25th Anniversary of Attingo Data Recovery

Cleanroom Laboratory Test Customer Hard Drive

MacBook run over by car

Data recovery in the customer's data center

Founded in 1997 by Nicolas Ehrschwendner, the company Attingo has developed into a recognized data recovery service for private and corporate clients throughout Europe. The ISO-certified company has been reconstructing and converting data from damaged storage devices such as hard drives and SSDs for 25 years and specializes in data recovery from server and RAID systems. In emergencies, lost data is recovered around the clock. Both the services and internal research & development are carried out exclusively with qualified in-house staff in the company's cleanroom laboratories – ensuring short distances and optimal data protection.

Company History of Attingo

The company's founding initially took place as a sole proprietorship in Vienna, and in 2007 it was transformed into Attingo Data Recovery GmbH. In the same year, the company moved to its current location in Döbling (1190 Vienna), which offers enough space for two cleanroom laboratories. Due to high demand, Attingo established additional branches with their own cleanroom laboratories in Hamburg and Amsterdam in 2009. In autumn 2016, the company became the first data recovery service to be awarded the Austrian federal coat of arms, recognizing its outstanding contributions to the Austrian economy. After several years of exclusive collaboration, Attingo took over Eticon Data Recovery in December 2021.

Qualified Data Recovery Professionals with In-House Research

Attingo Data Recovery is certified according to the international standard ISO9001:2015, making it the only data recovery laboratory in Austria with this verified quality mark. The certificate is regularly reviewed and awarded by Bureau Veritas to all Attingo branches.

The company also places great importance on internal research and ongoing training of its approximately 15 employees, who continuously improve their expertise. Procedures and tools are developed in-house, as well as data recovery software. For example, in 2014, the company was the first laboratory worldwide to develop a method for reconstructing data from damaged helium-filled hard drives. Additionally, Attingo has a large spare parts inventory with over 14,500 hard drives.

"The great strength of Attingo employees lies in comprehensive customer support from the first contact," says founder and managing director Ehrschwendner. "Whether corporate or private clients, our technical experts try to analyze and narrow down the data problems right from the first contact. In the laboratory, a detailed technician analysis is then performed to find optimal solutions. This allows us to achieve a success rate of 98% in data reconstruction."

Almost 45,000 Successful Data Recoveries in 25 Years

Since its inception, Attingo has successfully processed around 45,000 storage devices, commissioned by more than 11,000 customers from 47 countries worldwide. "Through the rescue and restoration of important data, we have saved corporate clients from damages worth billions and restored countless data and memories that were thought to be lost forever for private individuals," adds Managing Director Markus Häfele proudly.

Selected Statistics on Data Recovery from 1997-2022:

– Internal hard drives accounted for 45% of the storage media processed, followed by external hard drives at 31%. About 10% involved RAID, NAS, and servers, while the emerging flash storage devices (SSD, USB, CF, SD, etc.) accounted for 11%. The remaining 1% each was made up of floppies, tapes, and mobile phones.
– Among the manufacturers of the HDDs processed across all three laboratories, the market leaders clearly dominated: Western Digital (including Hitachi, HGST, G-Drive) with 53% and Seagate (including LaCie, Samsung, Maxtor) with 40%. Toshiba and other manufacturers had only a small share with 5% and 2%, respectively.
– The causes of failure over the past 25 years mainly involved surface damage at 60%, damaged read/write heads at 18%, and electronics or firmware at 17%. The remaining 5% was due to damage to bearings and mechanics or other causes.
– Since Attingo's founding, data recovery has predominantly involved Windows operating systems and Windows servers (66% and 5%, respectively), while Apple MacOS accounted for 15%. In the specialized areas involving Linux systems (including Unix, BSD) as well as VMware and Xen, there were 9% and 3% of the orders. Each accounted for 1% of the cases for iOS/Android and others.