If you
intend to use one of the many “Do It Yourself” tools for data recovery, we suggest that
you read this section carefully before proceeding.
The problems
you can run into using DIY recovery tools or automatic recovery tools do not
lie in the programs themselves, but rather in the lack of experience and
knowledge needed to know when to use a tool and when not to use it. If your
file or disk becomes inaccessible the first thing to do is to determine what
caused the error and what to do to recover the data. It is by no means easy to
fully understand how data recovery tools work and what their limitations are.
How can I also determine if the disk is actually damaged or not?
It may
happen that the file system of the disk is damaged for some reason but the disk
itself is not. That's why most of the modern data recovery tools don't write
data to disks that appear to be damaged. In case the hard drive is not actually
physically damaged it is preferable to use an automatic data recovery utility,
although this may not offer optimal recovery. However, it will be possible to
use a professional utility later if the experiment did not give positive
results. However, nothing ensures that the hard drive is not actually damaged.
A crash is a
major cause that could damage the disk or the files it contains and make them
inaccessible.
Definition of crash
Damage to
the hard drive caused by contact between the heads and platters of the drive.
These could scratch the magnetic surface of the platter. Such a situation could
damage only certain sectors of the disk or, at worst, the whole or more
surfaces of the platters. The data contained in these sectors cannot in any way
be recovered, even with professional utilities.
Other types
of failures are mechanical or electronic. Errors of this type reside in the
drive motor, head arm and other mechanical moving parts (internal or external).
Hardware failures are often caused by careless users who handle the drive
without taking precautions. Hard drive crash accounts for 36% of hard drive
data loss causes.
If your hard
drive is indeed damaged it is possible that you will make the situation worse
by simply reading the data from the drive.
Here is a
simple example that explains this scenario.
If your disc
accidentally falls, the heads of the disc may come into contact with the
surface of the disc. If the contact was only temporary, the worst thing that
could happen is the erasing of the disk data; the disc would still be usable.
Normally you would continue to use the disc, until some problem occurred would
make you aware that the disc is not actually working properly. The error
encountered may signal that a file cannot be read. This could happen several
months after the disk crash. What would actually happen inside the disk is that
the fragments produced by the first crash would cause other minor crashes. Each
crash would produce other fragments inside the disk and the potential problem
would gradually turn into an irremediable malfunction; crashes would become
more and more frequent and more and more harmful. By the time you realize that
the disc has serious problems, it may be too late. This is the time when any
user would roll up their sleeves looking for a data recovery utility. There are
then two possible alternatives:
First chance
You can opt
for a do-it-yourself solution or an automatic recovery utility. Whenever the
utility attempts to read data from the disk for recovery, further crashes will
be caused. In a few moments, the entire disk could become completely
inaccessible. It would therefore be impossible for any data recovery utility to
complete its task and the disk would become unusable. In fact, by running the
utility, the surface of the disk would continue to wear out permanently. It is
therefore very risky to try to run a data recovery utility on a damaged disk
without fully knowing the type of problem that occurred. You could therefore
make matters worse and lose the data on the disk forever. Only by turning on
the computer and then trying to access the disk
Second chance
Should you
choose professional data recovery
programs and methods, all your data (except those that have been damaged by
the crashes that have occurred up to now), could be recovered. The way we
operate is the following: first of all we clean the internal part of the disk,
to avoid further crashes. We then proceed with data recovery by making a copy
completely under our control. If we feel this is not the best course of action,
we will remove the damaged platter and read it out of the media filled with
debris. However, the possibility remains that the data cannot be recovered, but
in this way the chances of recovery increase considerably.
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