A Few Data Recovery Methods You Should Never Try At Home

For those of you unfamiliar with data recovery, it involves retrieving valuable data from a disk drive on a computer, flash drive, server, etc. that have not been properly backed up. It may be necessary for a variety of reasons, which may include hard drives that are damaged from floods, electric surges, being dropped, or from just wearing out over time. Regardless of the reason, many people try unconventional methods for retrieving their valuable data from their non-working hard drives with roughly a 0% success rate. Learn about some of the most common DIY methods for data recovery, and why we would recommend that you don’t attempt them if you want to get your data back.

Freezing

If you do searches for do it yourself data recovery methods, one of the most talked about method involves putting your hard drive in a plastic bag, sticking it in the freezer for a few hours, and then seeing if it will work again. While this may seem a bit bizarre, many claim that freezing a hard drive will shift parts of the hard drive that have moved around, and the hard drive will then be functional again. The biggest reason why you should not attempt this is that you could do damage to your hard drive. Hard drives are sensitive to changes in temperature, as well as changes in humidity. A large drop in temperature could result in a drastic change in humidity in the hard drive, which could damage the hard drive, even if it is in a plastic bag. While freezing your hard drive could work in theory, it would only work on older hard drives. Today’s hard drives are designed to be spaced fractions of millimeters away from one another, and freezing a hard drive would overcorrect any problem in place.

Dropping It, Again

For those of us who have dealt with an old appliance that stop working, such as an old TV or radio, our first instinct is to often give it a good whack – which sometimes would actually do the trick! That stands to reason that whacking a hard drive to knock all the internal back into place components (or something like that) will fix the issue, and the hard drive will become operational again. If this sounds like an act of desperation to get your hard drive to work again, it’s because it is. Dropping your hard drive should not be tried in hopes of recovering your data.

Open the Cover to See if Something’s Out of Place

In no situation should you open the cover of a hard drive if you want to have a chance at recovering your data from it. The platters of a hard drive are extremely sensitive to dust particles in the air, and the hard drive will stop functioning if you try to run it again. Data recovery professionals have to operate in a super filtered room wearing full body suits if they ever need to open a hard drive.

What These Methods Don’t Address

What people fail to understand is that none of these DIY data recovery methods don’t address logical hard drive issues, which are the most common reason why hard drive fails. Like a car engine, parts of a hard drive will eventually wear out and will need to be fixed or replaced in order to work again. These methods are geared towards the idea that they fix some physical damage that has happened to the hard drive at some point.

The best thing that you can do is to get in touch with a data recovery professional and ask them what they think might be wrong with your hard drive. Typically with a little bit of background information they can quickly diagnose the issue, and you will be well on your way to getting your data back.

About The Author:

Mike Hall enjoys providing data recovery tips and advice for people who have lost their data, and other tips for properly backing up and storing their important digital information. Mike works with Data Recovery Group, a provider of data recovery services for individuals and businesses.