Data Restore
More and more computer users have a great deal of their life tied up in their hard drives. This can range from simply having a memorable photo collection, to months of work related to a job or personal project. Financial records and personal information can also be commonly found on the hard drive. With storage capabilities soaring past the terabyte level, users stand to lose more than ever with the failure of a hard drive. Hard drive failures can put a person in a tough spot, both personally and professionally. For this reason, an entire industry has sprung up around hard drive recovery and data restore.
Despite improvements in hard drive reliability, the majority of these advances are limited to industrial environments. Complicated RAID 1/5 backup systems are limited mostly to commercial usage, leaving the consumer to contend with hard drive failure on their own. Regularly backing up important data to another drive, or internet storage solution, is the safest means of ensuring your data. Odds are, however, if you are reading this the data is already endangered and the backups either do not exist, or are very old.
Luckily, there are many ways to accomplish data restore. Best of all, utilities that deal with software malfunctions are typically free. Tools such as TestDisk, Undelete Plus, and File Recovery Wizard are very effective and free. These tools can help tremendously in cases where partition failure, accidental formatting, or data corruption are involved. This happens more frequently than you might think. If a computer no longer boots, it can easily be because of corruption in a partition or vital system file.
In these cases, a utility such as TestDisk can easily go into a drive and repair the corrupted section. Partitions can be rebuilt based on file contents, and even problems as serious as accidental reformatting can be recovered from. With hardware related issues, however, data restore can be more difficult.
There are two common hardware faults that can occur in a hard drive. The easier of the two to correct involves a failure of the logic circuit that controls the drive. When this occurs, the faulty logic circuit can be replaced with an identical model, potentially restoring the drive to working status. It is important to find an identical hard drive, not just in model, but also in firmware version. This information is usually listed in small print on the back of the box, and on the drive label itself. Replacing this part at home is very simple, and requires just a Torx screwdriver, and an anti-static surface.
The more serious of the two involves the burn out of the internal motor.
The motor drives the read/write head around the platter, and when it dies, can cause the head to drag along the surface. When this happens, the head can destroy everything in its path, irreparably erasing data. In this case, taking the drive to a professional is just about the only remedy. Because the drive is not functioning, software utilities cannot help in data restore.
Filed under: Data Restore