You Definitely Need a Good Hard Drive Disaster Recovery Plan

Yes, you can find many disaster recovery plans and data recovery services if you search on the internet after a data loss disaster occurs. Which one is the best? Does the first one work best for you? Definitely not, you should choose the most suitable solution to perform hard drive data recovery in different cases.

Now, we’re going to offer a comprehensive hard drive disaster recovery plan to help you out from almost all common data loss disasters. You may as well analyze your problem first and then choose the solution that is most appropriate for your case.

Chapter 1 – The Most Useful Hard Drive Disaster Recovery Plan

Summary: it would be best if you have a backup that includes all the files missing after the hard drive disaster. However, if you have no such backup, you also don’t need to worry too much. We provide a good recovery plan for you to refer to.

Have no plan to recover your data after a disaster like “hard drive clicking noise” happens to you? Don’t worry; let’s look into the specific business recovery plan and disaster recovery procedures now.

Step 1 – Turn to Backup if You Have Any

As you can easily find, backup forms an important part of the IT disaster recovery plan and disaster recovery process. What does this mean? Whenever a disaster happens and you need to recover hard drive data, a complete and up-to-date backup would be a “panacea”; it makes hard disk recovery all too easy and accurate.

So, if you have backups, you should resort to them to handle the data loss problem immediately.

Step 2 – Turn to MiniTool Power Data Recovery if You Do Not Have Backup Files

Yet, as you are about to see, there’s no backup (or the backup is not the latest version) is the most common case. At this time, you have no choice but to rely on whatever solutions you can find. Noticing this, we strongly recommend using MiniTool Power Data Recovery to deal with different hard drive data loss disasters. As the best disaster recovery plan without backup, MiniTool Power Data Recovery wins the favor of countless users. It makes you a data recovery specialist!

This free data recovery software works for different data loss scenarios, including:

• Delete files permanently from the hard drive: If the disaster simply refers to accidental deletion, then data recovery is usually easy. As long as the deleted files are not overwritten by new data, this file restore tool can assist you in recovering them easily.
• Format a partition by mistake: There are often two causes for the accidental formatting. One is that you open Disk Management, trying to manage partitions in a better way, but clicking on Format by mistake; the other is that you plan to reformat a partition to change its file system, but you choose the wrong one to perform formatting on. If you’re the victim of those 2 cases, you can use this file restore service to undo the disk format.
• Accidentally delete a partition: Likewise, you may accidentally delete a hard drive partition during the disk management process. Besides, the disk partition may disappear due to virus invasion or other unknown reasons. The MiniTool file recovery tool is also good at recovering files from unallocated space or lost partitions.
• The hard drive is corrupted/damaged: Sometimes your hard drive may be corrupted due to overheating, aging, or file system errors. They may appear as RAW and become unreadable before formatting. In such a situation, you can use the data recovery tool to rescue files first.

Firstly, you need to download and install the free edition of MiniTool Power Data Recovery on a hard drive separate from the drive where the disaster happened.

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Secondly, you should launch the installed software and then you’ll see its main interface where all detected partitions are displayed. On this page, you should select the partition that includes your files needing to be recovered, and then click the Scan button. Besides, you can select the Desktop, the Recycle Bin, and a specific folder to scan for a quick recovery.

Thirdly, you should wait for the completion of the full scan (wait for the progress percentage to go to 100%) since it will take some time. Though you have the option to halt the scan process midway, we do not recommend doing so for the best scanning outcomes.

Fourthly, unfold each folder on the scan result page to see whether there are the files you need.

Furthermore, you can preview the filtered files for confirmation. Various files are supported for preview, including documents, videos, images, audio, emails, etc. Only files up to 2GB in size are supported for previewing.

Finally, once you confirm the files you need to recover, you should check them and press the Save button to choose a safe storage path (choose a place that has no lost files).

