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Data Recovery Resource

Hard Disk Drive Data Recovery

Hard disk drive faliure is one of the simpler and more common data loss problems. As computers, particularly laptops, notebooks and mobile units, get old they become prone to mechanical faliure. Always ensure you backup regularly.

Some typical signs that may indicate hard drive failure are:

• Grinding, ticking or clunking noises when trying to access files or powering up
• Operating system not booting, with or without error messages
• Inability to read files which are apparently on the disk.

If the drive is not spinning, or if there are unusual noises during booting or drive access, and the data is important, you should contact a data recovery specialist. Attempting to recover data in these situations may only make things worse. After consulting with a recovery specialist, remove the hard drive for recovery work.

The most important point to remember when you have lost data is to not write anything to the affected drive: don't save or install anything on the drive and don't restore data onto the same drive. The reason for this is that hard drives do not actually erase anything. When you delete a file it is only marked on the drive as having been deleted. Therefore, if you accidentally delete a file you have an excellent chance of being able to restore it. However, when the system needs to store more data on the drive, it may overwrite files marked as deleted.

Obviously, if a hard disk has one bootable partition and it's gone, or your operating system files are corrupt or missing, the computer can't boot normally. The best option in this situation is to install the drive in another computer which recognises the file-system, preferably running the same operating system. With the drive running in another computer you will be able to copy data from intact file systems. If the file system is inaccessible, you will need to use data recovery software. Before you do that though, it may be a good time to call a data recovery specialist. The file system may be inaccessible due to media damage, which is where things start to get tricky.