Data Recovery Clean Rooms

Achieving cleanliness of this level is a massive task. Huge air filtration equipments have to be used that constantly re-circulate air 10 times a minute. Moreover, the air entering the room is also filtered. Some of the clean rooms are also kept at a positive pressure, so even if the air leaks; it will only be out of the chamber and unfiltered air will not come in. In short, the air quality, temperature, pressure and humidity levels are kept controlled in a clean room.

Manufacturing industries like the electronics, computers, aerospace, and many more require such low level contaminant environment for the production of hard disk drives, semiconductor devices such as Integrated Chips, (ICs) etc. Other industries like the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices industries also use clean rooms that are also sterile. Creating a bacteria-free environment is a function independent of the procedure required for clean room maintenance.

Maintaining Cleanliness

Maintaining high internal cleanliness levels is difficult. Contaminants get generated continuously, by people and equipments alike. Humans shed the outer layer of their skin every day amounting to 1 billion skin flakes every 24 hours. If these are added to the particles that are shed throughout door clothing and through the clean room clothing, they number to more than 1 million particles greater than or equal to 0.5 microns every minute.

Eliminating contamination of this sort requires herculean effort. Professionals working inside the clean rooms wear protective gear that might take a layman half an hour to get into. They first enter through an air lock that might also contain an air shower. They next wash their face with clean room soap, drink water to clear the throat of particles and cover their facial hair and head with a lint-free cover. Shoes are covered with a shoe cover and booties are worn over it. Later, they get into overalls without allowing it to touch the ground. After putting a filter unit and battery pack to the belt, they put on the helmet, safety glasses and the ID badge. Finally they wear nylon and a latex pair of gloves.

The equipments inside the clean rooms are also specifically designed (including the mop and the bucket.) The furniture is easy to clean and produces low particles and all equipment containing natural fibre like paper, pencil, etc are discarded and replaced by viable alternatives. Apart from this, the clean room is continually cleaned to remove particles, bacteria and electrostatic charges.

Classification of Clean Rooms and Data Recovery

However, the levels of cleanliness required vary. Different clean rooms have cleanliness levels maintained to their specifications. The level of cleanliness required is identified according to the classification it has been designed to. Clean rooms are either classified according to the FED 209 standards or the British Standard System that has designated 4 classes of 1, 2, 3 and 4. The FED standard is simpler and measures the number of particles per cubic foot of air and designates clean rooms as class 100,000, 10,000, 1000 and 100.

In the British system, the Class 1 is the highest standard and this specification is tighter than class 100. The particle count should not exceed a total of 3000 particles/m3 of 0.5 micron size (The biggest particle should be sized lesser than 0.5 microns) and this converts to 85 particles per cubic foot, while in a class 100 clean room the particle count should not exceed a total of 100 particles per cubic foot.

A class 100 clean room is required for opening the hard disks of today that are highly sensitive. Human hair is 100 microns while a dust particle is 25 microns. The space between the read write head and the magnetic platter is less than this, and if a hair or speck of dust were to lodge on the platter, this would imminently lead to a head crash and a permanent loss of data. Constructing clean rooms are expensive. The class 100 clean rooms for hard drive data recovery cost around £750,000 to construct and maintain.

As construction and maintenance of clean rooms are highly expensive, very few data recovery companies are well-equipped. Only the reputed data recovery companies should, therefore, be approached for the physical data recovery of a hard disk.