What To Do When Your Hard Drive Crashes
Have you ever experienced the pure fear and helplessness of a hard drive crash? Your mind scrambles for ways to retrieve your data and information? You have no back up! What do you do?
Diagnose the Problem
No back up? Let’s skip the I-Told-You-So and check out the problem. First, determine if you are in fact looking at a hard drive crash. Eliminate all other equipment failures and glitches. A USB Universal Drive Adapter is handy to have in a pinch and can check out all sorts of hard drive diagnostics. Hook up your failed hard drive to the adapter and access the trouble.
If you’re looking at the worst-case scenario of a hard drive failure, don’t panic. You still have options to explore to recover your data. Unless you are an IT professional, do not attempt to recover the data yourself. Doing so could result in further loss and reduce your chances of recovering your information.
Consult an IT Professional
Finding out how your data was lost is key to (hopefully) recovering it. There are two common ways in which hard drives crash – logical and mechanical and an IT Pro from Cosmotronics can help you determine which type you’re experiencing and help you to remedy the problem.
Logical Hard Drive Failure
In a logical crash your drive is unable to retrieve your data due to erroneous formatting or a corrupt file system. During a logical crash the drive is simply unable to find the path to retrieve your data. In this scenario the drive itself sustains no damage; it is possibly corrupt data that is the trouble. A logical hard drive failure could be the result of various issues, such as a virus, improper shutdown, registry damage, or deleted data.
Call an IT Professional to determine your options in regards to a logical hard drive failure.
Mechanical Hard Drive Failure
A mechanical crash is equipment-related, meaning some sort of malfunction or damage has occurred within your drive. Professional data recovery services are almost always required to restore a hard drive with mechanical failure. Mechanical failures can be the result of head malfunction, motor failure or damage of magnetic platters and certainly require the help of a professional to diagnose and treat the problem.
If the drive has actually broken physically it’s likely that it will need to be sent out to a data recovery center that can disassemble the drive in a clean-room and rebuild it into a functioning device. Cosmotronics has trusted partners that provide this service.
If you have experienced a hard drive crash of any kind, Cosmotronics is here to help. Contact us today and we can get your hard drive on the road to recovery.
