How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive

When your hard drive dies, there’s very little you can do on your own. You can find a lot of DIY data recovery tips on the Internet, most of which are almost guaranteed to do more harm than good. But the reality is that hard disk drives are extremely sensitive pieces of technology, and they can only be repaired by experts who know exactly how to recover data from a dead hard drive.

What to Do When Your Hard Drive is Dead

You’ll find plenty of wacky “solutions” to revive a dead hard drive online. Put it in the freezer, some will say. Put it in the oven, say others. Tighten the screws on the faceplate. Pop the cover off and flick the read/write heads off of the platter surfaces. Swap the circuit board.

If you don’t work in a data recovery lab and know exactly what you’re doing, this is all bad advice. If you do work in a data recovery lab, most of this is still bad advice.

When your hard drive is dead, you must not power it on or let it run. In addition to steering clear of DIY data recovery snake oil, you must not try to run data recovery software on the device. If you do not handle your dead hard drive safely, you risk making it even harder for trained professionals to help you.

Dead hard drive recovery software is snake oil. What you need is a dead hard drive recovery service.

The parts that make up a hard drive have razor-thin margins of error. While they’re well-designed enough to work properly for years and years (barring accidents), it doesn’t take much for DIY data recovery attempts to cause massive, irreversible data loss. This, in turn, makes data recovery engineers’ jobs even more difficult and lowers the odds for a successful recovery when the victim of a DIY data recovery “life hack” ends up going to a professional lab.

The people who know how to recover data from a dead hard drive work for two types of companies: hard drive manufacturers, and data recovery labs. Only these two businesses have the appropriate cleanroom facilities and data recovery tools to reliably repair dead hard drives. However, many hard drive manufacturers simply refer clients with dead hard drives to other data recovery labs.

How to Recover Data From a Dead Hard Drive… The Gillware Way

Unfortunately, when a hard drive is dead, there is nothing you can do on your own. As disheartening as it might be to hear it, there are no easy or DIY answers to how to recover data from a dead hard drive. You need to make use of a dead hard drive recovery service.

Hard drives are complex and delicate. It takes people with special training to fix them. This is where Gillware comes in. When your hard drive dies and won’t spin up, or it starts clicking or beeping, you can count on Gillware to provide affordable, professional data recovery services. The specialists in our lab know exactly how to recover data from a dead hard drive, and can salvage data safely and reliably from these devices.

In our cleanroom workstations, engineers with thousands of hours of data recovery work apiece can perform any sort of hard disk surgery. We can replace damaged and mangled read/write heads. We can swap out burned circuit boards and repair hard drive firmware. And we can even burnish the surfaces of scratched hard disk platters, using specially-designed tools.

We use extremely powerful, fault-tolerant data recovery software to pull data off of freshly-repaired hard drives. These software tools are even more powerful in the hands of our expertly-trained data recovery technicians.

Put Your Trust in a World Class Dead Hard Drive Recovery Service.

At Gillware, we pride ourselves on world-class data recovery services. But that’s not enough for us. We also strive to be affordable and customer-friendly, offering lower prices and a truly financially risk-free data recovery process. There’s no better option in the world for dead hard drive recovery services. Get in touch with our recovery client advisors today!