Note that if the total size of the files you have chosen to recover is larger than 1 GB or exceeds the free recovery limit left, you should get a license to upgrade your software and continue hard disk recovery. (1 GB refers to the total free recovery limit; if you have used the free edition to recover data before, the left capacity will be less than 1GB).

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Step 3 – Find a Data Recovery Company to Recover Files

Unfortunately, MiniTool Power Data Recovery may fail to help you when you need to finish data recovery from a hard disk that is physically damaged. At this time, a professional data recovery agency becomes a wonderful choice. It will open the disk under sterile conditions if it’s necessary, to try to help you get back all missing data. However, the disadvantages are obvious:

1. Your hard disk may become unavailable;
2. The cost of this kind of hard drive data recovery service is very expensive.
3. There may be still some files that can’t be found by an experienced data recovery company.

This is all about the hard drive disaster recovery plan.

Chapter 2 – Causes of Hard Drive Disaster and Useful Tips

As you know, the causes of hard drive disasters can be divided into mainly 2 categories: software fault (also known as logical fault) and hardware fault (also known as physical fault). Here, we’ll briefly introduce some common causes of these two types.

Software Fault

Actually, the software fault refers to the failure that is associated with the file system. As you know, the writing and reading of hard disk data are achieved through the file system. Therefore, if the file system is damaged, the computer will not be able to find the files and data on the hard disk.

The file system consists of mainly three parts.

• Partition table: the partition will not be recognized once the partition table is damaged.
• Boot sector/superblock: they define the most important parameters of the disk partition/volume.
• File index and Metadata: the data and files saved on the hard disk are distributed according to a certain structure. If this structure is destroyed, the complete file or data does not exist.

Common software faults include:

• Improper human operations
• Internal storage conflict
• System crash
• Virus attack
• Software conflict
• Incorrect system configuration

Hardware Fault

Hardware fault refers to the hardware damage that will prevent the hard drive from running/identifying properly. Hard disk components include circuit board, firmware, head, disk, motor, and so on; all those components may be damaged sometimes.

Common hardware faults include:

• Electricity failure: the system and components are not powered, or only partially powered.
• Firmware corruption: the firmware is a hardware program that controls the normal operation of the hard disk; it is regarded as the “brain” of the hard disk.
• Platter scratch: the platter is the carrier of the saved data. Bad sectors may be generated due to aging or scratches during hard disk usage.
• PCB failure: the PCB of the hard disk is burned or the control chip on the PCB is damaged.
• Components and chip failure: the components and the chip may fail, lose, have poor contact, or fall off. They may not work properly due to overheating.
• Head and motor failure: the head will age and become deformation; the motor will be burnt and stuck. Those things will make the hard disk completely scrapped and can’t be repaired.
• Jumper and switch failure: the off or wrong jumper connection between the system and the components/the printed circuit board and the wrong switch settings could lead to an abnormal system configuration.
• Component work failure: the main components of the computer (such as monitor, keyboard, disk drive, and optical drive) may fail, resulting in the improper working of the system.
• System hardware compatibility failure: this depends on whether the hardware components and a variety of computer chips can cooperate or not and whether there is consistency in aspects of speed, frequency, and temperature or not.
• Natural disasters: this includes floods, typhoons, hail, rainstorms, earthquakes, landslides, snow slides, etc.

Useful Tips

• Be cautious when using data recovery software as the hard drive disaster recovery plan: please choose the reliable one that is suitable for your current situation and avoid repeating the operations by using a lot of software blindly.
• Try your best to avoid the read-and-write operations on the hard drive after a data loss disaster.
• Data recovery is not a 100 % thing, so you’d better back up important files regularly.
• A good and comprehensive hard drive disaster recovery plan is necessary, even if you’re not suffering from a data loss disaster at this moment.

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Chapter 3 – Summary

When a hard drive disaster hits you, don’t act like an ant on a hot pot; the situation may not be as serious as you think. The right things to do after the hard drive is broken or hard drive data are lost are: stay calm and resort to a great hard drive disaster recovery plan at once. Do exactly what the plan tells you to do to finish computer data recovery.