So in summary clean rooms are essential for maximising the chances of a successful data recovery from a failed drive, are necessary for warranty considerations and perhaps most important of all to protect the integrity of any data on the drive because in many cases if the data is not backed up once lost it is gone forever, the loss of which can be devastating for both individuals and businesses alike.

If you need to hand over your hard drive to a data recovery services company check the validation of their clean room. At the very least it should be class 100 certified although the top companies will have invested in even better standards, for example ISO class 3.

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