No one can blame you if you’re tempted to try to do data recovery on your own when you lose some data or your device fails all of a sudden. Maybe you trust the experience you have in IT. Maybe you’re confident that you can do it yourself after watching a video on YouTube. Or maybe you just want to save some cash.
Unfortunately, the DIY route most often results in disasters, especially when it concerns the recovery of pertinent data. Here are some of the most common mistakes you should avoid if the time ever comes that you need to recover data from your device.
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Plugging Back In a Clicking or Noisy Hard Drive
If your hard drive starts clicking or producing noise, it’s time to stop using it right away and consult an expert immediately. A hard drive that produces strange sounds most likely faces a serious problem and continuing to use it will only worsen the situation in the first place.
Of course, it can be very tempting to just plug it back in just to rescue your data. However, if the head assembly or disk surfaces already have physical damage, the drive may end up degrading fast, leading to a head crash.
While a noisy hard drive doesn’t always mean that there is physical damage, this is never a risk worth taking. It will work in your best interest to just switch off the device.
Removing the Hard Drive’s Lid and Trying to Perform Data Recovery Yourself
It’s probably one of the worst mistakes you can ever make when recovering data. Just getting a peek into the drive assembly without trying a recovery at all will only jeopardize the possibility of getting good results.
The read or write heads glide on an air cushion approximately 3 to 6 nanometres above the disk surface while it spins. Once a debris or dust particle on the surface of the disk comes into contact with the read or write heads, it will be more than enough to physically damage the surface and render the data unreadable. It might even end up damaging the read or write heads themselves.
Just so you know, hard drives are made in environments with clean and filtered air to ensure that no dust and unwanted particles get into the assembly of the hard drive.
If you remove the lid, there is always the risk that airborne particles will land on the surface of the disk. Data recovery laboratories use filtered air facilities for their inspections. They also perform repairs in controlled environments.
It’s also quite common for disk surfaces to have fingerprint marks that can cause serious damage once you switch on the drive.
Performing Defrag on the Hard Drive
There are many reasons why it’s a bad idea to try to run defrag if your hard drive is showing signs of failure. The process is rather intensive and involves tons of read/write activity. These activities can cause more damage to the surface of the disk if there are already existing ones.
If the loss of data is because of data deletion or logical fault, the defrag process may permanently write over the data you want to recover.
If you have issues trying to access data or you have slow-running programs or operating systems, these are often early warnings of an underlying issue. Never attempt running defrag in the hopes of speeding up things. The best thing you can do is to let a pro check it first.
Letting Your “IT” Friend Check Your USB Stick or Hard Drive
While it’s nice of your friends in IT to lend you a hand, they might just end up making the situation worse, unless they specifically belong to the field of data recovery.
Continued use of your device after device failure or data loss has occurred may result in more loss of data or worse, permanent failure of your device. It is very common when it comes to hard drives although it also applies to smartphones, memory cards, and USB devices.
Trying to recover data without the right set of skills, knowledge, and tools is a recipe for disaster. Even if your friend happens to be an expert in a particular field of IT, the knowledge and skills that he or she has might not have anything to do with the recovery of data.
Watching YouTube Videos
It’s almost a norm for people these days to turn to YouTube and watch videos that teach them how to do things, such as recovering data. Unfortunately, trusting everything you see on these videos might only worsen your issue, to the extent that your data may end up unrecoverable.
One of the most important aspects of the process of recovering data is to guarantee the best recovery as much as possible, which will only happen if the fault is properly diagnosed in the first place. A professional engineer should conduct this diagnosis using the right methods within a clean and air-controlled environment before they try to do any engineering.
While it’s true that YouTube videos are very informative, with some even made by experienced pros, every device is different, which means each one requires a specific form of treatment. There’s no way to tell what caused the fault until the issue is sufficiently investment. For all you know, the device might have multiple faults that need to be addressed.
Downloading and Installing Recovery Software in the Drive in Question
Ceasing the use of the device affected and turning it off is the best thing you can do to ensure that you don’t worsen the data loss. Continued use of the drive such as downloading and installing the data recovery software will only worsen the device’s physical damage, preventing a successful recovery of data. Do yourself a favour and just leave the drive alone if you don’t want to make matters worse.
The Bottom Line
Data recovery is never something that you can just do haphazardly. Take note of the mistakes above and make sure you don’t make them if you ever find yourself facing the need to rescue data from your device.