Can you recover data from a broken hard drive?

Electronic devices are expensive – and that includes storage media. The monetary value of hard drives, however, nigh-on always pales in comparison to the emotional, practical and sentimental value of the data they contain. This is why, when a hard drive fails, users are less concerned about the cost of a new piece of media and instead want to find out if the data held on it can be recovered and, if it can, what they’ll need to pay to get it back. Well, you can click here to find out approximately how much data recovery will cost and you can find out if your hard drive's data can be recovered below:

If you’ve dropped your drive

If your drive has suffered physical damage the likelihood of a full recovery is, as we’re sure you can imagine, very much affected by the extent to which the drive’s various components have been harmed.

The good news, however, is that even when drives have suffered significant damage, a recovery is still usually possible. We’ve previously recovered data from drives that have been dropped, submerged in saltwater for several days and even some that have suffered significant fire damage.

If your drive isn’t being recognised

Whether this is caused by a software error, virus or anything else, the data held on the effected drive is almost certain to be recoverable. Before you decide you need the services of a data recovery expert though, we’d recommend you try starting your computer in safe mode as this could be a much quicker and cheaper solution.

If it’s making a noise

If your hard drive is making a grinding, scraping or clicking sound, it’s probably suffered from a head crash. This occurs when the read/write head comes into direct contact with a drive’s platters and, whilst it’s more than capable of permanently destroying your data, the sooner you power down your drive, the less damage there’ll be and the greater the prospect of a full recovery.

If you’ve accidentally deleted data

Human error is still the most common cause of data loss so, if you’ve accidentally deleted something you wanted to keep, you’re not alone. There’s more good news, too: the data in question is probably recoverable.

When data is initially deleted, its location is erased from your drive’s database. The actual data itself is therefore still present and recoverable until new data is written to this location.