How To Recover Data From Hard Drive
Tina Larzelere
Before proceeding with data recovery, ensure that the hard drive is physically intact. Check for any signs of damage such as unusual noises, visible cracks, or loose connections. If the hard drive is physically damaged, you may need professional assistance for data recovery.
Recovering data from a corrupted hard drive can be a tricky process, but there are options available that you can try. Here are some steps to help you recover data from a corrupted hard drive on Windows 11:
The first step is to determine if the hard drive is physically damaged or if it is just a software issue. You can try connecting the hard drive to another computer or a different USB port to see if it can be recognized there. If it can't be detected, it may be a sign of physical damage and you may need to consult a professional data recovery service.
CHKDSK is a built-in Windows tool that can help repair corrupted hard drives. Open Command Prompt and type "chkdsk /f X:" (replace X with the drive letter of the corrupted hard drive) and press Enter. CHKDSK will scan and attempt to fix any errors it finds on the drive.
If CHKDSK doesn't work, you can try using a data recovery software. Follow the instructions provided by the third-party software to scan the hard drive and recover data from a corrupted hard drive on Windows 11. The process can take some time, so be patient and don't interrupt the scan.
About how to recover data from a corrupted hard drive on Windows 11, remember to avoid using the corrupted hard drive as much as possible during the recovery process to avoid further damage. Good luck!
Before proceeding with recovery, it's crucial to understand the type of damage to the hard drive. Damage to the hard drive can be classified into two types: logical damage and physical damage.
You can try to recover data at home from physically damaged hard drives, but only if the damage is superficial and limited to the external casing, not affecting the crucial internal components needed for storing and accessing data. As long as these drives can be recognized by the computer, there's a chance for data recovery. Check out this article to learn about how to recover data from corrupted hard drive.
My hard drive failed a few days ago. The 2014 iMac could not start. I saw prohibitory sign. It is a 21.5" 2014 iMac with i5 core and 500GB hard drive. I took it to Apple store to run a test. The guy told me that hard drive is failing. There may be a way to use a thunder bolt to connect it to another good working mac and the good one may detect it as a external hard drive and I maybe able to get the old files that way. I don't have another mac. I got an external hard drive so I just went into the recovery mode and put the OS X Yosemite operating system into the external hard drive and boot it from there. It actually worked. I can get in now through the external hard drive with the newly installed OS X in it.
So I tried to get the old data from the old hard drive. From disk utility, I was able to see the Apple HDD but it says it has a hardware problem and can't be repaired. Try to back up as much data as possible and replace the disk.
Opening up the iMac and replace it with a new hard drive will cost too much money. Is there any software that can extract data / data recovery software that would work? All I got in the old hard drive were some photos and some important documents. I don't have many important projects and apps in there. As long as I can get all the photos and documents out, I will be very happy. And it looks like the thunderbolt method may not work either. or the thunderbolt method is another pathway so it may still work??? I'm already in a working OS X system now but still couldn't find the old files. Do you guys know of any other ways to get the data from that old hard drive?
My external hard drive is the 2TB Seagate SSD but now it looks like I can even install the OS X in a USB flash drive with 200GB good enough. I have used this iMac for 5 years and I only used 120GB out of the 500GB. 200GB flash drive cost about $18 to $24. If I can recover those old pix and old docs. I will be so happy!! I hope you guys could enlighten me a lil bit so I can get this fixed. Thank you so much!!
While Apple doesn't offer data recovery services for a failed drive, you may try searching for any that are available in your region. Specialists may be able to utilize particular techniques to gather data from drives that have failed. These techniques often require highly specialized tools and machinery and can be very expensive depending on the drive's size and the type of failure. However, data recovery can often access information on drives when data transfer is impossible.
