- Hard drive not accessible.
- Drive is not recognized when connected to another PC.
- Computer was running a little slow.
There are endless possibilities why your hard drive is not booting up. But for the purpose of educating you here we can assume that the problem is one of the most common problems we see and that would be bad sectors. This is an elementary problem to fix for a data recovery professional due to the specialty tools that we make available to ourselves. “Imaging” a failing hard drive with bad sectors is the key to preserving valuable data in this situation. The machine that we use to image hard drives is a special combination of hardware and software that can copy data sector by sector and simultaneously move that data to a stable secondary hard drive.
Once a hard drive starts to develop bad sectors they can multiply at an alarming rate. This imaging process eliminates the possibility of data loss as the problem drive is deteriorating. If you suspect your hard drive has bad sectors and you do not have a backup now is not the time to panic. You should immediately power off the hard drive then assess how valuable the data is and weigh your options. If the data is critical to your business or you have irreplaceable pictures of your family etc. you should seek the help of a data recovery specialist to have the best chance of preserving your data. There are some low cost data recovery software solutions for some very simple cases however this does not ensure your data is safe. There is no imaging process and that puts the data at substantial risk. Please follow the link below to learn more about the perils of data recovery software.