When a hard drive has suffered physical damage – whether dueto a fall, electrical surge, mechanical failure or anything else – it does not necessarilymean that the data that you have stored on it is lost forever. Yes, it’spossible that the damage is so severe that your data is beyond retrieval butthis is a lot less likely than you may think.
If your hard drive has suffered physical damage, what you doafter you’ve realised that something’s amiss is absolutely vital. So, if yourcomputer fails to boot, your hard drive starts to make suspicious noises or youhave good reason to believe your drive’s damaged (if you recently dropped thedevice housing it, for example) power it down immediately. Trying to boot upthe drive under such circ*mstances is likely to do further damage so our adviceis always to remain calm and turn it off as soon as possible.
Following this, it can be tempting to try and attempt a DIYrecovery. Be warned, though, the internet is full of recommendations that areactually going to do far more harm than good like the ‘freezermethod’.
Data recovery software is another common tool a home usermay employ in order to try and recover their precious files but, if your drivehas suffered from physical damage, it’s not going to work. Put simply, datarecovery software is designed to recover data lost due to logical errors andwill be of no benefit in this instance as a result. In fact, as utilising suchsoftware incorrectly can actually make the problem worse, it’s not something we’dadvise anyone other than the most technically proficient of users attempt evenif could potentially help.
Sadly, DIY options very rarely yield the results users desireand the task of recovering data from a physically damaged hard drive is onethat will almost certainly require the drive be removed from its casing. As aresult, its owner will most likely need to instruct a professional datarecovery company. What’s more, they’ll need to ensure that said company has a cleanroom as the microscopic particles present in the air are more than capable ofcausing irreparable damage to a drive’s magnetic platters and prevent any kindof recovery whatsoever.
Naturally, we’d recommend you choose Fields Data Recovery –and youcan book a free, no-obligation data recovery diagnostic here – but, whoeveryou do choose, please don’t try a DIY data recovery!
