Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive

• hard drive
• computers
• tech clinic
• DIY

Let’s dispense with the I-told-you-sos. If you find yourself facing a data recovery job, then you have probably forgotten the cardinal rule of computing: All hard drives eventually fail. And you didn’t back up your data, did you? We’ve been there—hey, everybody has to learn this lesson once. Now what?

Panic!

Just kidding. Actually, the first thing to do is determine if it really is a hard-drive failure you’re confronting, and not one of the countless other equipment glitches that can cause a boot failure. If you have access to another computer, remove the failed hard drive from your sick PC, and hook it up as a secondary drive to the alternate computer. The easiest way to do this is through a USB universal drive adapter—it costs about $30 and is a good device to have around for all sorts of hard-drive diagnostics.

On a Mac, the process is a bit simpler. Use a FireWire cable to hook your nonworking Mac to a working Mac, then, “target boot” the nonworking machine by holding down the T key as you power it on. With either method, it’s possible that your failed hard drive will show up on your healthy computer and reveal its files, in which case your hard drive is probably fine, but your operating system needs to be reinstalled. (Don’t forget to offload your files before you do that.)

If your files don’t show up on the secondary computer, then you are at one of those pivotal moments in life when you find out how much your hard work and treasured memories are really worth to you. Depending on how your drive is damaged, an attempt to salvage your data can cost anywhere from a hundred dollars to several thousand. What’s more, the process can take days—and there is no guarantee that the money and time you invest will produce any results whatsoever.

Now that we’ve gone through the depressing task of properly setting your expectations, here’s the good news: Very often, the data on failed drives is recoverable. In fact, it’s surprising how resilient that information can be—just ask any corporate embezzler who thought he had deleted all the evidence from his PC, only to have it show up later in court. The comparison is apt, since the very same computer forensic tools that uncover digital misdeeds are the ones that can find your treasured family photos.

There are two ways that drives crash: Logical failure and mechanical failure. In a logical failure, the drive’s components are physically undamaged, but because of either accidental formatting or a corrupt file system, the drive is not able to find and navigate its own data. However, unless it has been overwritten, that data still exists on your drive.

A mechanical failure means that your drive has broken parts that are preventing it from working—busted drives often make a telltale clicking sound as they futilely attempt to access their files. If you hear that, your data may still be there, but you’re not getting it back without calling in the experts (see “Worst-Case Scenario,” next page). And those experts make good money. Data recovery services from Kroll Ontrack, Seagate’s i365 and Iomega charge between $500 and $2500 to attempt to salvage data from either logical or mechanical disasters, depending on the severity of the situation. But if you are just dealing with a logical failure, you can get your files back on your own for far less.

We recently attempted a data recovery from the crashed drive of a Popular Mechanics colleague whose 120 GB MacBook drive had spontaneously given up the ghost. We removed the drive from her laptop, then used our USB drive adapter to hook it up to a desktop computer for diagnosis. We didn’t hear any sounds that indicated a truly dead drive, so our first step was to download the free demo diagnostic tool at Prosoft Engineering to check what might be salvageable. Many companies offer demos that will scan your drive and give you a pretty good idea of what’s recoverable before you lay down money to buy their software.

Once the assessment indicated we’d get good results, we used Prosoft’s Data Rescue II software ($99), which is tailored for the Mac OS and Mac-formatted drives. There are far more options for PC owners, including Prosoft’s Data Rescue PC ($99), as well as Ontrack EasyRecovery DataRecovery ($199) and RecoverMyFiles ($60) from GetData.

Most of these products work in a similar way. Install the software, select the defective drive as your source and choose a destination folder to receive the data. (Make sure your recovery drive has enough space for the contents of your failed drive.) Then be prepared to wait, and wait. A full scan and recovery of our 120 GB drive took four days, and a larger drive could take longer.

Recovering a hard drive is a bit like getting back a stolen car—you’ll be happy to have your files back, but the results could be messy. No data recovery program will return your files to you in exactly the condition you originally kept them. These programs are designed to essentially do a data dump from your problem drive to a new drive. Files will be organized by type (JPEG images will be in one folder, Word documents in some other folder, MPEG movies in another) and your songs and photos will be mixed with random sound and image files from your computer’s system folder.

Additionally, the names of all your files will have been changed to various alphanumeric sequences, such as IMG1039.jpg or MOV2010.mov. So be prepared to settle in for a long weekend of sifting through and renaming your files. Oh, and while you’re at it, now’s a good time to buy that backup drive.

19. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
I like the idea of freezing into a block of ice, but as water freezes ti will expand and crush the drive I would think, on the other had, use the usb adapter and leave the drive in the freezer in a bag without being submerged and copy data off that way. I also like SpinRite, its cost is $69 and it works good.

18. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Guys, why don't you just let your readers fix their own apendicitis cases, or even brain surgery? I believe it's extremely irresponsable to teach them to recover data, because of the many variants of data damage. YOu really should be a little more humble.

17. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
don't stop at just putting the drive in the freezer. put the drive in a sealed bag with just the power and ide or sata cable protruding. then submerge the drive and freeze it into the block of ice. it will stay cold for hours that way....and just like freezing will destroy any chances for recovery unless you just get lucky.

16. Freeze the Hard Drive?
in case of a mechanical failure, freezing the drive often works.. Don'T beleive me? Check out these success stories.. there are 100's of them. http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html

15. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Website: http://www.lakeside.com.np
Thanks for this wonderful information. I like it very much. Btw, congrats on making on the top of delicious.com best of luck

14. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
My harddrive seems to have a Mech failure and is making all the clicking noises mentioned above, i think it's the arm due to the nasty fall it took. Arn't part's replaceable? Wouldn't it be cheaper to replace the reading arm opposed to paying some bloak 1200 bucks?

13. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
I had a mechanical failure of an external drive just a few weeks ago. My friend put it in the freezer for a few days, fired it up, and quickly began to copy everything onto a new external. I got 99.9% of my data back and all it cost me was lunch!

12. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Website: http://vidshome.com
I had putted my bad hard drive in the sata enclosure, and hooked it up to my computer. The problem is, when I go to "my computer" to access the hard drive, the explorer crashes. I can not even access the hard drive I am using the recoveryfiles software and when it goes to look up available drive, it continue to scan for Drive K and never does anything after that. K is the letter assigned to the sata external hard drive. Any idea what I can do?

11. Last Ditch Effort!
This sounds crazy, but if you do have the dreaded 'click of death' and you've tried everything to the point where you're gonna have to send the drive in, try this: Seal the drive in a zip-lock bag and put it in the freezer for at least 6 hours. Take it out and QUICKLY plug it in & run the diagnosis program. If your drive comes up, copy off your most important data first, a little bit at a time, because it could crap out at any second. It might help to keep the drive on ice even when it's out. Trust me on this one, it can work. I know from experience, and it saved my life.

10. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Another great program for rescuing drives from logical problems is SpinRite from Gibson Research Corp. (www.grc.com). While it is a PC executable, it can recover drives of any type (Windows, Mac, Linux, iPod) as it is not dependent on the file system in use. It costs around $90, I believe.

9. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Website: www.flowww.com
I took my drive immediately to SalvageData.com. After a $500 fee, they told me the drive was unrecoverable because the motors were shot...and that I'd be wasting my time trying to recover anything from this drive. I then sent the drive to DriveCrash.com. These guys recovered 99.9% of the data (including an overdue graduate paper)... but for a whopping $2K. Word to the wise: 1) backup your data or learn the hard way 2) if you need to go to a professional, spend time online researching the possbilities. There are a lot of shifty groups out there that might not even look at your drive, but charge an evaulation fee whether or not they recover anything.

8. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Website: http://RickHamell.com
It's amazing what data recovery can do. It takes a lot of time and effort to really screw up a drive so that it can't be recovered.

7. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
What - Hard Disk recovery and no mention of SpinRite. It has recovered 9/10 drives Ive used it on. SpinRite doesn't require removal of the hard drive from original system and doesn't goof around with the file names. Your doing your readers a disservice my not mentioning the best product for hard disk recovery.

6. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
One thing you can try just before sending the drive to a recovery company and if you are desperate: find another drive which should be the same make and model and swap the controller circuits, as it may be gone on the "broken" drive. Good luck!

5. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Another method is to swap the electronics with a working drive of the same model, this is when the electronics part of the drive has died but the mechanics are still working.

4. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
That is excellent information. Did you look into the restore capabilities of a drive that went through a fire such as in a home?

3. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
I'd recommend looking into online backups like Jungledisk...its dirt cheap and works great. Plus you can get to your data wherever you're at. And, no, I'm not affiliated with jungledisk, just a happy user. Enjoy!

2. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Website: http://www.fallofearth.com
really interesting article didn't know i can recover the data from a dead hard drive and it doesn't cost that much .... thanks for the information !

1. RE: Don't Panic! How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive
Very good points. Cannot stress the importance of regular BACKUPS. I like Norton Ghost, just keep an image of your hard drive on a secondary source. jes

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