When your hard drive becomes faulty or appears to be damaged, the first instinct is to repair it and recover your data before losing it forever. There are many methods and tools that will not only let you repair your drive, but also recover your data. In this article, you’ll find all the information you need to recover a drive’s data and repair it.
Why do hard drives usually get damaged?
Our external and internal drives can be exposed to a range of risks, which can lead to data loss. Here are some of the most common failures that cause data loss on a drive, along with ways to repair the drive.
Viruses or malware
Viruses not only harm the health of our computer, but also everything they come into contact with. Although their main purpose is to steal information, they can alter the recording and encoding of data, rendering it completely unusable. These viruses can grow to the point of fully occupying the drive’s memory, even corrupting the file system, causing crashes and preventing us from reading from or writing to memory.
How to repair this damage?
A simple solution to fix this and recover your data is to keep your operating system and antivirus software up to date. Indeed, if the drive is kept clean of viruses with a good antivirus program, the risk of data loss drops to zero.
Corrupted files (bad sectors)
Just like viruses and corrupted files, this can be a serious problem for your external hard drive. They reside on your drive, preventing any modification of data on a host drive. In many cases, bad sectors mean your hard drive can no longer be recognized by a computer. This is due to a virus or a file transfer error.
What can be done to fix this?
To avoid these kinds of problems, keep in mind that you should never remove an external drive from the USB port without first ejecting it. To do this, right-click on the hard drive with your mouse. Close all processes running from the connection between the internal drive and the external hard drive, so they can be safely disconnected and errors avoided.
You should also avoid shutting down the computer while the external drive is in use, as this kind of interruption can cause faults in the partitions.
Sudden temperature changes
This problem can lead to the death of your hard drive. Temperature changes occur when there is an electronic fault in the external hard drive, or when our computer suddenly sends an electrical surge greater than the drive’s capacity. This generates high heat that can damage the logic board.
When these problems occur, external hard drive boards can start to run more slowly or become warped, until the total failure of the drive is caused.
How to repair this damage?
To prevent this problem, make sure not to leave your hard drive connected to your computer for long periods. You should only use it when you need to copy or paste files. It is also important to check with a multimeter the voltage your hard drive is receiving, which should not exceed 5 Volts.
Your hard drive being dropped
This is one of the things you should always watch out for, as an impact or a fall can damage any of your drives. Keep in mind that external drives are mechanical parts serving a circuit. As such, an impact can trigger system failures, causing irreparable situations such as preventing you from accessing the data stored on the drive.
How to repair a drive?
You must take serious care of the drive to avoid any damage. Therefore, you should keep it away from impacts, meaning on a flat surface and out of reach of anything that could fall on it.
Wear and loss of performance over time
It is inevitable that our external hard drive will eventually become damaged, since everything that exists has a lifespan, and our hard drive is no exception. There are certain steps you can take to extend the life of your drive, such as:
- Use the hard drive in a cool place (at a moderately low temperature) and do not expose it to sunlight
- Keep it away from dust, and always clean it with a special brush
- Avoid any contact between your drive and water or any other liquid
Steps to recover data from a damaged hard drive
Sometimes, when you inspect your hard drive, certain important files and data are lost, and once the drive repair is complete, you may even lose all the files stored on it. Therefore, to recover this data, here are a few steps to follow:
Recover files with the CHKDSK utility
Unfortunately, the Windows CHKDSK utility does not have a graphical interface like most recovery software. It runs from the command prompt, or CMD. To use this tool, you still need to know the commands you have to run, because if you want to recover data and don’t know how to do it, you could lose it forever. Here are the steps to use CHKDSK and recover files:
- Go to the Windows menu and type « Command Prompt or CMD », then press Enter on the first result shown. You can also access it by pressing “Windows + R”, typing “CMD” and pressing “ENTER”.
- When the command prompt console appears, type CHKDSK E: /f and press “ENTER”. Here the letter “E” represents your hard drive’s letter and should be replaced with whatever letter is assigned to your hard drive.
- Next, type “Y” and press “ENTER ” and repeat the same with the letter “E”. Enter the command: « E : > attrib -h -h -r -s /s/d » and press “ENTER” again.
- By following all these steps, you can recover most of the files that were accidentally deleted, as well as those deleted manually (intentionally), and store them in a folder inside the hard drive.
Using data recovery software
If you’d rather not use your operating system’s built-in tool, you can opt for file recovery tools. These are programs such as EaseUS Data Recovery and Recuva, or Prosoft Data Rescue and Ontrack. These applications scan the drives to be repaired (storage devices such as a memory card or USB sticks) and let you search for the data to recover by file type, name, etc. They will also show you recently deleted files and let you know how recoverable they are.
To do this, select the drive to repair so the scan can run. Once the scan is complete, a deeper scan will start. Then, you’ll need to select the data to recover from the list of files to recover. Finally, click the “Recover” button to start the process.
All the methods above are good for drive recovery and restoring data from a drive. However, if you don’t have the technical skills, it’s best to turn to data recovery professionals. Our experts will first run a diagnostic on your storage media before carrying out corrective actions such as repairing it and recovering the data. This will save you time and money.