Hard Drive Crash Recovery

A hard drive crash is the worst thing that a computer user would expect, leading to anything from loss of work in progress to an inability to start the computer. The situation occurs when there is either some software problem or in the worst case, some physical damage to the hard drive of the system, generally occurring due to the collision of the read-write head and the magnetic recording surface of the hard drive. Hard drive crashes can be catastrophic, ranging in scope from a few corrupted files to the whole disk, with loss of the most precious, and often irreplaceable, data.

External hard drives have become quite popular these days, due to the ease of portability and use. It is even believed that these hard drives have a better life span since they are prone to lesser wear and tear chances due to the limited use, restricted only till the time they are used. On the other hand, the internal hard disks are continuously in use, and rests only when the computer is turned off. This fact makes one believe that external hard disks are better option to store data. But the fact is, even external hard disks are equally prone to logical failure or software problem. Though lower, the chances of a physical damage due to read-write head of a hard disk drive touching its rotating platter, still hold good. Thus, the precious data is not safe even with such external hard drives.

The best way to preserve data is to take back up of the useful data at stipulated time intervals, and using more than one copy on different media to be extra cautious. However, there are some ways to recover the data after a hard drive crash. The first step is to check the damage to the hard drive. Hard drive crash due to software damage is usually recoverable with the use of a working PC and a few software tools. Hard drive crash due to hardware problems, however, will require some other ways or at the extreme point, the aid of a professional to recover the lost data.

If the hard drive crash happens due to physical damage, there is still a very good possibility that the data is still intact and accessible. One can guess if it is a physical failure by the noise the drive will make. To recover the data in this case, one should first of all get a new hard drive and install operating system on it. The next step is to install the new drive as master or primary hard drive and reassign the original hard drive as a slave or secondary drive. This allows one to run the computer from the new hard drive, still giving access to the original. One may then try to take an image or clone of the slave (crashed) drive and transfer the image to the new drive using softwares like Acronis True Image 2009 or Norton Ghost. However, if one is not able to do so or the crashed disk is inaccessible, the best thing one can do is send the drive out to a data recovery solution like Disk Doctor or Stellar Data Recovery. These are experts for retrieving data from a crashed hard drive. This may cost a bit, but certainly the recovered data would be far more valuable than this small price.

If the reason for hard drive crash is not hardware related, one has a good chance of recovering his drive. The first step in doing so is to use the operating system's repair features. However, if OS recovery program comes out to be unsuccessful, one can use third-party recovery programs such as FindNTFS, which locates and recovers files kept on a drive that has been formatted with the NTFS format protocol, or Active@ Boot Disk, which is a bootable disk on CD, DVD or a USB flash drive that allows one to boot up his computer in order to recover data from the crashed hard drive. Even data recovery software family from Disk Doctors contain easy to use applications that can recover data from a hard drive having logical failure.

When choosing a tool or application for computer hard drive crash recovery, one should keep certain aspects in mind. Preference should be given to one that records changes being made during the recovery process and contains an undo feature. One may have to try several software actions to recover the data from the crashed drive, and the undo might prevent from causing further damage.