There are lot of ways you can examine a hard drive and see if any of it’s data is recoverable. With little time and the right tools( also a little care) you may be able to extract recover data out off of your damaged hard drive.
Step One: Gather Your Tools To Examine The Drive’s Condition
At first let’s make sure we can connect the drive safely into a computer. You will have some kind of SATA/IDE to USB cable or USB drive enclosure or sled which you can mount the drive into and connect the drive into your computer easily.
Next, take a look at the drive itself and check if it is damaged in any way or if the pins bent or broken. Just make sure that the drive is in a good enough condition to be actually used before we try anything later which might make it’s condition worse.
Step Two: Get A Data Recovery Software
In this step, make sure your antimalware and antivirus tools are up to date. You don’t want your drive to start misbehaving once it is connected to a PC. Once you have done that, it is the time to download and install a data recovery tools. Here are some of our choice:
Recuva (Windows, Free): Personally, Recuva has been indispensable. Made by the same folks behind CCleaner, Recuva makes data recovery simple and easy. if you’re only interested in browsing and restoring selected files off of the drive, Recuva is a great option. Alternatively, check out Undelete Plus for Windows.
- TestDisk (Win/OS X/Linux, Free): If you’re not afraid of the command line, TestDisk is an open source utility that can run against almost any platform or partition type. It does a great job of recovering data quickly, and won’t do unnecessary writes against the drive you’re trying to recover from.
- You can use the software of your own choice but make sure it is a popular and trust worthy one.
- What is your Favorite Data recovery tool ? Comment below