Question:
Data Recovery Help - My data disk had failed. What should I know before sending the disk to recovery lab ?Answer:
"Never assume data recovery is impossible!"Don't be panic as this will worsen the situation for data recovery! Read the following tips to see if they help.
Prevention is better than cure
- Always backup important information and data.
- Use good anti-virus application to detect any virus in your drive. Sometimes by killing the virus and reboot, the problems may go away.
- Do not allow your drive to experience extreme hot or cold temperature.
- Avoid resting your computer on unstable or moveable platform.
- Avoid leaving your drive unattended at places prone to water, fire or magnetic field.
Somethings You Need to Know
- Stay calm and get help. More data could be lost through panic measures than anything else.
- Do not attempt to solve the problem yourself when your hard drive is making any unusual noise. Running any commercial utilities will make the situation worst.
- Do not attempt to shake or hit on the drive when you encounter any problems, as this will only cause further damage to the drive.
- Do not do anything further if the system report CRC read IO error as this is indication of media failure and data could only be recovered if the disk could reach us early.
- Do not run scandisk as this will stress your disk further if it is already malfunctioning. Scandisk could only solve trivial logical problems.
- Do not attempt to format your drive or changing the partitions when you are unable to access your data.
- Do not run any utility programs unless you know what you are doing. Improper techniques often make recovery more difficult and in some cases it will result in permanent data lost. For instance, if you are running some commercial software utilities, do not install the software on the problem drive. Upon recovery, do not write the data to the problem drive until you are sure you have got back your data. One common mistake is the user tends to run OEM recovery CD which may be performing a format and Window OS reload resulting in more data lost.
- Contact some experience engineers for some on-line telephone advice.
Some Special Cases
- If your disk had dropped into river, lake or sea and had submerged under the water for some time (say a few hours), please do not allow the disk to dry. Upon retrieving the disk, immediately soak the disk into a jar of clean water (distilled water preferred) and rush the disk for recovery. The data can normally be recovered if the salt water does not dry and "crystallize" on platter surface.
- If the disk is wet due to spilling of drinks, water etc, do not power up the disk. Just dry the disk with clean cloth and send it in for recovery.
