Hard drives are precious storage devices used to store everything from personal data to business’ financial files. They aren’t only effective for carrying a high volume of data but also perform large data transfer operations frequently. However, any damage to the hard drive results in data loss, which isn’t only stressful but also costs you valuable time and money trying to retrieve lost files and business data.
Generally, hard disk failure can happen at any time due to a virus attack, poor power supply, bad block, sectors and corrupted operating system files, etc. And the chances are that you can indeed lose important data due to a damaged drive. However, the good news is that a user can retrieve data back from a crashed, damaged, and corrupt hard drive. Even many people are unaware of this risk and threat, and few are careful enough to back up their important files. Faced with hard drive damage, people often look for data recovery software to save their data.
Below we’ll give you all the knowledge to recover files from a damaged hard drive.
Table of Content
What Could be Common Causes of Hard Drive Crash?
Methods to Adopt for Recovering Data From a Crashed Hard Drive
- Retrieve Data and Backup Them to Another Safe Place
- Recover Data Using Software
- Use Disk Management Utility
- Look For Data Recovery Services
Summing Up!
What Could be Common Causes of Hard Drive Crash?
The damages and crashes on hard drives occur due to logical and physical errors. Here are some listed common reasons behind crashed hard disk that are as follows:
Logical Errors
- File System failures
- System file degradation
- Bad sectors on the hard drive
- Malware or virus infection
Physical Errors
- Overheating Disk
- Moisture or liquid spills
- Defective components
- Mechanical damages due to improper use
- An unexpected power surge or failure
- Burned drive
Methods to Adopt for Recovering Data From a Crashed Hard Drive
The first thing you need to do is determine if it’s indeed a hard drive failure and not some other hardware failure that caused the boot to fail. Before applying any procedure on the broken or corrupted hard drive, it’s recommended to remove the damaged hard drive from your current PC and install it into another PC or laptop as a secondary drive. One simple and easiest way to do this is a USB or IDE/SATA adapter. Once you become successful connect the HDD to another computer, determine – whether the content is visible or not.
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Retrieve Data and Backup Them to Another Safe Place
If you’re able to boot the PC or laptop despite the damage, it’s advisable that – don’t try to restart the computer and make an endeavour to copy your essential data. Following this practice will put your device at risk of losing data permanently. Instead, you should insert your hard drive into another system and try to recover data using software to retrieve your essential data.
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Recover Data Using Software
If a disk ends up with failures and errors, you should try to retrieve data using a hard drive data recovery tool and store it on another device. Such tools are highly recommended that keep data perfectly safe and preserved. The availability of DIY software can recover data from formatted, corrupted, or even crashed Windows PCs and storage devices.
A data recovery tool first creates an image of the drive and saves it as an IMG file. This image file can further be used to restore data from a broken device. This won’t only bring data back to life but also prevent data from further damages. Once you become successful in creating an image file of the entire drive or a specific part of a drive, it’s time to save this file to the desired location. Now, select the files and recover those files. Such tools are a safe, secure, and convenient way to restore data back after being accidentally deleted or if a hard drive is crashed.
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Use Disk Management Utility
Some logical error notifications can appear as – The Disk Structure Is Corrupted and Unreadable, Disk Unknown Not Initialized, The Device is Not Ready, and more. Such errors won’t only make it complicated to access the drive and data but also enable users to spend money and time. However, with just a few simple steps, you can retrieve data back without any third-party assistance.
- Click Windows + X and select Disk Management from the obtainable choices.
- Determine – whether you’re available to check the crashed hard drive in Disk Management or not.
- If it’s visible to you, you can successfully format the device to resolve the hard drive errors to make its data accessible.
Be careful while fixing or recovering the data through the disk management option. You might end up losing up data permanently. However, don’t worry! Data recovery professionals can get the data back by fixing its errors.
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Look For Data Recovery Services
If both above-mentioned methods fail to provide the effective or desired results, it means the drive is damaged or crashed. So, what to do now?
To resolve such physical issues or crashed hard drives, it’s time to look for data recovery services. Thousands of professional data recovery technicians are offering services. These experts perform the appropriate operation on hard drives in class 100 cleanroom. So, any outside environmental factors affect the drives. This also avoids further damages and disasters to the drive. Experts diagnose the device thoroughly to determine the reasons for existing damages in the hard drive. Even these professionals are always equipped with the required tools and software. On the basis of diagnosis, they attempt to perform operations to recover data from a broken hard drive.
Summing Up!
If you fail to access the data from crashed, damaged, and broken hard drives, it’s time to perform the necessary methods as mentioned above to recover data back. However, avoid using your drive instantly or overwriting it. Another thing to remember is that data recovery software can only access the data from the hard drive if it’s accessible and detectable. Therefore, the best solution is to take the help of data recovery professionals. This highly recommended solution enables you to revive data from formatted, corrupted or even crashed storage drives. So, if you need assistance fixing or resolving hard drive issues, feel free to contact data recovery IT Support professionals.