August 8th, 2008 admin
The worst thing that can happen to someone that works a lot on a pc or laptop is a hard drive crash. The biggest problem is that not many people, with very important data on their pc’s don’t do regular back-ups. It will always cost you less to back-up your data. A laptop hard drive data recovery can cost a lot, especially for a laptop.
However if it’s too late to do a back-up you probably don’t have any other choice but to look for companies that recover data from damaged hard drives. To know what you should expect you should know that a virus attack, the deletion of an important file the problem will be logical. If you dropped the laptop, if it was damaged by fire, if water got into your lap top and so on, the damage will be physical.
If you are lucky, the problem is logical and it can be solved pretty easily, all data can be safely recovered and it also doesn’t cost too much. If the problem is physical, you aren’t too lucky. It depends in what way the hard drive was damaged mechanical or electrical.
In case of a mechanical damage, the part that was damaging will need to be replaced, otherwise they won’t be able to recover data. This can be a very hard job and can take a while. It is much harder to do this for a laptop hard disk because it is much smaller, that means the parts are also smaller and replacing them can be very complicated. If the problem is electrical it also is hard to recover the data. In this case the circuit board will need to be replaced to recover the data. In the worst cases, if some parts are too badly damaged they won’t be able to recover the data at all.
Now that you know what can happen when they try to recover your data, you can start looking for a company. It’s important to know these things because they will ask you what happened to pre-analyze the situation. Also don’t be fooled if a company offers a very low price. The will also ask money after the job is done and it will cost you a lot more then with other companies. After the job is done you can’t back it up. So don’t choose companies which have suspicious prices!
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August 8th, 2008 admin
Usually people use a laptop to be able to work wherever they go. Having a lot of important data on your laptop can mean disaster if the laptop hard drive crashes. That’s why it is always better to regularly back-up your data. If you don’t and your hard disk crashes, you will have to pay a lot of money to recover it. In some cases you might even lose it forever. So I recommend buying CD’s or DVD’s from time to time and write all the important data. It’s the safe and the cheap way. If your hard drive crashes it will be much cheaper to replace than to recover the data, if it’s physical damage you will have to replace it anyway.
The most common types of hard drive failure are produced by accidental deletion of an important file, attacks from a virus, corruption, physical damage; the hard drive could also crash if you drop your laptop.
There are a few things you shouldn’t do if you suspect hard disk failure, because you could make things worse. If it was damaged because of a fire don’t try to clean it. You can amplify the damage done that way. If you know that the damage is physical don’t shake the laptop and don’t remove the hard drive. Leave it as it is until a professional inspects it.
After the laptop was physically damaged you should immediately turn it off. It can prevent further damage. If it was damaged because of water, you shouldn’t try to clean it or get the water out! If you see messages similar to “Volume Corrupt” or “Operating System Not Found” it is strongly recommended that you shut down the laptop right away and call a professional to see what could be wrong.
If you suspect a mechanical damage, meaning, if you hear weird noises coming from your laptop don’t use scandisk or checkdisk or anything similar. Finally, the worst thing you could do is to try to recover the data, without knowing what you are doing. That’s the best way to permanently lose your data.
So, if you suspect that something is wrong with your laptop hard drive, you shouldn’t do a thing, only if you know what you are doing. The first thing to do in case of hard disk damage is to call a professional and let him take a look!
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August 6th, 2008 admin
If you need to recover data from a hard drive, you might find this article very useful. In 85% of the cases the process is successful, which is pretty high and the chance that you lost your data forever is pretty low. It is also important if you suspect a hard drive crash that you turn off your computer and let the professionals do their work. If you experiment without knowing, you might lose the data forever.
For instance, if you use cheap data recovery software or utilities from your hard drive you might increase the damage a lot, because they are meant to be used only if the hard drive works properly. To perform a data recovery you will need a lot of hardware, software and tools. You should also leave it to a professional, because every mistake can lead to permanent data loss.
The first thing that companies do is to find out the type of the failure. In the case of a logical failure they will eventually scan the hard disk and will try to repair the file system. It is possible that the hard drive is restored as it was before. If the file system can’t be repaired, each sector of the hard drive will be scanned and all the files will be copied somewhere else. This process can take up to two days if the hard drive is close to physical failure.
If your hard drive crashed because of a physical failure, it will be much harder to recover the data. In this situation you need to have the proper parts to make the hard disk work at least until you recover the data. For example, if the circuit board failed, you need to replace it with exactly the same circuit board. A lot of skill and experience is required to recover data in case of a physical failure. It can take up to ten days to recover the data and in the worst cases the data can be permanently lost.
The price for a data recovery can go up to $15.000, which is a lot of money. That’s why it always is better to backup your data, because if you don’t and you will need to recover it, you will spend a lot of money to do that. Also be careful what company you choose to do the work, because some might ask for less money than other companies at first, but after the evaluation the price will go up and it will be much more expensive than it should be.
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