Bentley-based data recovery specialist SpectrumData Recovery has opened Western Australia's first internationally certified 'clean room' to recover lost data from computers and other digital storage devices.
The clean room, one of only two in Australia for data recovery purposes, enables the retrieval of data that may have been lost due to anything from damage to the device, to accidental deletion of data, to viruses or component failure.
SpectrumData chief executive officer Guy Holmes said physically damaged hard disk drives should only ever be opened in a controlled clean room environment because just one spec of dust is enough to contaminate a disk, potentially making it unreadable and the data it contains irrecoverable.
"Air inside the clean room is thousands of times cleaner than the air outside," he said.
The clean room facility and enclosed work surfaces have been officially rated and certified at a level greater than Class 100(US)/Australian Standard 3.5 (AS1386-1989) and ISO 14644-1 Class 4.
"Previously the majority of Western Australians would have probably had to send their hard disk drives overseas in order to recover lost data," he said.
"This clean room data recovery facility will provide a crucial service for not only individuals and organisations based in Western Australia, but also for many based in the Eastern States."
The clean room facility is located on site at The SpectrumData Group's head office in Technology Park, Bentley. It forms part of The Australian Data Management Centre, a dedicated technology and data management facility of which they are the majority tenants.
A large data storage vault and a state of the art computer room/co-location data centre, collectively worth over half a million dollars, will also soon open at the Centre.
"Having all of these specialised data management facilities under the one roof will make the facility the only one of its kind in Australia, possibly the world," Mr Holmes said.
