Is there any way to come back from a dead external hard drive?
It finally happened: your external hard drive is dead. And you never carved out the time in your busy schedule to backup your files. Now what? Many other photographers, videographers, students, teachers and all kinds of professionals have found themselves in similar situations. And while it may seem grim, there may be a glimmer of hope after all.
Recovering data from a failed external hard drive isn’t impossible but if you’re going to try to diagnose and fix the issue yourself, you need to be very careful so you don’t aggrevate the problem. Of course, we highly recommend you consult a professional if you have no idea what you’re doing. Making a wrong move could only worsen the problem.
Causes for External Hard Drive Failure
According to Data Recovery Labs, external hard drive failure is a common problem. So you’re not alone! There are many things that can cause a drive to fail and if you store most of your valuable data and work on a computer, you should definitely be aware of these risk factors.
- Physical damage: If you’ve dropped your hard drive several times, it’s definitely more prone to failure. Just as physical damage can really hurt your computer’s internal hard drive, the same applies for the external one. Make sure you lay your external hard drive flat on your desk or workspace area instead of standing it up. This will keep it from tipping over and slamming into the hard desktop.
- Power surges: If you plug the wrong cord into your drive, you could cause a power surge. When the power is abruptly interrupted and restarted, you’re likely to experience data loss or overheating.
- Tangled wiring: When you’re working on projects that involve multiple pieces of equipment such as cameras, laptops and your external drive, oftentimes the cables can get tangled and messy, making it all too easy to accidently trip or yank a device off the desk or table. If your external drive gets yanked off your workspace and hits the floor, drive failure could be an unfortunate consequence.
The primary ways to protect yourself from the panic and frustration you feel when your external hard drive suddenly dies are to backup your data in a few different forms, store the backups in several different places and be aware of the causes of drive failure, as listed above.
Diagnosing External Hard Drive Failure
If your external drive is making clicking noises and you’re getting error messages, your might be toast. But just to make sure, try connecting it to a different computer. If it still doesn’t work, your external drive may just need a new SATA bridge card. You can pick up a new one online or at retailers like Best Buy but if you don’t know how to install it, it would be wise to contact a tech service to replace it for you. If replacing the SATA bridge card still doesn’t bring your external hard drive back to life, you’ll want to contact a data recovery tech service and let them do their handy work.
Recovering Your Hard Drive Files
If your external hard drive is dead, It is still possible to recover the files on it. But we can’t make any promises because it often depends on the amount of damage done to the hard drive and how much money you are willing to spend to recover them. You’ll want to contact a data recovery service to assess the damage. Tech writers at PCWorld suggest DriveSavers or OnTrack, two of the more well known data recovery services.
Losing important data due to a dead hard drive is a hard lesson to learn but you can minimize your loss by:
- backing up and storing files in more than one place
- utilize both local and cloud storage
- safely store and organize local hard drives with ProStorage
External hard drive failure doesn’t have to be the end of productivity. Do your best to recover your data, learn your lesson and move on to become a more experienced professional.