The first thing to establish is what exactly is wrong with yourhard disk:

• Either your computer won’t bootup, or


• Your computer boots up OK but you can’tsee one of your other drives.

Let’s see if we can eliminate the worst scenario. Listen closelyto your hard drive - is it making any sort of weird noise, suchas scratching, scraping, ticking etc?

If so, then your drive is physically damaged and the only hopethat you have is to take it to a service whereexperts might be able to get your data off for you. Theseservices are expensive and time consuming - so you need to makea judgement call as to the value of data on thedisk.

• If it’s only your saved game data or downloadedmusic files you would like back, you’re probably better offkicking yourself for not backing up, and accepting the dataloss.
• If, on the other hand, it’s a book or other typeof information product that you’ve been working on for years,then send it to a service for an evaluation andquote - it usually costs nothing.

If your hard disk sounds OK, then you stand a decentchance of recovering data yourself.

First you’ll need to download some software to help you out.Unfortunately, the better software utilities are not free, butthe good news is that many allow you to try them out to see theycan access the data. There are some freeware versions availablebut generally speaking these are not easy to use - no userinterface / little documentation, or they are not veryeffective.

There’s a list of recommended software on our site ‘DataRecovery Emergency Room’ - compare the different optionsthen download a few of the trial versions.

Your next steps will be based on how your hard drive/s weresetup:

• If you only have a single hard drive that hasnot been partitioned or split into different “logical” drives,you’ll probably need to attach the hard drive to anothercomputer that has enough space to store all your data. This canbe quite technical so if you don’t have the skills please get acomputer savvy friend to help out.

  Another option is to purchase an external USB hard drive case.You can then simply slot the hard drive into the case and plugit into another PC using a USB port.

• If you have a multiple drive setup and your computerboots up fine, then it will merely be a case of getting thedownloaded software to read the files and then copy them toanother drive - provided you have a drive with enough space onit. If not, you’ll need to attach the hard drive to anothermachine with enough spare capacity.


• The scenariowhere you have a multiple drive setup, where the problem driveis the one that contains your operating system files is moretricky.

  Look for a software package that has a boot diskoption available. What this means is that when you start yourcomputer with the boot disk in it, it will automatically run thedata recovery program without trying to start windows. Youshould be able to see your files and then copy them across toanother drive.

Hopefully these tips will enable you to get all your
important files back.

Once you’ve had some time to recover, please take a look at thevarious articles on our website - our goal is to make it one ofthe best resources on data recovery.

About the author:

For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters' interest has been in makingthe most effective use of a business's information assets. Hehas lead several data-to-information projects : ABC Costing,analytical CRM, data warehouse development.

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