Sometimes, the worst happens…
It’s no good dwelling on the fact that you should have had backups of that critical data when the hard disk drive containing the only copy has started making funny noises and is refusing to work.
Try to minimise damage
Hard disk drives have mechanical moving parts just like a needle and arm on a record player (not sure what a record player is? please don’t make us feel that old!!) so at the first sign of something going wrong, stop trying to use the disk. Immediately.
If you know how to, unplug it from the computer and handle it carefully.
Data can probably be recovered from a hard disk with a faulty actuator arm or damaged read/write heads, it can’t be recovered from a hard disk that’s had the heads repeatedly scratched all over the surface of the disk.
SSD
Modern solid state drives are a different matter, no moving parts to worry about, but also no physical medium that can be searched for missing data. That’s not to say that your data is absolutely lost, but getting the drive assessed quickly is paramount.
#WeCanHelp
If you have a hard disk that’s stopped working, unplug it if it’s external, or turn off the PC/laptop that it’s in then contact us immediately.
It could be a fault on the power side of the hard disk, and so recovery of the data should be fairly easy, but if there is damage to the internal read/write mechanism, it will need to be opened in a specialised clean room and the platters removed by professionals.
If you’ve accidentally deleted data from a device, stop using it to try to preserve the data, turn it off and then contact us.
We can help try to recover your lost data.