Tips On How To Recover Data From Hard Drive After Analysis

Though hard drive is relatively tough when compared to flash drive and compact disk, problems can still be found, even if the hard drive has not been used for a long time. This is likely to cause data loss.

If you search in Google, you’ll find a lot of users show interest in hard drive data recovery. Noticing this, I think it’s necessary to talk about how to recover data from hard drive in different cases. After that, I’ll tell you the things you should notice to ensure data integrity and enhance the possibility of complete data recovery.

Recover Data from Hard Drive in Different Cases

Computer failure refers to the physical damage or software program error occurred in a computer system. The former is called hardware failure while the latter is often called soft failure.

The practice has proved that 70% of computer failures are soft failures. Here, I’ll introduce 4 types of common reasons to lead to computer failures. The methods for recovering lost data from hard drive will be given as well.

Partition Table Damage

The partition table records some important information about hard disk partitions. If the hard disk partition table is attacked by a virus or damaged for other reasons, it may cause the partition to disappear suddenly, the disk to be inaccessible, data to be lost, etc.

In such situations, to recover data from hard drive, especially when the partition is lost, you can seek help from a professional and green hard drive data recovery service, MiniTool Power Data Recovery. It works well under various file loss/inaccessible situations, such as hard drive incorrectly formatted, disk partition lost, hard drive inaccessible, etc. Not only it can recover files when Windows functions but it can also restore data when the computer fails to boot.

Here we will show you how to recover files when the partition is missing.

How to recover data when you can boot Windows:

Step 1: Download, install, and run the hard drive data recovery software – MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: On the main interface of this data restore tool, select the unallocated space or the lost partition and click the Scan button.

Step 3: After scanning, you can browse the found files carefully to pick out the files you need. The Type, Filter, and Search features go a long way in simplifying file recovery during the process.

Moreover, you are allowed to preview multiple types of files, including documents, images, videos, audio files, etc. Just double-click the file or select it and click the Preview button to preview it.

Step 4: Finally, check all the files you want to recover and click on the Save button to specify a storage location for them.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free can only help you scan the disk, preview lost files, and recover 1 GB of files. If you need to recover unlimited data, you’re required to get a license for upgrading the software to a full edition.

How to recover when the partition table is damaged and the system can’t boot:

Method 1: Using MiniTool Partition Wizard

Since you can’t enter the system, you should find another computer to get the bootable edition of MiniTool Partition Wizard and then use it to boot without OS so as to recover partition.

Step 1: get MiniTool Partition Wizard on another computer, run it and choose “Bootable Media” (which is only available in a full edition) from Tool Bar.

Step 2: follow MiniTool Media Builder to make a bootable disk/CD/DVD easily.

If you have made a boot disk, please disconnect it from computer now. If you have made an ISO file, please burn it to your USB drive/CD/DVD.

Step 3: connect the bootable USB drive or CD/DVD to the computer which can’t boot. Then, restart the computer and press corresponding button to enter BIOS.

Step 4: change the boot order to make this bootable disk you’ve made the first boot device. Save changes and exit.

Step 5: choose “Partition Wizard” in the MiniTool PE Loader interface. After that, you’ll see the main interface of MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 6: select the target disk with deleted partition and click on “Partition Recovery” from the left pane.

Step 7: now, you should follow the Partition Recovery Wizard to finish deleted partition recovery easily.

At last, you should select the disk and choose “Rebuild MBR” to try to fix the problem and make the system boot again.

Method 2: Using MiniTool Power Data Recovery

To recover data from the deleted partition while the system can’t boot, you should resort to MiniTool Power Data Recovery Bootable Disk.

Step 1: Get MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free installed on a functioning computer, run it, and then click the Bootable Media icon in the top menu bar. After that, follow the on-screen instructions to upgrade it.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: Insert the USB drive into the working computer and create a bootable disk.

Step 3: Connect the bootable disk to the unbootable PC, then boot from the burned bootable recovery media.

Step 4: Choose MiniTool Power Data Recovery in the MiniTool PE Loader interface. After that, you’ll see the main interface of MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

Step 5: Select the unallocated space or lost partition according to the volume size, then click the Scan button.

Step 6: On the file scan result page, find and preview the files by using the corresponding features.

Step 7: Finally, select all required files and click Save to complete file recovery.

Click to Tweet

Master Boot Program Damage

The master boot record (MBR) is believed to be the most sensitive part of hard drive. And the master boot program in it is used to detect the correctness of hard drive partition and determine the active partition. After that, it is responsible for handing over the boot right to the operating system in active partition.

