With digital content becoming more and more mainstream, we have become highly dependent on different storage devices. It is nothing less than a nightmare, when your hard drive crashes and all the data on it is lost. And then you find ways to recover data from a crashed hard drive, which might seem a bit too complicated at first. What you should do now?
Panic!
Just Kidding. We have brought together all the methods you can use to get your data back. Have a look at the guide.
Caution: You should not try to write any new file on the hard disk or the partition of the hard disk that has crashed or wiped off. Otherwise it would become even more complicated and difficult to recover your data from that drive.
Source: wikipedia.org
Find the problem
First of all, you need to know if it really is a hard drive failure or the OS is causing the boot problem. And, here is when you will get a chance to play a bit with your screwdriver! Remove the problematic hard drive from your computer, and connect it to another computer as a secondary drive. The easiest way to do this is by using a USB hard drive adapter, which are available online for a few bucks.
In case your data is visible in the alternate computer, then the issue was just related to the boot process. You just need to reinstall the OS on that drive to solve the issue, and you won’t need to recover any data from that hard drive. But, make sure to backup the data before reinstalling the OS.
If your case isn’t similar to the one mentioned above and you can’t see any file in your hard drive or a particular partition, then my friend, you’re in a serious trouble. Hold on, there is a simple way by which you can recover data from a crashed hard drive. Here it is-
How to get back my data?
There are several free and paid data recovery software available online, and you can easily recover your data.
Recuva is a free and powerful data recovery tool that can help you recover data from a crashed hard drive. Even if the drive is formatted, this software can detect any deleted file and recover it very easily. There is also an option for deep scan, in case any file has been missed in the basic scan.
Source: www.meshfile.com
Stellar Data Recovery software also helps you recover data from a crashed hard drive. A variant of the software is available for free, and a premium variant is also available for more control while recovering the data. Also, this tool is available for both Windows as well as Mac, you can use any one of them, based on the OS you’re using.
EaseUS is another data recovery tool, but you’ll have to pay if you want to fully utilise its capabilities. This tool works similar to Recuva, and is quite efficient in recovering most of your important files. You can rely on this tool to recover data from a crashed hard drive.
Other such tools include PC Inspector File Recovery, Hiren’s BootCD, and GetDataBack. While the ones mentioned above are best in their respective class, you can also try these tools for better pr even more results.
The Catch
There are a few issues with this method of recovering data from a crashed hard drive. First, the process is very time consuming. It can take up to several hours to completely recover all your data. Secondly, the files recovered won’t be in the condition like they originally were.
The file names will be changed, and all the files will get a sequential alphanumeric name and will arranged accordingly, like IMG5983.jpg and MOV153.mov. You will then have to open each file and rename it like they earlier were.
After doing all this, it would be the perfect time to invest in a new external hard disk to keep your important data backed up, always. Or, you can be a bit more tech savvy by renting some space in any of the cloud storage services.
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Do share your experience of recovering data from a crashed hard drive in the comment section below, we will be happy to hear you.