How to Recover Data Due to Hard Drive Failure?

Introduction of Hard Disk Drive

Hard disk drive (HDD) can be used for storing information on computers. It is meaningful on today’s modern computer. However, some factors often resulting in failure or the loss of important data, including critically damaged by static electricity, shock, or other reasons. In many cases it is necessary to get the lost information back to life from the failed hard disk drive. Below are several cases which cause hard disk drive failures that can possible retrieve data.

Common Hard Disk Failures

1). Physical Failures
Physical failure often occurs from sudden switch off, accidently power failure, sliding them off desks as well as cheap components.
Besides, drive alignment drift is another reason caused such problems. Mechanical devices are subject to wear and tear, heat and cold, loosening tolerances etc.
However, the small changes in the read/write heads don’t matter usually, as data still gets written in the same place as it will be read later. However, there is some data that hardly ever gets overwritten, and that is the Sector ID Headers.

2). Logical Failures -- Master Boot Record (MBR) Failure

Technically, if the Master Boot Record is working correctly, the master boot code scans the partition table for the active partition, finds the starting sector, loads a copy of the boot sector from the active partition into memory and then transfers control to the executable code in the boot sector. If the master boot code cannot complete these functions, in other words, if it works incorrectly, the system displays a MBR error message.

3). Boot Sector Failures

The boot sector is a region of a hard disk drive, floppy disk, and other similar data storage device. It is loaded to memory and executed as a part of the bootstrap sequence. The boot sector contains a small computer program that is loaded on the operating system into memory and transfers the control.
Most boot sector failure is caused by the defection of boot sector virus. Boot sector viruses are usually spread by infected floppy disks. In the past, these were usually bootable disks, but this is no longer the case. A floppy disk does not need to be bootable to transmit a boot virus. Any disk can cause infection if it is in the drive when the computer boots up or shuts down.

4). Accidentally Data Deletion

Some time you may delete a file that we think it unneeded any longer, but in a week or two you may realize that it is a needed one. It happens to the best of us, but fortunately there are ways to get these lost files back.

5.) Cross Linked Files

A file system error that corrupts the contents of an existing file by writing data from another file into the same cluster. Running Scandisk or a similar program cleans up the problem, but one of the files is no longer usable.

6.) Bad Sectors

Back sectors are the main reason of the hard disk drive that cannot be used any more. If a part of the disk get bad sector which contains data then those data is to be recovered before use. When you format a disk, the OS will mark all unusable sectors as bad sector; however, this does not affect the overall performance of the disk as the damaged space is considered unusable.

Data Recovery from Hard Disk Drive

1). Replace the (Circuit Board) PCB
Upon a Hard Drive circuit board failure, it is possible to get back the data by carefully replacing the PCB of the hard drive.

2). Replace the Firmware
Hard disk drive firmware is the information which used by the computer enables it to correctly interact with the hard disk drive. It may be replaced or updated by the matching firmware.

3). Replace the Head Stack
There are common situation that may be due to head failures. There is a small chip located in the head stack that is called PREAMPLIFIER. Working with preamplifiers always includes some difficulties, because, practically, they can not withstand static discharges. If re-soldering is needed, one should follow a number of rules to protect a preamplifier from static damage caused by careless finger touching. Although this task is very risky and it should be done in a high secured lab specially created for this task.

4). Copy/migrate the disk to another drive
In some cases the complete functionality of the hard disk drive may be disabled while only the internal disk plate is without any damages or errors. In those situations, it is possible to move/copy/migrate the disk to another drive.

5). Spin-Stand Testers
Hard drive manufactures and their head media; preamplifier and read channel suppliers do have very accurate, very expensive "magic machines" called Spin-Stands. These are used for testing and experimenting with heads and disks. They are used mostly by researcher and development departments.

6). Magnetic Force Microscopes (MFM)
Magnetic force microscopy is a powerful tool for high-resolution magnetic imaging of most data storage media. As the density of magnetic media is higher, the bit becomes smaller than the wavelength of light, so optical techniques cannot resolve it. General MFM is capable of imaging the magnetic domain of several tens of nanometers. Also, MFM is almost simultaneous with measuring the surface characteristics of topography and roughness of the same area with sub-angstrom vertical resolution.

Optimal & Available Data Recovery Tools

For Windows

1). Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery
Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery can recover nearly 200 file types from a variety of devices, including hard disks, USB drives, SD cards and DVDs.

2). Data Rescue PC³
Data Rescue PC can restore files even if you cannot get Windows to run. It also works over a network connection. This makes recovery from severe disk disasters much easier, even if you know nothing about data recovery.

3). GetDataBack
GetDataBack can recover data via a network connection or serial cable. This is critical if you need to recover data from a disk you cannot remove and attach to another computer.

For Mac

1). Softtote Mac Data Recovery

Softtote Data Recovery for Mac is an innovative data recovery toolkit to give you the choice of getting lost valuable data documents back from lost, deleted, logical corrupted and formatted hard drive, digital camera, Pod, USB drive, MP3, and MP4 player, SD card in Mac OS.

2). MacKeeper

You don’t need to possess some special skills or knowledge in order to retrieve the accidentally lost data on your Mac. The two necessary conditions are patience and concentration, as this process will take both time and effort.

3). Disk Doctors

Disk Doctors' Journalized Volume feature saves past scans of individual volumes. You can pull data from these scans rather than rescanning the same volumes in the future.