How To Restore Data From a Damaged Hard Disc Drive

How To Restore Data From a Damaged Hard Disc Drive

You shouldn’t give way to despair if your hard drive has been damaged as all the data can be restored. Even in case when your HDD has been broken, your files can be brought to life as they can still remain on the disc, but cannot be viewed through “Explorer”.
Has the article helped you?

You’ll need:

•a damaged hard disk drive;
•a personal computer;
•special utilities;
•access to the Internet;
•computer skills.

Instruction

1. First of all, remove your HDD from the system unit. Don’t throw it away into the bin if any physical damage has occurred, as lost data can be restored even in this state of your HDD. Connect a removed HDD to another computer or insert it into an external USB hard drive enclosure.
2. What you should do next is to use special programs which can be a piece of either freeware or shareware. The following programs have shown themselves to good advantage: О&О UnErasc, PC Inspector File Recovery 4.1 and Zero Assumption Recovery (or simply ZAR). Use O&O UnErasc and PC Inspector File Recovery 4.1 for scanning the disc and then choose necessary files from the list of lost data. If you use these utilities, files can be restored only if no information was written to the HDD after files had been deleted. You can restore files even from a formatted hard drive by using Zero Assumption Recovery utility.
3. Errors in the Master Boot Record partition table are often responsible for file loss. To restore data download from the Internet free simple programs which efficiently reconstruct the MBR with the help of file structures. Such programs as Active Partition Recovery or MBRlool 2.3.1 will easily restore damaged sectors.
4. Create an exact copy of your hard drive to avoid irretrievable data loss. Buy a special program, for example, HDClone 3.2., which will make a sector-by-sector copy of the HDD.
Notice:
Be careful when buying any programs, especially in the Internet, as some of them can represent a real danger to your computer.
Useful tips:
Some pieces of shareware restore files in several passes. Thus, for quick data recovery purchase a license key for some amount of money.
Additional sources:
Active Partition Recovery

Several myths about Hard Disk Drive (or simply HDD)

Some myths of HDD

1. There is a vacuum inside of the Winchester HDA. Certainly it's one of the most frequent mistakes. It's incomprehensible that people think so, but this can't be real as a matter of principle, because the magnetic heads soar about the disk surface at the expense of air stream, which is produced by rotating “pancakes”. So, if there is no air, the Winchester won't work due to the laws of physics. Actually there is simple air inside the HDA which is purified at the expense of air filters with the same pressure such as outside the HDA.

2. If the Winchester's magnetic heads has failed and the disk thrums, you'll need to replace the magnetic platters into another serviceable Winchester for removing data. It's the second common mistake. It's not clear, why people think, that it's necessary to replace the platters, though only magnetic heads has broken down? In practice the replacing of the platters into another HDA is a very hard work an sometimes it even can't be done. Even professionals use this method only in case if bearing box is jamming. It is so difficult because after replacing the “pancakes” they need to be centered relative to the axle shaft, preserving the disks’ displacement angle relative to each other. In most cases it's much simpler to replace magnetic heads from the serviceable HDD into unserviced, because magnetic heads of most HDD models are fastened on their axis and they don't need to be centered.

3. There are special stands, where you can right from the magnetic platters read the information from the damaged disk. Right, such stands really exist, but you may find them only somewhere abroad, the cost of hard disk recovery at such like stands will be somewhere about tens of thousands of dollars, it's possible only for several HDD models, data recovery will be only partial. That's why it'll be more correctly to think, that there is no such a universal in general comprehension stand. It is connected with several moments. First, all modern storage have different systems of technological orders and also there is such a thing as compiler, so if you'll read all disk sectors logically, it'll be necessary to get somehow the logical data structure from the physical sectors. Second, the concentration of data recording of modern HDD is so, that reading information from the HDD surface is possible only by staff heads, but this will have no sense if the platter will have a scratch, in this case the heads fail immediately.

4. The data, which is rewritten must be recovered by the remanent magnetization method. The method of recording data in modern HDD means full magnetic reversal of part of the surface while the information is recordered. That's why the remanent magnetization simply doesn't exist.

5. Government secret services as FBI have on hand super equipment, which simply commercial companies don't have. In reality there are also no magicians in FBI, and certainly they don't have some marvel devices for HDD data recovery in any cases. Moreover, people from secret services very often appeal to hard disk data recovery commercial companies for help.

6.There are cases, that people, when at service center, tell that they don't need the hard drive repairment , but they need just to rewrite the data from it. That's a pity, but it's impossible to copy the data from the damaged hard disk. Nobody still can't do this very work. So, first of all you need to fix your hard drive and only then you may copy all the necessary data from it.

So, when you have so problems with your HDD, don't do anything with your own hands. If after reading this article you have some questions - better consult a specialist to avoid more huge problems.