Technology Information

drivers

A common piece of software that is often overlooked is the software driver. These drivers are designed to allow an external piece of hardware, such as a printer, to integrate with the main computer unit. A driver facilitates communication between the software application that needs to use a device and the device itself. It can be thought of as a bridge that closes the gap between applications and external hardware devices.

When a computer software program calls for a certain function of the device, this invokes a specific routine in the driver which then issues the proper command to the device. The device then sends the requested data back to the driver, which in turn communicates that back to the application.

These device drivers can also invoke certain software routines in the original program that made a call, or request, for the action. Because of this interaction, it is very important for the software driver to be up-to-date and current and also for the software programs that interact with them to be “aware” of these programs so that they can interact correctly.

Some of the common device drivers that you probably have on your computer are the small programs that came with your printer, your digital camera, your cell phone, any Bluetooth device that you have and hard drives that are removable. Without the right device driver you will find it virtually impossible for any of these external tools hardware devices to be recognized by the operating system, let alone function correctly.

When people have problems with printers, scanners, USB drives and other devices, one of the most common problems is with the drivers. Because these small programs function as a go-between and interact with both operating systems and other computer software programs, they have a tendency to be become corrupt.

When a device driver becomes corrupt, the item of hardware that they “drive” can start to behave erratically or stop responding completely. One very common problem that happens is when a printer driver gets corrupted. If your printer suddenly starts producing pages that are not formatted the way they appear on the screen, or print out nothing but sheets full of code, then the problem is most likely a bad software driver.

The good news is that it is very easy to replace a device driver that has gone bad. Most of the time on a PC running Microsoft Windows, such as Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can reinstall the driver from the CD-ROM that came with your device, as it will simply over-ride the defunct version. However, before installing Mac drivers, it is recommended to completely remove all associated files from your computer before re-installing the newer version. If it has been awhile since you bought the device, then the best thing to do is go to the website of the manufacturer and search for the most recent version of the driver.

In a surprising number of instances, this approach can be the most direct and simplest way to quickly get rid of an issue with a peripheral. Another benefit of seeking out the most up-to-date drivers for your devices is that often you will gain improved performance overall. This factor makes a good case for checking in every few months on the manufacturer’s website to see if any driver updates have been made available.

In recent times with the “Credit Crunch” beginning to bite a lot of people may well be tempted to try to repair or recover their data from a failed hard disk drive or memory stick. Alternatively they try to use recovery software, which is easily available on the net, can be paid for and downloaded online.

In most cases this software will be a data recovery programme for a hard disk drive that has suffered from some form of logical table corruption and will not assist with

1. Mechanically failed devices
2. Degraded hard Disk Drives
3. Devices with electronic failures

This software will of course not be able to help and if the drive is degraded or suffering from a mechanical failure attempting to run this software will in most cases cause further damage to hard drives, potentially making the disk unrecoverable.

The software itself is very often very reasonable priced – usually under $100 but is only good for one purpose to recover either deleted or logically failed drives, so if you are not sure what you are doing trying to do a self recovery can in the long run cost a lot more.

There are of course a lot of IT experts around of course and you may even have some in your own business, but do they really know what they are doing when it comes to the serious issue of data recovery? You would think that your onsite IT support would be data aware bit this is quite often simply not the case.

In a typical case a drive was initially presented for diagnosis and duly diagnosed with a blown PCB - the drive seemed completely dead and would not spin at all. As an additional test a new PCB was placed on the board so that the response of the heads could be tested. The result of the diagnosis was that the hard drive read heads had been damaged following a power spike.

Upon further discussion, with the client, it transpired that the IT dept had decided to remove the HDD from the laptop and as it was an IDE device mount it as an external storage device by using an IDE connector. Unfortunately they plugged the HDD to the connector “upside down” meaning that crucially the drive received a huge power spike through it when the connector was hooked up to a PC.

It appears that the lack of care taken by the IT dept has caused the drive far more problems that what was probably a simple case of “bad sectors” on a hard disk drive. The cost of a simple bad sectors recovery has now become a full HDD rebuild with the search now on for suitable parts - causing delay and additional costs to the School concerned.

Naturally the client is somewhat annoyed that his data, whilst probably still recoverable, is likely to cost much more and take longer in the recovery process.

Unfortunately most Data Recovery Companies will probably have their own tales of customer mishap or IT Technicians making their job more difficult through there well intentioned but often misinformed knowledge of hard disk drive technology.

So the moral of this is that whilst many people will look for a quick and cheap fix for their data recovery problems, they really are best leaving it to the experts.