Data Recovery Tips

The following tips will improve your chances of a successful result, and perhaps more importantly, prevent you from accidentally taking actions that could exacerbate the damage.

Sound: The most common sounds associated with failing drives include clicking, clacking, whirring and grinding sounds.
Corruption: Files may be completely unreadable or partially readable, especially common with documents and images.
Missing or Renamed Files: Files may have unreadable extensions and they may be renamed entirely, sometime affect entire folder structure.
Slow Operation: System seems to operate very slowly when trying to read files or folders.
S.M.A.R.T. Notifications: Identify attributes like "Soft Read Error Rate" or "Uncorrectable Sector Count".
Failure to Boot: This often occurs due to electronic issues.

Never operate a hard drive that makes unusual noises.
Don't install new software or hardware without an up-to-date data backup.
Never operate a hard drive after you've accidentally deleted files.
Do not install data recovery software if you have trouble diagnosing the cause of the failure.
Never use a hard drive's entire capacity.
Do not attempt to repair physical issues outside of a Cleanroom.
Never attempt to fix physical issues by lowering or raising the temperature of the hard drive.