Best ways to Western Digital hard drive data recovery
Working with large quantities of information? You know the panic moment when you realize that you need some files that you deleted a long time ago. This is the topic of this article : Ask me how to recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive. First lets start with some general data recovery advices, valid for all type of data devices, PC’s, Mac’s, phones.
Use cloud storage. For most regular users, cloud storage services represent the most reliable way how to protect themselves against data loss. Providers of these services are commonly located on the other side of the planet, and they use sophisticated backup systems at their storage facilities, resulting in multiple degrees of redundancy. Best of all, services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive have free plans with generous storage limits, which are more than enough for text documents.
The first step is to remove the hard drive from the device if possible, or otherwise stop using it. Any actions, even installing a recovery app, risks overwriting the files you need. The good news is that when you delete a file on a drive, all that data doesn’t immediately go away. The computer mostly erases the information that points the computer to that chunk of data, which will remain until it gets written over. This works differently depending on whether you have a magnetic spinning disk drive or a solid-state drive (SSD), which you’ll find on most modern computers. But either way, recovery is possible.
So, if your hard drive fails, you’ll need to take care to stop working on it immediately. Even if you’re not directly accessing the data on it, your computer is probably writing something to it thereby risking your shot at data recovery. Once the data is overwritten, there’s no any chance of getting it back. So shutdown the computer that is connected to the hard drive and unplug it.
If you want to replace the PCB then you’ll need to fine a matching replacement and have the ROM chip moved. There are many online providers that will sell you a matching PCB. Some of them even offer to move the ROM chip for you, saving you the hassle of soldering and possibly damaging the chip. If the PCB was the only damaged component and the drive’s internals are OK, then after the replacement and ROM swap, your drive should be up and running again. Another PCB-related item to check are the head contacts. Sometimes they corrode with time, but are easily cleaned with a rubber eraser.
Older laptops that were constructed with traditional hard drives were fairly simple to pop open and fix. You could unscrew a few screws holding the case together, and then plug into the drive via a universal SATA port to retrieve the data. Opening the actual drive itself is not without risk, or advisable, as dust could and will enter the drive, causing contamination and potentially additional damage during the process. For example, older drives would be subject to something called stiction, and sometimes became ‘stuck’, whereby the head and actuator were locked or stuck and the motor failed to spin, causing the hard drive platters to spin improperly. One trick that had some reported success involved placing a hard drive in the freezer, which would cause the metal to contract and become unstuck, at least long enough to offload the data.
Do Your Data Recovery is the tool that you need to use in order to get all your files recovered, and you only need a few clicks to do it. One thing to considerate: If you want to recover all your data, do not save any new data on it, because it will reduces the chance of success. See more info on Recover permanently deleted files.
