Recovery: Physical Damage

 

If have important data stored on a drive which has physical damage the necessary steps to take are much different than from logical or deletion problems. Unlike tape or optical storage media hard disks have a number of moving parts which can fail long before the data itself is corrupted. Mechanical failure can take place in a number of ways, including problems with the motor or platter, or even a crash of the drive's head. Under these circumstances there is very little the home or SOHO user can do without professional help.

Opening a hard drive, under any circumstances is a bad idea. The inside is extremely sensitive to dust so unless yoiu are operating in a "clean room", you can only can only damage the drive more by attempting to fix it at home. This will obviously counteract your intentions of recovering the data.

A simple web search of "data recovery company" will reveal a number of names of appropriate companies. These people have the expertise and tools (like magnetometers and Class 100 clean rooms) to extract your data from a problematic drive.

If you are dealing with mission critical data it stands to reason that this information is backed up in at least one other location so the contents of any one drive may not be that important. If you do not have a back up of your data and you believe the drive is physically damaged there are a few courses of action. If the drive simply refuses to work you have the option of going to a data recovery specialist. If the drive still works but you think a problem is developing, like a loose platter, yoiu have two options. Usually the best course of action for very important data is to immediately stop using the drive and send it to a specialist as this will minimize and further physical damage.

If you are a home user and it is not worth it for you to go to a data recovery specialist the best course of action is copy the information elsewhere before the drive completely goes. This can be done either onto other drives, storage media, or over your network. There is a good chance that you will be able to salvage your data if the problem is oncoming gradually.

The best way to identify problems is to use your hard drive manufacturer's diagnosis application. An example of this is Maxtor's PowerMax which can be used to determine the health of the drive and possibly diagnose any issues. Of course, if the drive makes any strange noises, it may be time to look into data recovery.