What if your hard drive fails and you don’t even have data backup? If you see a file icon with a question mark on your Mac or you receive an error message stating “Windows detected a hard disk problem” then possibly your hard drive has failed.
This can be a nightmarish situation, especially when you don’t have a backup. Now the question arises what should you do in such a dreadful situation. Do you need to find an emergency data recovery specialist or a DIY method is sufficient to fix this issue?
Hard drive failures can be tough to bear, particularly if it has data that you absolutely cannot afford to lose. In the state of panic, most people turn to Google to find a quick solution to this problem.
The internet has a wealth of knowledge and you can easily find step-by-step instructions for doing just about anything.
From baking cupcakes to fixing clogged kitchen sink, you can find DIY tutorials to do almost everything by yourself. However, when it comes to recovering data from a failed hard drive, a DIY attempt may further complicate the issue.
Given the complexity of modern drives, there’s often little that you can do yourself to get the data back. Hard drives are quite delicate and a DIY effort may cause irreversible damage.
Are you still thinking about trying a DIY method to recover your lost data? If so, here are some reasons why a DIY attempt could further damage your hard drive and make data recovery impossible.
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DIY Data Recovery Tricks Could Make Things Worse
When it comes to data recovery, you will find some less technical, unconventional DIY tricks on the internet. One of the oldest and most popular home remedies is constantly restarting the device in the hope that it will fix itself.
But when you repeatedly reboot the device, it may actually cause further damage. You must avoid using this trick, especially if you’re trying to preserve your data.
This is because when you turn on the computer, it writes data to your hard disk drive or solid-state drive. You think that your computer is sitting idle but possibly data is being written to the drive.
The ‘behind-the-scenes’ system processes such as driver updates, virus scanning, and OS updates can potentially overwrite the data that you’ve lost or deleted.
So, if you’ve lost data, make sure to power off your system immediately and avoid turning it on and off again.
Another common myth is putting a hard drive in the freezer can help in recovering data. But putting your broken hard drive in a freezer to bring it back to life is definitely a bad idea.
When you put the drive in the freezer, water will condense and freeze to the platters of the drive. The minute drive returns to room temperature, condensation will start to appear both inside and outside the drive.
This will damage the platter, causing the frozen hard drive to crash.
You will also find some other ridiculous tricks like if liquid gets in the drive then hang your device out or leave it in rice to draw the liquid out.
When you experience data loss, you may feel tempted to try these quick tricks to save your data but these DIY remedies usually cause more harm than good.
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DIY Data Recovery Software
To help users recover their lost data, a plethora of free software tools are out there. Some of these tools help in solving the issue but if not used properly you may end up permanently losing all data.
When you run the software on the same system that you’ve lost the data from, it could destroy lost or deleted files by overwriting them. If used correctly, data recovery software may help you get back your lost files.
However, a single mistake can also have disastrous consequences. Moreover, if your drive is physically damaged, then any DIY software will not work.
Opening the drive Yourself
The most dangerous DIY method is opening the drive yourself. You can easily find hundreds of DIY videos and articles explaining how to successfully open your hard drive and fix problems like ‘clicking’ noises.
However, a DIY drive repair can be even riskier than using DIY data recovery software. Hard drives are delicate, complex devices that cannot be opened at home.
If opened inappropriately, dust particles and moisture in the air can cause further damage to an already damaged hard drive. A hard drive should only be opened by a data recovery engineer.
