Well, to get an idea of that, we’ll need to understand the two ways in which a hard drive can crash. They can suffer either logical failure or, much worse, mechanical failure.

• Logical failure is what happens when something happens, usually a file corruption or some kind of accidental formatting that stops the drive being able to navigate and find the data stored on itself. The components of the drive itself are not actually damaged in any way, and so your data is almost certainly still on the drive and easily retrievable (by experts!) so long as you haven’t overwritten it.

• Mechanical failure is much worse. This is when you hard drive has damaged some of its components and this is what prevents it from working normally. Often, a busted hard drive will make a tell-tale clicking noise in its futile efforts to access the files inside it. If you can hear this sound, then chances are good that your data is still there somewhere, but unless you call in some specialist hard drive data recovery help, you are not going to get it back very easily.

Recovery techniques

Recovering data from physically damaged hardware can involve multiple techniques. Some damage can be repaired by replacing parts in the hard disk. This alone may make the disk usable, but there may still be logical damage. A specialized disk-imaging procedure is used to recover every readable bit from the surface. Once this image is acquired and saved on a reliable medium, the image can be safely analyzed for logical damage and will possibly allow for much of the original file system to be reconstructed.

Hardware repair

Media that has suffered a catastrophic electronic failure will require data recovery in order to salvage its contents. Examples of physical recovery procedures are: removing a damaged PCB (printed circuit board) and replacing it with a matching PCB from a healthy drive, performing a live PCB swap (in which the System Area of the HDD is damaged on the target drive which is then instead read from the donor drive, the PCB is then disconnected while still under power and transferred to the target drive), read/write head assembly with matching parts from a healthy drive, removing the hard disk platters from the original damaged drive and installing them into a healthy drive, and often a combination of all of these procedures. Some data recovery companies have procedures that are highly technical in nature and are not recommended for an untrained individual. Many of these procedures will render the manufacturer’s warranty void.

Data recovery Software

Revolutionary applications have emerged which help you recover data on your own. They incorporate many features which make it a cakewalk for you to recover deleted or lost data from various storage media including hard drives, pen drives, camera cards, external hard drives, and other removable media. Let’s have a look at some of the major advantages of data recovery software:

• Easy-to-use: Recovery utilities are completely hassle-free and incorporate simple and graphical user interface to guide you on how to perform recovery. Even if you do not possess technical skills, these tools can be used without acquiring any knowledge. All you have to do is follow the instructions provided by them

• Less time consuming: Most of the data recovery softwares are designed to perform recovery in a fast manner but this does not mean that they are not efficient.

• Versatility: Data recovery software are available for different storage media and support recovery of lost or deleted data in numerous data loss situations.

Data recovery software selected from a reputed data recovery company will always yield favourable and successful results. Therefore, you must pay attention while trusting a company and its product. A software, chosen wrongly, can pose serious threats to already inaccessible or lost data and might even end up destroying the possibilities of data recovery.

Ravi Narayan Sharma

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