Guide to Retrieve Data from Dead Hard Drive

No matter a hard drive is  produced by a famous or potty little company, equipped with high or low quality, it is still impossible to evite away from hard drive failure. And then you have to confront with getting valuable data off dead hard drive. But how to check if a hard drive is dying? How to retrieve data from dead hard drive? The meaning of this article is to help you troubleshoot such things.

Indications of Hard Drive Failure

To avoid fatal damage on data stored in hard drive, you have to be conscious of signs of hard drive failure. 

     1.Unusual noise. You must be very familiar with how your hard drive performs, how it sounds and how it looks.  The first and easiest way to examine a hard drive is to check how it sounds. If you hear unusual noise that may point to a damaged internal mechanism, please do not hesitate to lean in and take a good listen. For instance, atypical clicking could indicate an issue with the read-write arm, while persistent grinding could foreshadow potential problems with the spindle motor or bearings.

     2. Frequent freezing and occasional corrupted file. These two things are not always the hints of hard drive failure. The situation may result from a multitude of issues, such as malware and other non-hard drive related problems. But you need take them as signs of a dying hard drive just in case.

      3.  Physical appearance such as bent pins / broken pieces. Physical appearance seems a tell-tale sign of hard drive failure. But dust and other airborne pollutants can easily damage your drive’s surface given its incredible sensitivity, so avoid opening the drive and exposing the inside components to the outside elements. It’s necessary to carefully remove your computer’s hard drive and inspect it for obvious indications of damage such as bent pins and or broken pieces.

How to Recover Data from Hard Drive?

To confirm if hard drive are really faced with failure, some may resort to methods like run a diagnostic test provided by hard drive manufacturers, disc defragmentor, etc.. Such kind of methods can do a favor in figuring out what the actual problems could be. This takes a risk of overwriting and damaging data, however, if your drive is in fact exhibiting failure. In my opinion, the best option might be to power it down, bypass these troubleshooting methods, and go straight to an expert or hard drive recovery software.

Steps to retrieve data from dead hard drive

   1. Mount the drive using a USB universal drive adapter or dock, if you have access to another computer. An external connection is far easier and more convenient to work with than installing drive internally. And then connect your damaged drive to the alternate computer and check whether the drive containing your files shows up once connected to an active device.

     2. Download reliable data recovery software. It can’t guarantee that all files can be salvaged. But it’s worth a shot to avoid other costly payment.  Free or premium tools? It depends on you.  If you’re a Windows user who is searching for a free dead hard drive data recovery, maybe you can have a try of  Recuva. Also, there’s a free tool compatible with Windows, Mac OS X as well as Linux--TestDisk.

     3. If data recovery software can’t work well, turning to a specialist (such as DriveSavers) for help is urgent and necessary. Expensive as the service is, it really works well at recovering data — even from physically war-torn and dead drives — and carry out the process in a clean, sterile environment around the clock.

Many ways to get back data from dying hard drive, but not all can be salvaged. So, the best way to keep priceless data intact is to routinely back up locally or online.