When private vacation photos or favorite music suddenly disappear from your personal desktop PC or laptop, it is frustrating. The loss of important data in businesses, however, is a catastrophe. Two pieces of good news upfront: first, data loss can be prevented. Second, even seemingly lost data can be recovered in most cases.
How Does Data Loss Happen?
The causes of data loss are either logical or mechanical in nature. Logical defects can include viruses/trojans or software/system crashes. Accidental or intentional deletion/overwriting of files also occurs from time to time. If the hard drive is making strange noises such as clicking or clacking, however, physical causes (defective components due to drops, liquid ingress, material wear, etc.) cannot be ruled out.
The Golden Rule: Backup to a Second Hard Drive!
The most effective method is regular backups to a second external hard drive and/or to cloud storage. If a storage device fails, the data simply needs to be transferred back to a new device. Backing up data on a partition of the same hard drive is not recommended. If, for example, the read/write head develops a defect, the data is still lost - at least initially!
Avoid Extreme Temperature Fluctuations
You can prevent physical damage to storage devices by not exposing them to extreme heat or cold. Specifically: neither your laptop nor external hard drive should be left in a hot car during summer. This applies equally to USB flash drives and memory cards.
Vibrations Are the Enemy of HDDs
With mobile hard drives (external hard drives) or laptops, vibrations should be avoided at all costs. Otherwise, the read/write head could make contact with the magnetic platter. This is known as a head crash. The frequent result: clicking noises and data loss.
Turn Off Systems During Thunderstorms
Even though nothing usually happens: better safe than sorry. To prevent overvoltage damage, we recommend turning off your Mac, PC, laptop, or external hard drive during severe thunderstorms. Tip: RAID arrays are also susceptible to overvoltage damage!
Shut Down Your Computer
Hard drives for private use, unlike large server systems, are not designed for continuous operation. You should therefore give your private internal or external HDD/SSD some rest by shutting down your computer or switching off the external drive from time to time.
Use Antivirus Software
Firewalls and antivirus programs should be standard equipment on every PC. Data loss caused by computer viruses, worms, or trojans can be counteracted this way. However, these programs do not offer one hundred percent protection.
SMART Monitoring
Special tools can read the SMART values (SMART = "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology") of hard drives. Impending defects can thus be detected early in the best case. Important: not every SMART tool is suitable for every type of hard drive.
The Right Response in an Emergency
If the worst case does occur, it is important to stay calm and make the right decisions. As a first step, the storage device should be hard-powered off and disconnected from the power supply. We do not recommend attempting to repair the hard drive yourself using recovery tools from the internet. After all, it is not always clear whether it is a single logical defect or a chain of causes. Instead, contact a professional data recovery specialist on site.
Should data loss occur despite all precautionary measures, our specialists are ready to professionally recover your data - quickly, reliably, and at a fixed price.
Contact us at 0800-881 12 25 (free, available 24/7) for a free initial consultation.
Lars Müller