Hard Drive Image
The first step to take when a computer begins to fail is to remove the drive, if possible, and install it in a designated workstation computer as a secondary hard drive. In the case that a hard drive cannot be moved or moving it would risk further damage, it is possible to start the host computer using alternate boot methods other than the damaged hard drive using various methods such as boot cd's, flash drives or an external hard drive.
After a boot solution has been found it is wise to disable hardware features such as S.M.A.R.T. hard drive monitoring or other manufacture automated diagnostic features. Then you would use specialty software to pull and duplicate any information that is still available. Any writing or copying to the damaged drive is HIGHLY discouraged and should be avoided at all costs as it can create more damage and increase the likely hood of losing more data.
Be careful when attempting to use Microsoft's Scandisk or CHKDSK utilities as these programs can actually have much more disastrous results depending on the type of problem your computer is having.
After safely backing up as much data as possible on a new hard drive we can begin more aggressive techniques to recover hard to reach data. It is rare to recover 100% of data in these conditions, but the sooner these recovery measures are started the higher the percentage of data that can be saved.
Revive Dead Hard Drives
If a hard drive is completely non-responsive or seems to be 100% dead, sometimes you can replace a circuit board from a working hard drive in order to revive the dead hard drive. It is still good practice to extract as much data off the drive as possible as this solution comes with no warranty from the manufacture.
Other methods include re-writing the Master Boot Record or re-constructing the hard drives partition tables. It is important to exhaust all efforts in extracting data before performing operations like these.
Physically Damaged Hard Drives
For this extreme situation the number one thing to do is to call an experienced data recovery specialist. A company that has the means to dismantle and rebuild a hard drive in a specially designed "clean room" is the best option. These options are typically very expensive, but in some cases are the only way to save your data.
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