There is nothing worse than turning on your computer only to find that you get nothing more than a blank screen and a possible message that tells you that the computer cannot find any bootable media. This can mean only one thing. That there is a problem with your hard drive. If you, like most people, have files on your computer that you would rather not lose then this is probably the moment that you panic and are in desperate need of hard drive recovery utility software to recover your data.
Without hard drive recovery utility software your alternative is that you seek the services of a specialised professional to recover your data and this could cost you 100’s if not 1000’s.
The other situation you may find yourself in that will have you searching for free hard drive recovery utility software is when you start searching for a file on your computer only to find that you have accidently deleted it. You then head on over to your computers recycle bin but find that you have also emptied the recycle bin and the file is no more.
In this article we will hopefully help you with both of these situations. First we will take a look at using hard drive recovery utilities and how to recover data of a broken or failed hard drive and then we will look at how to recover and undelete files that you may have accidently deleted from your hard drive and emptied from your computers recycle bin.
Hard Drive Recovery – Failed Hard Drive.
This type of data recovery is for those of you who suspect that you have a faulty or failed hard drive. The main symptom of a faulty hard drive will be your computer refusing to boot up (start). This can usually be accompanied by a weird clicking noise from the hard drive and possible a message on your computer screen that will read something similar to – Cannot find bootable media, please insert bootable media and press any key.
It is very easy to panic when you find yourself in this situation but the key here is to stay calm. First you need to make sure that it is actually your hard drive that is faulty, broken or failed and not the hard drive controller that is at fault.
The best way to test this is to remove the side from your computer (disconnected from the mains) and try switching your hard drive from the ide1 port to the ide2 port. These ports are located on the motherboard where the hard drive cable plugs into it.
If switching between ide ports makes no difference then you know your fault is with your hard drive rather than the hard drive controller. If you want to be double sure that it is your hard drive rather than the hard drive controller then you could always try your hard drive in another computer.
Now that you know the problem lies with your hard drive you will need to use a hard drive recovery utility. There are plenty of hard drive recovery utilities out there both for free and at a price. A quick Google search will present you with hundreds of options all of which will promise you the world. A word of warning here. There are a lot of sites that will offer you hard drive recovery utilities that promise to be the answer to all of your prayers but the people running these websites are out to do nothing other than scamming you. Some sites even offer you their software as a free hard drive recovery utility for you to find that once you try and use it you have to pay to receive a license key for it to operate. Even once you have paid there is every chance that the software will be trash and not work. It may have even installed spyware or a virus on your computer.
My personal recommendation is to use a little program that is called Inspector File Recovery. It is totally free and I have used it with success in the past. A quick Google search for hard drive recovery free software or just a search for the software itself will give you a place to download it. The software itself is far from the best that is out there but your alternative here is to pay a huge fee for commercialised software or pay an expert to carry out a data recovery on your hard drive and that will cost even more. Recovering hard drive data is big and expensive business which generates huge profit as people in this situation are desperate.
Data recovery software is pretty easy to use if you follow the on screen steps. It is important that you install the hard drive recovery software on a different hard drive to the one that you need to recover the data from.
Your best bet here is to install your faulty or failed hard drive as a secondary device and install the data recovery software on the main hard drive. You will need to make sure that the computer recognises and is able to detect the faulty hard drive because if the computer cannot detect the hard drive the hard drive recovery software will not be able to find the hard drive either.
The beauty of some free hard drive recovery software or data recovery software is that it can be installed on a bootable USB pen or a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM which will eliminate the need to install your hard drive as a secondary device in a different computer.
A bootable DVD-ROM or USB pen is simple to use. Just pop the media in the computer and start it up. The computer will then boot from the device. It is now just a case of starting the software away and following the on screen instructions which are self-explanatory. The hard drive data recovery software may take a while to search but it will find and show you all of the files that are available for recovery. These files can then be saved to an external device or secondary hard drive.
If this fails and there is a mechanical problem then you may need to call in an expert to recover your files.
Many people have stated that when there is a mechanical fault with their hard drive they have fixed the problem using the freezer technique which is detailed here.
How to Recover Deleted Files.
The accidental deletion of a file is something that happens to most of us at one time or other. A quick Google search for ‘how to undelete files’ or ‘how to recover deleted files’ will give you a lot of information on this subject.
Even if you have deleted the files from your computer and then emptied your recycle bin it may still be possible for you to recover and undelete your files. Just because you have deleted your file and emptied your recycle bin does not mean that the file is deleted from your hard drive.
If you imaged a hard drive as a circular disc and on this disk there are two sections. The section that is closest to the middle is visible through your computer and the section towards the outer edge of the disc is not visible to your computer. When you have a file on your computer or in the computers recycle bin then the file will be located on the inner part of the circular disc. Once you empty the file from your recycle bin the file is then removed from the inner section of the disc and placed on the outer edge of the disc and becomes non-visible to the computer. Your file can remain on this outer part of the disc for some time. What happens the more you use your computer the further the deleted file moves towards the outer edge of the disc before reaching the very edge of the disc and falling off which is when it is lost forever.
What data recovery or undelete software actually does is provide you with a window to this unseen section of the hard drive.
It is important that as soon as you realise that you have accidently deleted a file or need to recover or undelete a file then you try not to use your computer. Each time you use your computer will push your deleted file that little further towards the edge of the disc.
There is no end to the number of software packages for data recovery available. You will find that while searching for free file recovery software there’re is also no end to the number of packages out there. Most of it you will find that although it is advertised as free once you try and use it you have to pay to register it to unlock all of the features.
My personal recommendation here is to look for a software package named Recuva. I personally use this package myself and have always had great success with it. This file recovery software is totally free with no hidden charges and worst brilliantly. With hard drives been larger nowadays be aware that the recovery process will often take a few hours to carry out as the file and data recovery software scans the entire hard drive for deleted files.
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