For business or on a home computer, disaster can strike at any time in the form of a hard drive that suddenly fails. While often hard drives do begin to show signs of trouble well in advance of failing, this is certainly not always the case.
When there is an unexpected hard drive failure, it is very unlikely that it is possible to complete full data recovery from the hard drive on your own. There is the possibility to recover files that are accidentally deleted or even data loss from some formatting mistakes through software, but sudden failures are often caused by mechanical problems that need to be fixed.
In the event of sudden hard drive failure, there are a few important things to do to improve the rate of recovery of data. While simple and what may seem like obvious steps, they are often overlooked or forgotten in an attempt at a do-it-yourself plan for data recovery from the hard drive.
Shut Off the Machine
With internal hard drives, immediately shut off the computer. If the computer is left on, the hard drive will attempt to continually read and write over data, which can make data recovery from the hard drive much more difficult.
External drives should be disconnected from the machine immediately. With both external and internal drives, do not attempt to use any installed or downloaded software or utility.
Don’t Use Software Recovery Tools
If the hard drive is still working but if it is making noises or if there are random error messages or read errors, do not attempt to use recovery software. There are a lot of downloads and options online that offer recovery software, some even provided by the device manufacturer, but they only work if the issue is software related.
If you have a backup copy of files, always install them on a new hard drive. Do not continue to use the existing hard drive until you understand the reason for the failure. Click here for more information.