Let's dispense with the
I-told-you-sos. If you find yourself facing a hard drive 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.)
An attempt to salvage your data can cost anywhere from a hundred dollars to several thousand
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.
There are two ways that drives crash: Logical failure and mechanical failure
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
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.
Drive Disasters: Worst-Case Scenario
What
if your hard drive is suffering from something a bit worse than your
everyday hard-drive crash? How much damage can your data take before
it's gone forever? We wanted to find out what could be salvaged from a
computer that had been through a natural disaster, so we simulated a
really bad one. We decided upon an earthquake/flood doomsday scenario.
First, we took two laptop drives, loaded them with test movie and music
files, then beat the heck out of them until we heard the signature
clicking of mechanical hard-drive failure. Then we submerged one of the
drives in custom- made storm-surge floodwaters (salt water, construction
debris, oil) and let it soak for four days.
We sent both hard drives to Kroll Ontrack Data Recovery, which sells
data-rescue services to both corporate clients and consumers. Ontrack's
Jeff Pederson analyzed the drives in the company's clean room and found
that the read/write heads in our dry drive were bent from our abuse and
that we had scratched the platters. Our flooded drive was wet, but the
platters were undamaged. Pederson replaced the heads and performed a
recovery.
The results?
Pederson was able to save 99 percent of the data from the dry drive and
100 percent from the flooded drive. Had we been paying customers, the
service would have cost us $1200 each.
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