Five Data Recovery Myths

Data recovery—it’s one of those things you hope you never need, but it happens. It’s usually a classic Murphy’s Law situation. The one week you put off backing up your hard drive is the week that it crashes. To make things even worse, the reason that you put off your hard drive backup is that you were so busy you didn’t have time, and that means that the information on your drive is vital, mission-critical data that you absolutely, positively need. Desperate to get to your files, you’re likely to fall for one of the many hard drive data recovery myths that populate the web instead of contacting a professional data recovery operation. Here’s why some of those myths could be extremely counter-productive.

Hit the Hard Drive and it Will Start Working Again

Some people will suggest that you should give your hard drive a sharp wrap if it stops working. In all fairness, this used to work and still sometimes does. Hard drives are mechanical devices and occasionally, something gets “stuck.” That said, smacking your hard drive around in an attempt to get it working again is about as effective as kicking your dog to get him to stop barking. It may shut him up for a while, but the side effects make it a bad idea. When you smack your computer or hard drive, you risk scratching the surface of the disk and making it impossible for even the best data recovery specialists to get any of your precious data back.

Drop the Hard Drive Onto a Carpeted Surface

The theory behind this hard drive myth is about the same as the last one – a jar will kick things back into gear and get the hard drive running again. While this may work in isolated cases, there’s a far better chance that you’ll damage the drive, and the disk itself, making it impossible to recover data from it.

Put Your Hard Drive in the Freezer to Get it Running Again

There’s a persistent myth that freezing a hard drive can bring it back to life long enough to allow you to recover some data from it. Again, there’s some science behind it and it may work… temporarily. Again, it’s more likely that you’ll permanently damage the drive and make it impossible for professional data recovery specialists to get your data back.

The Truth

If your hard drive stops working and there’s data on it that you need, get it to a professional hard drive data recovery firm as soon as possible. If you can afford to lose the data anyway, feel free to try one of the myths that may work—or may lose all of your data permanently.