As a result, if the hard drive master boot program has been damaged, you cannot boot computer from the hard drive.

This case is very similar to the first situation of partition table damage case. So, you are also able to make use of the MiniToool Power Data Recovery Bootable Edition for recovering lost data from external hard drive. The recovery process is exactly the same as said before.

Improper Operations

Sometimes, if you are not familiar with the computer system or not careful enough when operating on the computer, you’re going to make some mistakes, such as deleting files or formatting partitions unintentionally.

To recover files deleted mistakenly from hard drive, you should do the following things.

• Run Power Data Recovery and select the place in which deleted files are located.
• Click on “Scan” to detect lost files.
• Check deleted files from the scan result and save them to another drive.

The steps to recover data from a formatted partition are basically the same.

Physical Damage

Physical damage of hard drive refers to the scratches, stains and other factors that could damage the constituent components of hard drive. Not like the data loss caused by soft failure, this kind of data loss is beyond the capacity of any hard drive recovery software.

So if you really meet this problem, the only choice of you is to send you computer hard drive to professional recovery agencies, which will use special tools and methods to try to recover data from hard drive.

However, you are only able to take a chance to recover data on bad hard drive by doing so; whether the data in the hard drive can be recovered or not depends greatly on the damage degree and damage part.

Tips for Enhancing Data Recovery Success Rate

In order to recover data from hard drive as much as possible, users are interested in finding ways to enhance data recovery success rate.

Well, what should you do to avoid causing secondary damage to data? There are things that you should pay high attention to.

Avoid Unnecessary Operations

After you find important data were lost, you must be so anxious that you will choose to constantly restart computer or plug and unplug mobile devices in an attempt to be able to retrieve data.

But unfortunately, this is completely wrong. Secondary data damage is likely to be caused during this process. The best reaction is to save and close pending documents, close unnecessary programs and turn off the computer.

Analyze the Causes of Data Loss

What I want to say by encouraging you to find possible causes is trying to recall what you have done to computer or what abnormal phenomenon was occurred before data loss. No matter it belongs to hardware failure or soft failure, you should stop operating the computer or mobile device immediately. And then search for corresponding solutions to recovering lost data from storage devices like internal external hard drive.

Stop Writing New Data into the Device

Data loss caused by soft failures like accidental deletion, virus attack and unintentional deletion can be solved easily by resorting to powerful hard drive data recovery software as long as the lost data have been overwritten yet. Writing new data into the device which contains lost data would be very harmful.

Seize Time to Start Hard Drive Data Recovery

Whether it is a hardware failure or soft failure that caused the data loss, you must take actions to try to get back lost data as soon as possible. The possibility of recovering recently lost data is indeed larger than that of recovering data lost a long time ago.

Click to tweet

5 Components of Hard Drive Data

Data saved on the hard drive can be roughly divided into five parts according to their different characteristics and functions:

• MBR area
• DBR area
• FAT area
• DIR area
• DATA area.

MBR (Master Boot Record) Area

Locate in cylinder 0, track 0, sector 1 of the hard drive. However, in the total-512-bytes master boot sector, MBR only takes up 446 bytes. Another 64 bytes are given to the DPT (Disk Partition Table). And the last two bytes are “55, AA”, end mark of the partition.

DBR (Dos Boot Record) Area

Usually locate in cylinder 0, track 1, sector 1 of the hard drive. It is the first sector that operating system is able to access directly and includes a bootstrap program and a BPB (Bios Parameter Block).

FAT (File Allocation Table) Area

Locate after DBR area. In order to realize the linked storage of files, system must accurately record the state of clusters – which clusters have already been occupied by files – and specify the number of the next cluster for each occupied cluster (we all know that files are stored on hard drive in the basic unit of cluster. One cluster can only have one file, while one single file may be divided and saved into different clusters). For the last cluster of a file, it has to specify that there is no successive cluster.

DIR (Directory) Area

It is next to the second FAT (FAT backup). It records the information like the starting unit of each file in root directory and file attributes. When locating the file location, operating system is able to know the specific location and size of a file in hard drive by looking at the starting unit in DIR area and the FAT.

DATA Area

This area locates after DIR area. It contains the real content of data on hard drive and occupies most of the hard drive space.

Conclusion

All in all, you should be careful enough when using or managing valuable data. Once data are missing from hard drive, you have to stop what you are doing right away. Then, follow the steps shown in above content to recover lost data from hard drive as fast as you can.