Certifications & Credentials

ISO Class 4 at 0.3 & 0.5 μm — Tested to ISO 14644-1:2015

Our cleanroom facilities were tested in accordance with NEBB Procedural Standards for Certified Testing of Cleanrooms, meeting the air cleanliness classification requirements of International Standard ISO 14644-1:2015 during an “at-rest” occupancy state.

• Classification Laminar Flow Hood — ISO Class 4 at 0.3 & 0.5 μm
• Standard ISO 14644-1:2015, NEBB Procedural Standards
• Testing Firm Air Filtration Management, Inc. — NEBB Certified Firm
• NEBB Professional Michael J. Kelly, NEBB CPT · Certification No. 104
• Test Date January 2020
• Certifying Body National Environmental Balancing Bureau (NEBB)

Why ISO Class 4 matters: a hard drive’s read/write heads fly closer to the platter surface than a particle of smoke is wide. A single airborne contaminant landing on that surface during an open-drive procedure can scratch the platters and destroy the data permanently. ISO Class 4 is the cleanliness level that makes head replacement, platter work, and donor procedures survivable — and it’s a level that cannot be improvised on a workbench with a filter box.

ISO 14644-1 runs 1 to 9. Lower is cleaner, and each step permits about ten times more airborne particles than the one below. “ISO-certified” with no number tells you nothing — Class 9 is roughly an ordinary office.

“Class 100,” which many companies still advertise, comes from a federal standard withdrawn in 2001. It corresponds to roughly ISO 5, about ten times dirtier than the ISO Class 4 this work is done to.

That difference is invisible until a drive is open. When platters are exposed for hours during a multi-disc recovery, the air above them matters more than anything else on the bench — which is why we built a larger, cleaner hood rather than working only from the 18-to-24-inch ISO 5 enclosures most of this industry uses. And had it independently certified by a NEBB firm rather than a non certified $200 consumer particle counter advertised by some companies.