Forms of Data Loss What is Data Loss Costing You? Urban Legends - How NOT to Fix Your Hard Drive

Urban Legends - How NOT to Repair Your Hard Drive



Hard Drive in the Freezer

Legend: Many people have claimed that placing a damaged drive in a freezer for a period of time can somehow repair it.

Fact: Placing any kind of media in a freezer could never repair the multitude of failures that can occur. Head crashes, electronic failure, and other problems require extensive skill and recovery methods that just won't happen sitting next to frozen ground beef and ice cream.

In fact, the amount of moisture in a freezer could cause even more damage to your drive. See Water or Liquid Damage for information.

While it is possible for a hard drive to overheat and temporarily not run properly, just let it cool down on its own. If it continues to fail due to possible overheating, call Hollywood Data Recovery for more instructions.

Dropping Your Hard Drive

Legend: Dropping or even lightly tapping your drive a few times may cause the heads to become "unstuck" and start reading again.

Fact: No matter how hard or how lightly you do it, causing more physical trauma to your hard drive will make matters much, much worse. Any vibrations to your drive could cause the read/write heads to crash against the media surface and further damage your data (similar to a record needle scratching the surface of a record). Handle your damaged drive like an egg, not a Dihatsu. See Head Crash or Unusual Noises or Impact Trauma for more details.


Over-the-Counter Data Recovery Utilities

Legend: A $50 recovery utility purchased at a computer store will deliver the same results as professional data recovery.

Fact: Often times running any kind of utility or scan on your damaged hard drive can cause irrepairable damage to most of the media surface. If the read/write heads have crashed and are actually touching the media surface, even powering the drive on can cause severe data loss, let alone scanning ever sector of the hard drive. See Head Crash or Unusual Noises for more information.

Also, if files have been accidentally deleted, they may still exist on your hard drive. They're not readable because when you delete a file, the computer just designates that section of your hard drive as a spot that can be overwritten later. Running any kind of utility, or even booting up your computer, could cause that area to be overwritten, making recovery much more difficult. If you've accidentally erased important files, it's best to not even use the computer, as normal use could rearrange the data on your drive and pottentially overwrite your deleted critical files. See Accidental Deletion for more details.

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