How to Recover Data from a Damaged or Crashed Hard Drive

The hard drive is another component of your computer, so errors can occur at any time. While making a backup copy is the best solution to an unexpected event, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to recover information from a damaged or damaged hard drive or you can ask for help to https://www.salvagedata.com/. Next, let’s look at the most common solutions and the most effective data recovery methods.

Having problems with your hard drive can turn into a nightmare. The rest of the components of the computer can be replaced without problems, beyond the financial outlay, but the same does not happen with the hard disk, where we have all our information stored.

Things to Check before you Panic

Before we panic and think that we have lost all the data stored on the hard drive, we have to perform a series of checks to determine the problem. Failures can occur at the physical level or at the software level. The former are more complicated to solve but not impossible, since their cause may be in a third component such as food.

Checking if the problem is electronic or mechanical is something within everyone’s reach. To begin, we will open the computer case and remove the hard drive without disconnecting it to have it more at hand. When we turn on the computer, we will pay attention to see if it turns. We will notice this with the vibration and noise produced, obviously we exclude SSDs from this point. If it does not emit strange sound or does not rotate, it is possible that we are facing an electrical failure, otherwise, the problem could be mechanical.

If the hard drive does not spin and has no activity, we will try connecting it with another power cable. Another solution to rule out that the problem is in the motherboard or power supply, is to “puncture” the hard disk in an external base or in an external USB connection box. In case all this fails, the electrical problem is almost assured.

Can you Repair an Electrical or Mechanical Failure?

There are hundreds of tutorials on the Internet that explain how to repair a hard drive with electrical problems, although it is best to go to experts in the field, either directly to the manufacturer or to any specialized technical service. Unless we are “handymen”, we do not recommend the replacement of electrical components of the hard disk itself.

With the mechanical problem we are in the same situation. Surely you will find recommendations such as freezing the hard drive. Affirming that the problems of deformations due to overheating can be corrected when placed in the freezer, these manuals have been reproduced since the beginning of time. In addition to possible problems with condensation and humidity, there are dozens of reasons not to heed these tips. Nor will we drop it to see if the hit magically fixes the problem, tapping the TV is a thing of the past.

In summary, if our hard drive does not spin, does not turn on or makes strange noises when working, we have few options other than going to specialized companies. But first, we will test with the bases or external cases, in addition to placing the hard drive in another position just in case.

Ok, the Hard Drive Works But My Data Is Not There

Once we have ruled out the physical failure of the hard drive, it is time to focus on its logical or software part. Data may have been lost for various reasons, such as bad sectors, accidental deletion, or the presence of malware in general (or ransom ware in particular). In this case we are going to see the data recovery, regardless of whether the deletion occurred.

If it is the main disk from where the operating system starts, surely we will not be able to start and we will have to resort to a Live CD or Live USB to be able to execute the most common recovery tools. In case of having another computer, we can extract the damaged hard disk and connect it to the second PC, either internally or in an external box.

We will have to resort to these if we cannot start the system. Almost all the distributions and tools mentioned above have tools to recover data and repair logical problems on the hard drive. In addition, we can download others that we will re