Situation 1: A student prepares for the final exam that will take him out of school into college. He has been surfing a lot, and his PC is loaded with virus. On the eve of the exam, his hard disc crashes.
Situation 2: After the destructive flood in Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, in 2005, the massive loss of data affected even the international stock exchange rates.
Situation 3: A company CEO is about to make a crucial presentation before a possible funding agency. But the electrical connection in the board room is not secure enough. At the exact moment, his laptop hard drive fails him, and all his labour is lost.
The above are only some examples of a near-death experience that one never forgets if it happens even once. Hard drive failure is a total nightmare for anyone from a housewife to a company’s founder.
The Causes
There are a lot of factors that cause hard discs to crash; but they can be roughly divided into two broad heads:
A.
Loss through Physical Damage: This is damage done physically to the disc itself or the circuit system connected to it. This can be caused by the following:
- Dust: If a disc is taken out and not stored properly, if dust accumulates on the disc over a very long period, or if the case is not of a good make. Dust particles can actually scratch a disc, or corrode a part of its surface.
- Water: It can be an accidental drop, a flood, or someone’s brilliant idea of cleaning/cooling a disc, but water is really bad for a disc. Here it should be noted that if a wet disc is dried, the metal surface gets ‘eaten away’ in the process. Therefore, a wet drive must be kept that way until the data is recovered.
- Fire or heat: A fire is either an accident or crime, but a disc getting overheated is much more common. It is strange that apart from home users, some small businesses still do not give enough importance to the simple measurements to be taken to ensure a proper temperature level for a hardworking CPU.
- Humidity: The water content of the air is liable to damage a drive, if it remains consistently humid for a very long time in an uncontrolled atmosphere.
- Motor failure: The motor of the machine may fail due to a number of mechanical causes.
B.
Loss through Logical Damage to the Applications Software: Understandably, this is the more common of the two categories. Here, the disc itself remains unscathed, but the data is either wiped or corrupted. Some of the common causes of this are:
- Power failure/fluctuation: A total power failure is rather uncommon, but power spikes and surges are still some of the most common reasons of a PC’s hard drive crashing.
- System crash: The operating system may refuse to start up or may malfunction, and the disc may develop bad sectors.
- Mistaken / malicious formatting of disc or a partition: The entire disc may be formatted, i.e., all data erased, or a particular partition in the same disc may be formatted. Apart from bad handling, this happens in cases like corporate espionage or data stealing.
- Virus: A virus replicates itself automatically, wiping or corrupting existing files in the process. It may affect the program files and crash the drive.
Data Recovery Companies of the UK
There are literally hundreds of data recovery companies in the country, which is exactly why they cannot be trusted easily. A quack will charge very little, but may end up killing a patient. Almost all consultants would strongly advise a specialist where precious data is concerned. The best way to find out whether a company is good or not is by checking its credentials. It should have a proven track record and strong testimonials in its favour. This is clearly not a task for talented but inexperienced people.
James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on
Data Recovery see http://www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk
