Methods Of Data Recovery That Won’t Work

When a hard drive fails it can be tempting to try every solution that you come across. However, there are a lot of common misconceptions out there which people claim will fix your hard drive and restore your data. These range from putting the drive in your home freezer to dropping it from a huge height onto the floor. Some of these so-called solutions can actually cause far greater problems and will leave you with an even lower chance of getting your data back. Be aware of the following methods of data recovery which won’t work. Even if you do read of people using these with success, you’ll find that there are far more accounts of it going wrong than right.
    
         
     
     
 

One common piece of advice is to put your drive in the freezer. Indeed, you used to be able to fix early drives where the spindle had been misaligned by suddenly lowering their temperature. This is because it would shrink the drive’s components by an extremely small degree and it could move everything back into place. New drives are far more specific in their design and now shrinking of the components usually make things even worse. On top of this, putting the drive in the freezer can cause condensation. When the drive dries out it can cause rusting and damage to the electronics, which is definitely a situation you don’t want to find yourself in.

Another method that people might suggest is hitting your drive or dropping it from a height. Again, with older drives a sudden impact could knock the drive head back into place if it had become misaligned. It certainly wasn’t an ideal or reliable fix and that’s even truer with modern drives. If the drive head has become stuck to the platter, knocking it in even further can cause damage that will be impossible to fix. This is because your data will be physically worn off from the platter.

Some adventurous people may attempt to replace the electronics board on the hard drive. This is unadvisable because these boards are designed with your specific drive in mind and contain information that can’t be found on another board. Applying the wrong component to your drive can cause damage to the platters. Also, the fault may not lie with the electronics board and you should never attempt to fix the problem if you’re not fully confident in what it is or how to sort it.

The fact of the matter is that you shouldn’t try freezing your drive, dropping it or replacing the electronics in an attempt to fix the problem. You might feel like throwing it across the room in frustration, but it’s not going to help anything. In fact, it’ll likely just make things worse. Hard drives are very precise pieces of kit and as such they need to be treated with care. You need to send your drive to a data recovery expect if you want the best chance of getting your data back.