How To Recover Data From Failed Hard Disk Best Practice

How to proceed to safely retrieve data from hard disk: Instructions for Use

All computer companies sooner or later happen to have some customers who need to recover data from a failed hard drive. It is very important that the data recovery technicians are in possession of both the appropriate equipment and the knowledge necessary to perform the work.

However, even the most capable technician can run into procedural errors that, only at best, translate into a "simple" (so to speak) waste of time. When the error is more serious or linked to particular cases, there is a risk that the data contained on the media will be irreparably compromised.

The purpose of this post is to illustrate and make known our data recovery procedure to the numerous computer assistance centres that collaborate or are interested in collaborating with us, as well as to individuals and companies that are evaluating the option of relying on us for the recovery of their data.

Obviously it is not possible to condense in a single post everything there is to know, since each architecture has its own particularities and therefore of the precautions and of the different steps to follow in order to save time and, at the same time, guarantee the security of operations. It is however possible to list a series of best practices that can be applied independently of the type of architecture to safely retrieve data from hard drives.

Communication with the owner of the support is essential!

It may seem trivial or obvious, but the first thing to do is to talk to the owner of the support and get as much information as possible about how the failure occurred and the behavior of the support.

Below are the essential information that we try to find when we are contacted for data recovery from a hard disk:

1.       How and when did the problem occur?

2.       What happened to the support?

3.       Have other operations been performed by other technicians to recover the data? If yes: which software was used? Has the PCB been changed? has the hard disk been opened? Have the internal components of the Head and Disk Assembly (HDA) been changed?

4.       Have interventions been conducted by another data recovery center or by a simple IT technician?

5.       What are the most important data to recover?

In any case it is strongly advised against turning on the disk, especially in cases where the disk is connected directly to the motherboard with the intention of running the Windows operating system. A peculiarity of Windows, in fact, is that, in the presence of anomalies, it could start its integrated tools for file system recovery and thus lead to extremely harmful consequences, such as to render the support unusable.

Furthermore, it is necessary to avoid the ignition of supports that have fallen into the water. In these cases only the laboratories and the technicians specialized in data recovery have the skills and the necessary equipment to open the hard disk in a clean room, check heads and plates and clean or replace them if necessary.

Another possible scenario is one in which the heads are stuck on the plates. Also in this case the disk should not be started because it is likely that the functioning of the arm holding the heads will be compromised. Operations of this type usually cause serious damage to the surface of the plates and lead to the loss of essential data.

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Created on Oct 21st 2019 05:06. Viewed 446 times.

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