Data Recovery Myths and Facts

What does data recovery have in common with primitive religions and mythology? If you guessed “voodoo solutions”, you’d be half right. In prehistoric times, man created myths to explain phenomenon he could not understand. The more important something was in his life, the more likely it was that he’d create a myth to explain it – and some voodoo solution to prevent it from happening or recover from it. When you consider the importance of computers and the data that their hard drives and other media hold, it’s no wonder then, that there are so many myths about lost files and data recovery. Here are some of the best known myths about data recovery and the facts about them.

Myth: You can remove the hard drive platters from one drive and put them in another to read them.

It is possible, but not for most users. Hard drive cases should only be opened in a clean room, and only by professional hard drive data recovery professionals. Manufacturers calibrate the alignment of the disk platters and drive heads within thousandths of an inch to maximize performance. If you mess with the inner workings of a drive, you’re seriously compromising the ability of data recovery professionals to recover any of your lost data.

Myth: Lasers can read hard drive disks without opening the case.

Chalk this myth up under the “not yet” heading. There’s promising research using lasers and other external means to scan hard drives, but so far there’s nothing that’s practical for use even by commercial data recovery firms. It may happen someday, though, and it will eliminate the risks of opening a hard drive case.

Myth: Hard drive manufacturers guarantee recovery of data from a failed hard drive.

Unless there is a special arrangement for a particular company, manufacturers of hardware don’t cover the cost of data recovery under warranty agreements. In fact, most manufacturers explicitly exclude data from coverage under their warranties, and state that they are not responsible for data that’s lost or damaged during transit, repair or replacement of your hard drive. Back up your data regularly so that you can restore it to a new hard drive or to a hard drive after repair if necessary.

Myth: You can use data recovery software to recover data from a drive that has failed mechanically.

If a hard drive has failed or is failing mechanically, any attempts to access or recover data from that drive can further damage the data on the drive and make it more difficult to recover.

If your hard drive has failed or if you can’t access a hard drive for any reason, the best course of action is to call in a data recovery professional like Fields Data Recovery. Don’t try to go it alone or you risk making it impossible to recover data that you might otherwise have been able to save.