Hard Drive Recovery - Don't be Caught Off Guard
Hard drives are easy to erase. Most people do not think of this often
enough. Is it because it is tucked away in the case of the computer?
Hard drive recovery is an undesirable option. Ever wonder why hard
drive makers tell you to make sure you backup all your important data
before you do anything to your hard drive?
Drive makers and restorers know that hard drive recovery is not
guaranteed.
Types of Hard Drive Failure
Let's look at two possible types of damage or failure that your hard
drive could suffer.
Physical Damage
If your drive
-
makes strange, loud sounds,
-
pings, clicks or ticks repeatedly without doing anything
-
was fried by a power surge (due to lightning, etc)
then you have a physical failure. A big clue is when your drive does
not show up in the BIOS.
It could be an head crash (failure). If the head crashes or you see or
smell smoke, you may need to seek professional help in restoring your
drive. This is forensic restoration and can be expensive. Weigh the costs
against the value of your data.
However, remember that your easiest hard drive recovery method would be
to restore your data from a recent backup. So backup frequently.
Software Damage
By software damage, we mean damage to critical operating system files
or to the master file table or boot record of the drive. If
you have formatted your hard drive and want back some important
files click here.
If this is what happens, there is a chance you can do an effective hard
drive recovery and get back all your data. You may be able
to do a hard drive recovery on a
crashed pc all by yourself without spending hundreds of dollars to get
back your data.
Chances are that the data is still there, providing you have not
written anything else on the drive since the fault occurred.
What happens when you delete?
In order to explain how you can recover you files from a bad hard
drive, let's see what happens when you delete a file and empty the recycle
bin.
Hard drives do not actually delete anything whenever you clear your
recycle bin. They just designate the space available for re-writing by
removing the file information from the file table. It is just marked as
having been deleted.
The operating system will therefore not "see" the files that have been
marked as deleted.
See also how to recover deleted
file on your hard drive.
How to do a Hard Drive Recovery
If your hard drive is not physically damaged, there is a great chance
you can recover your data. If you see smoke or hear funny sounds, let the
recovery specialists handle it.
It is important that you avoid writing any more information on the
affected drive. Here's how to recover information from your damaged
drive...
Move the drive to another computer that uses the same operating system
or file system type. If you were using Windows XP with NTFS (NT File
System), place the drive in another system running Windows XP.
Of course, you want to make sure that your master/slave configuration
is correct, so the system can access the drive.
You can now use file recovery programs (special software) to read the
contents of the drive.
Have a DOS Boot Disk
Having a DOS boot disk will allow you to boot your computer then use a
program such as
Testdisk
- a file recovery program that runs in DOS - to recover DOS and NTFS
partitions. There is a Linux version of
Testdisk
as well.
The NTFS file system stores a backup copy of the drive boot sector on
the drive. File restore programs can find these backup copies and restore
the damaged partition or volume.
Another useful recovery utility is
FindNTFS, that is (you can guess from the name) a free but great
little program for restoring the NTFS partition commonly used in Windows
XP and Windows 2000.
FDISK With Caution!
Do NOT use FDISK.EXE on a drive already installed and running in
your computer UNLESS you are ready to do a completely clean setup and
install (as with a brand new drive).
If your drive is physically damaged,
you have to get the help of a professional drive recovery
service to restore your information.
If your partition table or master
file table is damaged, there is a good chance you can do a hard
drive recovery successfully with software, by yourself.
See the
hard drive data recovery page
on this site for more information.
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