There are three main situations when hard drive problems and stop you from getting at your data. This article covers these three situations and explains how to recover hard disk files.
1. Mechanical Faults
The worst case scenario is when your hard disk develops a component or mechanical fault. This is usually apparent as the computer will become complete inoperable and you may be able to hear a grinding or rattling sound coming from inside the disk enclosure or there is an excessive amount of heat coming from the vents.
Your best advice is to not attempt to use the PC and call in a data recovery expert/PC repair to recover hard disk data before the problem gets worse.
2. Boot Faults
If your computer fails to start properly then the best approach is to repair the issue prior to data recovery. Some options are:
- Start the PC in safe mode (use F8 as Windows starts) to run Windows with fewer services. If it starts properly then backup your data to an external drive then troubleshoot the issue.
- Restart Windows using the last known good configuration. This will be effective especially with DLL/registry problems.
- Start the PC from an emergency boot disk and scan the drive for faults.
If Windows starts and you are still unable to recovery hard disk data (lost/formatted/deleted files) then proceed to the next step. If it fails to start then you could resort to computer maintenance software or a PC technician to attempt the repairs.
3. Lost Data
If your data is lost from the drive then data recovery software should be able to help. There are freeware options (Recuva, Undelete Plus, etc.) that can scan a file system and recover hard disk data by copying the original data clusters directly from the disk.
