Why You Should Not Attempt Data Recovery on Your Own

There are three reasons why you should never roll up your sleeves and get down to the task of retrieving data.

1. Hard Drives are anything but hard.

2. It is a complex task.

3. A wrong move can never be corrected.

Many of us know at least one person who has attempted data recovery from crashed computers. Most often this “do it yourself” decision results from a (perceived) expensive quote from a data recovery services specialist.

The “helpful” suggestions for a fix-it-yourself program range from hitting the hard disk, putting it in a freezer, shaking the hard drive, opening the hard drive and dusting it and so on. In a vast majority of the instances where the users have tried to recover lost data by themselves, it has only resulted in problems that even an expert could not fix and irreversible loss of data!

Let us hark back to reason number one – a hard drive is delicate delicate delicate! In trying out a hard drive recovery, many people open it up and then look at all the components. This will almost always lead to a permanent loss of data. The hard drive is full of disk platters, spindles, actuator arms, and other fragile components. The disk platter is the most sensitive part of the hard drive and so slight that even a single dust particle could harm it. Therefore data recovery specialists actually work in clean and sterile rooms that can put a hospital’s operation theatre to shame! The platters that hold the data are manufactured from glass, ceramic, light aluminium alloy. They are then covered with a magnetizable layer. The disk platters are finicky about what comes into contact with them and will react adversely to dust, fingerprints and any other debris.

These platters are moved by the spindle which moves according to the speed determined by a motor. The precious data held within the folds of the platters is accessed by the actuator arm. When the hard drive functions normally, all these components come together in perfect harmony. So when an untrained hand dives into this balanced mechanism, it may set into motion all kinds of disturbances which could result in an irretrievable loss of data.

Take for instance one of the aspects of today’s hard drive technology – mechanical precision. The degree of this precision results in the fact that the head assembly of a hard drive is so finely tuned that any contact or operation on it needs specialized tools. The other aspect of electronics is just as delicate and complex. Hard drives are finely tuned to complement the storage media and the data signals they emit.

Enter reason two – it is indeed rocket science. Data recovery, be it hard drive recovery from physical or logical damage, is a complicated process which necessitates the knowledge, tools and the environment for it to be successful. Many a time, people will run disk repair utility to fix the problem. Bad idea indeed! These software programs are exceedingly complex. They work in complex steps and write to the disk which can result in an overwrite of the original data. Select one wrong option and you can bid goodbye to your data! Disk repair utilities fundamentally create a new drive after washing away old data which has either been completely removed or buried deep under the new data.

The common man does not know that recovery of data is not as easy as reformatting the failed medium or media. When you select the option of reformatting the disk, it also allows the master boot to be overwritten. Rebooting a system after selecting to do a reformat and reinstalling the operating system is another humungous error.

Data recovery work is carried out in Clean Rooms (for instance Class 100 Clean Rooms) by trained lab technicians with specific tools and cutting edge technologies. Only this combination allows the hard drive to be scanned thoroughly and securely.

Here is how a typical data recovery setting looks like – an enclosed room with external ventilation so that even the air in the clean room does not get contaminated by air from other parts of the building. There is also a particle enclosure which acts as an additional barrier to stop dust from entering the room. The data recovery guys outfit themselves in highly protective gear of gloves, work suits (which don’t have lint), masks and so on. Before entering the Clean Room, they are blasted with a jet of air to remove even more dust and contaminants and only then do they start the complex work of data recovery. Clean Rooms are labs which have controlled temperatures and humidity levels.

And finally, there is no option of correcting errors in a DIY data recovery experiment. Make a wrong move and it could signal the death knell for the data. Even the best data recovery service specialist will not be able to resuscitate dead data. There are lots of companies that serve this niche area of data recovery.