Data Extraction

We have in-house software engineering facilities. This means we can access storage media of any age or format; from legacy, obsolete or unrecognised devices. If the device cannot be interrogated by normal means, we write software drivers to gain access.

We perform data extraction, recovery and conversion from the following devices:

• Magneto Optical (MO) disks
• WORM disks
• Magnetic Tape (all formats)
• Hard disk drives – any interface or age
• Minidisc
• Optical disks – DVD, CD, Blu-Ray
• Floppy disks
• Unknown or unidentifiable devices

We are able to work with any file system or operating system, including:

• MS-DOS – all versions (including stacked or compressed volumes)
• DR-DOS
• PC-DOS
• Microsoft Windows – from V1 to Windows for Workgroups to Windows 7 (FAT16 – NTFS)
• IBM AIX
• UNIX and all variants
• Linux Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 and all variants
• Apple Mac OS – all versions
• All other file systems

We often receive legacy or proprietary systems or hardware devices for which there is no support and no way of accessing them using current computer equipment and software.

Retrodata have in-house software engineering facilities and are able to code device drivers so that we can attach and access your storage medium and convert it to the specified format. We believe our abilities and experience in this are unrivalled.

Alternatively, the data might exist on a proprietary or obsolete storage medium (from old Linux, UNIX or Apple systems, or on MO WORM discs such as the Pioneer DC-502A, or early MS-DOS or DR-DOS systems with similar dated and unsupported storage devices.) We are able to overcome all these hurdles with software we have created for this purpose, often using forensics-based methods to achieve success. We have a range of mission-ready process systems already configured to access a huge selection of these older devices and systems.

We see data extraction as the reading of raw data from any storage device or medium and saving it to a format compatible with current equipment. The source data can present as compressed, which in itself does not normally cause difficulties. However, often it has been compressed or encrypted using proprietary means and cannot be read with existing software or utilities. Our software engineers are able to read this either by calculating the compression algorithm, or by reverse-engineering the stored data.

If you require data conversion from any database, or are considering application retirement and have volumes of information you need to keep online, our advanced level of both hardware and software engineering skills will ensure that the migration is completed accurately and efficiently, and with the highest levels of confidentiality.