A friend was going on about how his new hard drive crashed two days after he bought it. Without thinking I suggested he return it for a refund because his warranty should cover the failure. He then explained to me that he had just transferred the data stored on the old hard drive to the new one. I continued to reassure him that he didn’t have a serious problem because he could still do another transfer from the old drive to a new one.
But I realized I was not helping him over his emotional preoccupation with the drive crashing, so I shut up. The silence was deafening, nonetheless, because I couldn’t stop processing my thoughts on how he could solve his problem.
We were into two long minutes of silence when he blurted out he had mistakenly thrown out the old drive. So having identified the problem I set out to reassure him that he had a good chance of recovering the data.
However, we still had to go through a few more deliberations before deciding how he could approach the problem.
Usually, it is possible to recovery data stored on a hard drive, but it depends on the circumstances. If you find that, your hard drive is making scratching or ticking noises, software might be all you need to recover your data. However, if the hard drive aperture arm fails or you have damaged platters, do-it-yourself software would not normally do the job. In fact, going this route could further damage the drive, and make recovery more difficult. You need to consult with a data recovery technician in this case to ensure a proper outcome.
The capacity or size of the drive doesn’t matter either. You can use data recovery techniques to get your data back. Again, sometimes software works and at other times it doesn’t. You will need to check for noises coming from the drive before deciding if you can use software. However, if the drive crashes you want to send it to a data recovery shop before it is too late.
