by Kim Naugle

Created on: May 05, 2008

Whether or not a hard drive is salvageable depends on a few things. The internal workings of a hard drive resemble that of an old turntable. A "head" (like the needle on the arm) has to touch the disk (the record) when it reads and writes data. If these physically moving parts are damaged, it's practically impossible to recover the data, and unless you're willing to spend a lot of money to recover it, it's probably not even worth it. You can generally tell if the head or drive has been damaged by the tell-take "clicking" sound as the drive is spinning up when the computer is first turned on. If there is no physical damage, then the hard drive can be "saved".

After the hardware question is answered, it then becomes a question of software. Depending on what operating system you're using (XP, 2000, 98, ME, Mac) and what exactly happened, that will have some bearing on how intact the operating system is, and how intact the files themselves are. A computer knows 0's and 1's and in its most basic form, that's what your data is. It's also possible to transfer a hard drive into a new computer (it's basically storage) but again, depending on what happened, there will be varying degrees of success with this step and this is better done by a professional PC repair technician. Often times opening the PC's case yourself will void the warranty.

There are plenty of places out there that perform data recovery by simply taking the hard drive itself and pulling the raw data from it using several different methods. It's not always a guarantee that the pieces of your data puzzle can be reassembled properly and put back "like new" but generally your chances are pretty good. The price of data recovery varies greatly. The process itself is fairly simple, but the problem is that it's generally very time consuming when the data exists (and is recovered) on a very low level, and the software that is used has to find all the pieces of the puzzle, match them up, and assemble them correctly.

Most people these days are heavily into media; whether it's music, pictures, documents we all have something that's important, that would be difficult, if not impossible to recreate, and therefore should be protected. So rather than spend a lot of time and energy trying to salvage data, your best defense is a good offense. Invest in some kind of backup program or software to reduce or eliminate the need for data recovery. There are many (possibly too many) options for data backup, so make sure that you enlist the aide of a local, trusted, data recovery or PC specialist. It's also a good idea to find someone who's registered with the Better Business Bureau to give an added layer of security.

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