It is possible to leave the drive installed in the Mac while booting from a Linux USB drive/stick to attempt to recover the data. Sometimes it may be better to remove the drive and connect it to a USB adapter, drive dock, or enclosure, but it is possible to leave the drive installed. While your Linux guy may have been able to recover data in 80%+ times, this may unfortunately be one of those 20% times. It really depends on where those 720 bad sectors are located. I'm guessing that even after he clones the drive, that it will be necessary to run a data recovery app on the clone using macOS. While it may be able to recover data, the data may not have any file names associated with it so be prepared to sift through tens of thousands of files. If you have the Linux guy attempt data recovery, just make sure he uses GNU ddrescue and enable the mapping/logging feature. That is the only free open source tool that can possibly do the job. Most Linux distributions have this in their software repositories, but it is important to make sure to use this specific version since there is another utility with the same name (minus the "GNU" part) that is also included in most Linux distribution's software repositories.
Yes, the professional data recovery specialists will need to remove the drive and use expensive specialized equipment & software to attempt to recover the data. Sometimes this expensive equipment & software is needed, but other times it makes no difference. It all depends on the hard drive and the type of failure. With the specialized equipment & software they can turn off one of the drive heads to prevent it from interfering or causing further damage. Some drives (Seagate) will go into a lock down with some failures so the specialized software & equipment are needed to control the drive to get past the lockdown. I've seen some professionals on YouTube videos utilize their expensive software & equipment while also using the same free open source Linux utility that I would use.
They all should end up cloning the failing drive to a good new drive of equal or larger size. It is much easier to work from a healthy clone to finish the recovery process. Sometimes it may be necessary to clone the clone drive if the file system needs to be repaired. You don't want to make a fatal change/mistake on the one good copy of the drive you have. Since the file system and file structure on the clone drive will be incomplete, it is necessary to pull the data to yet another drive. After the data is recovered, then the clone drive will need to be erased so it can be reused.
Yes, you can install and boot macOS from a USB3 SSD and it should be faster than your original internal hard drive. Just keep in mind that the failing internal drive can cause performance issues even while booted to the external drive. If it doesn't cause a problem now, it may in the future as the drive failure gets worse or interfere with booting from the external drive. There may be some ways to prevent macOS from accessing the internal drive while booting so it does not interfere with macOS or prompt you about the drive, but sometimes a drive failure will prevent the Mac from being able to communicate at all with the external drive.
FYI, 32GB is not large enough. A macOS boot drive needs to have at least 20GB of free storage space available at all times for the normal operation of macOS. Also, your iMac can use up to macOS 11.x Big Sur. Big Sur requires at least 36GB of free storage space to install (45GB or so if installing from Internet Recovery Mode or bootable USB installer).
Depending on the severity of the hard drive failure most normal apps (even data recovery apps) will not work because they are not able to handle the errors produced by a failing drive. Even macOS is not able to handle these errors. macOS is not the correct choice for recovering data from a failing hard drive. Failed attempts will make the drive failure even worse and will cause data loss. Run DriveDx and post the complete DriveDx text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which I can examine to see how bad the failure is.
I have successfully recovered data from hundreds of failing hard drives (some of them with severe failures), but it takes extreme care to do data recovery. Plus you will only get one chance because the attempt will most likely kill the hard drive permanently. I don't consider myself a professional in data recovery, but I am an advanced amateur. Professionals actually have access to expensive equipment and software which can aid in recovering the data more safely. You will need a USB3 hard drive that is of equal or larger size, plus access to another storage device to store any files able to be recovered. The first thing that needs to be done is to perform a low level clone of the failing drive using a special utility which is able to ignore the errors and concentrate on recovering the good parts of the drive before attempting to recover data on the bad parts of the drive. Even after this, the clone may need to be repaired before being able to access any files and a data recovery app may also be needed. You do not want to make any modifications to the source drive, and this is especially important with a failing drive. I can provide instructions if interested, but only after seeing the DriveDx report. My instructions involve using a Linux boot disk as well as a command line utility (a lot of professionals may also use this free utility).
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