What Are Some Advance Data Recovery Techniques?
Summary: Data recovery is usually an easy way to retrieve lost or deleted data. But sometimes, you need some advance methods to recover data in critical situations like system crash, unbootable hard drive, BSoD error, etc. Here in this blog, we’re discussing the advance data recovery techniques to cater to all simple and complex data retrieval scenarios.
Data Recovery is a process of retrieving deleted or inaccessible data from formatted, deleted, damaged or corrupt secondary storage devices. To salvage the data, there are various techniques available to overcome physical and logical errors in the storage devices.
These techniques require extra software and hardware for accessing, repairing and reconstructing the affected storage media for successful data recovery.
Data recovery techniques are categorized into 2 major categories based on the type of damage and accessibility loss to the storage device.
1. Logical Data Recovery
When an error is not a problem related to the hardware and can be solved with the help of software solutions, it is referred to as ‘Logical Data Recovery’. Logical damage to the hard drive causes corruption and makes the drive & data inaccessible. In such cases, you need to perform logical data recovery.
Some types of logical damage scenarios are:
a. Damaged, Formatted or Deleted Partition
Cases where hard disk becomes unreadable is usually caused by a damage to the partition table and file system due to bad sectors that develop (slowly) during a hard drive usage.
When a hard drive goes bad or data gets deleted, it’s better to take out the hard disk from the system and connect it to another system in read-only mode (if possible). The same goes for other storage devices such as thumb drives, SD cards, etc. Stop using the storage media immediately to avoid permanent data loss.
Use a reliable data recovery tool such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to salvage your lost data. The tool can help you recover deleted data from an inaccessible, corrupt and formatted storage media. Additionally, it lets you recover data from a partially burnt or scratched optical media (CD, DVD, HD DVD, & Blu-ray).
b. Overwritten Data
When a file is deleted from the Windows operating system, the deleted files are considered as free space by the system. So when you install a program or copy a file to your system, it overwrites the lost files and makes recovery impossible. Therefore, when you face a data loss situation stop using your system or hard drive to prevent further damage to the lost or deleted data.
SSDs work differently and recovery from SSDs is easier if TRIM wasn’t enabled on your system. TRIM command makes data recovery hard and most software-based recovery process fails to recover complete data from SSDs.
2. Physical Data Recovery
Human errors are the second most common cause of data loss after hardware failures that can cause physical damage to a storage media such as hard disk. A hard disk is quite fragile and compact. A little shock can result in a non-functioning hard drive and a permanent data loss situation. Therefore, it’s important that you handle your hard drive with the utmost care.
Some Physical Damage scenarios can be as below:
a. Complexity
The distance between an Actuator head and platter of the hard drive is just 5nm which is equal to two human DNA strands (2.5nm each). Hopefully, this fact can help you understand how complex and delicate a hard drive is. Especially those plugged into the laptops.
Most physically damaged hard drives can’t be repaired by the end users as opening a disk to repair physical damage needs controlled environment that should be dust-free and temperature controlled. This also requires specialized tools, equipment, and different types of headers/actuators. For this there are service providers such as Stellar Data Recovery, equipped with Class 100 dust and static-free cleanroom labs to facilitate safe & secure data recovery. Stellar has been working in the field of data recovery since 1993 and is trusted by over 2 million satisfied users globally.
b. Hardware Repair
In some exceptional cases, where the drive has some life left or is suffering from a mechanical failure, the end user i.e. you can take help of a professional data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to create a full disk image or clone of the hard drive. Later, the recovery process can be implemented on the disk image or the clone and data can be reconstructed.
However, it’s recommended that you should not use such a drive for a long time and reach out to data recovery experts. A physically damaged drive can be repaired by replacing a faulty part in the drive-by experts to make it usable for data recovery purpose.
Conclusion
We discussed data recovery and various techniques that are implemented depending on the cause of data loss and accessibility.
For a physically damaged hard drive’s data recovery, you need to be very careful with the drive and handle it gently. Reach out to a data recovery expert such as Stellar Data Recovery, as soon as possible.
Software-based data recovery techniques are feasible as you don’t need to send it to a data recovery service and lets you recover data from the comfort of your home or office. For logical errors on hard disk, recovery using Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows is highly recommended. It is a DIY easy to use software that help’s you recover deleted data from any inaccessible, corrupt or formatted storage device.
Hi the Stellar can be recover data with folder structure before format and partition my hard drive or will just recover data with random?
Hi Hussien,
Can you please elaborate what issue you are facing exactly as i am unable to get you.
What is the difference between Logical Data Recovery and Physical data recovery?
Hi Elias,
The difference between the Logical Data Recovery and Physical Data Recovery are as follows:
When an error is not a problem related to the hardware and can be solved with the help of software solutions, it is referred to as ‘Logical Data Recovery’. Logical damage to the hard drive causes corruption and makes the drive & data inaccessible. In such cases, you need to perform logical data recovery.
But Physical data recovery is the extraction of the raw data from a damaged disc. If a hard drive is not accessible by software such as the system BIOS, Windows’ Disk Management, or other disk utilities it can be considered as truly dead and in need of physical data recovery.
I hope this clears your doubts of both the data recovery.
Can I recover data if TRIM is enabled on my SSD drive?
No, It’s not possible to recover deleted data from TRIM enabled SSDs. This is because when an SSD erases data with the TRIM feature enabled the data being deleted is immediately overwritten permanently. This makes it impossible to recover the data, as it no longer exists.
Will stellar data recovery, recover files deleted using a file shredder programme?
Hi Mark,
We would like to inform you that our data recovery software does not use any file shred application during recovery. It simply reads the hard drive and provides the best possible recovery after reading each sector of the hard drive. Thanks
My first interaction with this software is when someone mentioned this software as a solution on Spicework community forums. Since I am in great urgency to recover my Christmas celebration images, I bank upon this and happy to recover all the lost photos.
We really appreciate your good words.
In case of any logical hard drive issue, it can be best dealt with advance data recovery software.
Thanks, Tracy for sharing your experience.
Can Stellar Data Recovery software recoverys data from encrypted hard drive?
You need to decrypt the hard drive and then use Stellar Data Recovery – Professional version for complete data recovery.
I understand that Stellar Windows Data Recovery Professional can recover all kind of files, but my question is can it repair corrupted files ?
in my case the external hard drive I use for backup is recognized and in working condition ,however,there is a specific file that can’t open , this file exist in the external hard drive and I can see it but can’t open because it seems corrupted.
Can Stellar Windows Data Recovery – Professional repair this corrupted file?
We would like to inform you that Stellar Windows Data Recovery Professional can be used to recover lost or deleted files only. Unfortunately, it can’t be used to repair any file.
In case if you want to repair corrupted file then you may try our repairing application. We request you to let us know the file type which you would like to repair. You may also contact our support team on their below email address to get an assistance:
support@stellarinfo.com