Sometimes data loss happens in spite of your best efforts to prevent it. Laptops are subject to a lot of shaking, dropping, traveling and other rough handling that can result in damage or corruption to the hard drive.
Because laptops endure rough handling on a daily basis, the average lifespan of a laptop hard drive is 3 years. Other factors that reduce laptop hard drive life and lead to needing data recovery to recover your laptop data are dust and heat. When dust gets into the small cooling fan which prevents adequate cooling and causes overheating.
Since the lifespan of a laptop is so short, it is absolutely vital to backup your data on a regular basis. You should also double check your backups to be sure your data was backed up correctly. Too many times we see clients lose data because their backups were not working properly and they had never checked or tested them.
Please, do not take unnecessary risks if your hard drive contains vital data, documents, spreadsheets, CAD files, MP3s, videos, pictures or critical files you don’t want to lose.
Further damage and permanent data loss can occur if you try to fix it yourself, especially if you hear scraping, grinding, clicking or other unusual sounds. Those sounds indicate a serious problem that could make any chance of successful recovery impossible.
If you are suffering from data loss, or your laptop isn’t running right and you can’t access your files, here are some things you can do to ensure the highest chance of a successful recovery. You’ll also want to take these steps if your laptop is acting strange, running slow or unexpectedly shutting down so you don’t lose your data.
Help ensure your data can be recovered successfully. Take these steps…
- Turn off your computer immediately-continued operation can cause greater damage
- Do not restart the computer: when a hard drive is in a distressed state, any extra actions can cause more damage
- Do not install or re-install any software or hardware
- Do not shake, disassemble, or attempt to clean a damaged drive
- Do not use a file recovery or other data recovery software to repair damaged drive
- Do not try to clean or dry a wet or muddy drive
- Do not try to operate a visibly damaged device. Get professional help!
*DIY utilities can cause permanent loss of data...
Recovery software and utilities are designed to work with properly functioning hard drives. If your hard drive is clicking, grinding or making unusual sounds, the platters are getting scratched. DO NOT run software or utilities in these cases. YOU could lose everything!