When a computer’s hard drive fails, data recovery options include trying it on another computer, using data recovery software, or using hardware data recovery services, which can be expensive. Regular backups are the best prevention.
The unimaginable happens. You were happily clicking on the keyboard when the screen went blank. Perturbed, you restarted your computer. The panic hasn’t arrived yet, so the computer informs you deadpan that no hard drive can be found.
If you use computers for any length of time, this situation is likely to happen to you. Most likely, it will happen to you while you are in the midst of an urgent project. This is when hard drive recovery comes into play.
If the drive is truly dead, you have a few different options for recovering the data.
Try it on another computer. Sometimes it can be other errors on the computer that can cause the drive not to register. If you’re able, connect the drive to another computer and see if it can read. If it does, you have an entirely different problem to deal with. If not, you have several choices for hardware and software based recovery.
Data recovery software systems. There are software suites that specialize in recovering data from inaccessible drives. Since this type of software is most commonly used in business computing situations, the cost can run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. Many times the software can even rescue recently deleted files.
You might get lucky and find a data recovery software package that comes with a free trial. If you’re even luckier, it will be a fully functional free trial.
Hardware data recovery systems. You typically can’t get one of these for your home, but there are special pieces of hardware that will directly read the hard drive platters (the part of the hard drive where your data is physically stored). Typically these are services that will give you a quote based on the type of media your data is on and the amount of data you want to recover.
This service can range widely, with the upper ranges running into the tens of thousands of dollars. Most of the time these services can recover your data and will also transfer it to a medium of your choice at no extra cost.
Nothing beats regular backups of your computer data, but if you get stuck, use one of these services to save you!
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