I’m sure you’ve heard of the term ‘data recovery’ before and you’ve probably tried to retrieve your files or solve your hard disk errors with free software. Recovering data from your hard drive can sometimes seem like an easy task but when you get an error after error response there’s no room for experimenting. You don’t necessarily need to seek professional help every single time you accidentally delete a file, but it is important to leave this matter in the hands of professionals when more severe issues occur. Here are some of the cases when you’ll need a professional to help you out.
Heat
Hard drives have a platter with a magnetic coating, and a mechanical arm called an ‘actuator’ with a small copper wire that transfers electrical pulses sent by the computer. All this is happening while the disk platter is moving and the friction generates heat. In some cases, this heat can lead to major damages or even injuries. In this case, it is imperative that you leave this matter in the hands of professionals and ask for a hard drive data recovery. This happens in extreme cases, but it is important that you power it off and let it cool down completely.
Noise
There are two types of noises that you’ll usually hear if there is a mechanical issue – clicking and grinding. If there are bad sectors on your hard disk, that means that you have a degraded plater. This makes the actuator (mechanical arm) return to the same exact point as it attempts to read the data, which results in interrupted clicking noises. A way more serious issue is the exact same thicking noise but only way louder followed by grinding noises with the same dB count. Again, it is important that you shut off the drive immediately and reach out to a reliable IT company that offers hard drive data recovery as further use can damage it irreversibly.
BIOS/ WDM (Windows Disk Management)/ Disk Utility
Sometimes when you connect your hard drive, be it for the first time or 100th, you will get a “not initialized” error. Sometimes this is just a bug and a simple restart may fix the problem, but in some cases, it’s a hardware failed drive. In case this message doesn’t show up immediately, you can check the drive using Disk Management in Windows or Disk Utility in MacOS. Attempting to initialize a failed hard drive will always show a low level I/O error. Similar issues like file corruption, registry damages, and OS failure will be shown in the BIOS.
