hard drive recovery

Dear Lifehacker,

I have a hard drive with valuable information on it, but I cant seem to access it—the drive is either damaged or erased. Is there any way I can see whats on the drive and get it off?

Sincerely,

Drive Paramedic

Dear Paramedic,

Dont worry, were not going to ask where you got the drive, but there are plenty of ways to examine it and see if any of the data is recoverable. With a little time, the right tools, and some care, you may be able to get some data off of that drive.

Step One: Assemble Your Tools and Examine The Drives Condition

How Can I Recover Data from a Dead or Erased Hard Drive?

The first thing to do is make sure you have the tools required to connect this drive to another computer safely. Ideally, youll have some kind of SATA/IDE to USB cable or USB drive enclosure or sled that you can mount the drive into and connect it to your computer easily. Sure, if you have a desktop and like getting your hands dirty you can try to install the drive as an internal one, but an external connection is faster and easier.

C2G / Cables to Go 30504 USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA Drive Adapter (Black)

Next, take a look at the drive itself. Is it damaged in any way? Are the pins bent or broken? Make sure that the drive is in good enough condition to actually use before you try anything in the first place that may damage it even further. If the drive is too physically damaged to attempt recovery, you may need more drastic measures that well get to later. If everything looks good and you have the equipment required to connect the drive to your system, we can proceed.

Step Two: Grab Some Data Recovery Software and Connect the Drive

Before you do much else, make sure your antivirus and antimalware tools are up to date. You dont know what youll find on this drive, and you dont want it to start misbehaving once the drive is connected to an active system. Once youve done that, its time to download and install some data recovery tools. Here are a few we love:

Recuva (Windows, Free): Personally, Recuva has been indispensible. Made by the same folks behind CCleaner, Recuva makes data recovery simple and easy. if youre only interested in browsing and restoring selected files off of the drive, Recuva is a great option. Alternatively, check out Undelete Plus for Windows.

FileSalvage (OS X, $80): File Salvage for Mac will set you back some serious coin, but its one of the best tools to pull data off of a connected hard drive in OS X. It can recover virtually any type of file on multiple partition types, and prides itself on its ability to recover from damaged drives and corrupt media. If you want an alternative, try Data Rescue for Mac ($100).

TestDisk (Win/OS X/Linux, Free): If youre not afraid of the command line, TestDisk is an open source utility that can run against almost any platform or partition type. It does a great job of recovering data quickly, and wont do unnecessary writes against the drive youre trying to recover from.

Bootable Linux distros for drive recovery: If youre not interested in messing around with apps (or paying for them), consider burning a bootable CD or USB key withBackTrack, Bart PE, or SpinRite on it, so you can boot to an OS thats not your primary drive, avoid writing or touching the drive you want to recover from, and run a host of recovery and forensics tools against that drive that are highly effective and completely free. Photo by Roman Soto.

A number of these tools can recover from formatted drives, especially if the data hasnt been overwritten. Weve tackled this topic before,&n
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Posted by waluh at 8:09 AM
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