According to the latest annual survey of hard drive reliability by Backblaze, a provider of cloud backup services, the annualized failure rate for modern hard drives is around 2 percent. This means that if we have a group of 50 people, with every person in the group using two hard drives (perhaps one inside a personal computer and one inside a laptop), then one of those 50 individuals is going to lose all the data stored on the hard drives within a year.
That’s bad news if you keep important data on your computer without proper backup. When a hard drive failure occurs, not only are you likely to lose access to your files but you may not even be able to boot into your operating system to search for a solution on the web.
As with so many other things in life, preparation is the key to success even when it comes to hard drive repair and recovery. If you know why hard drives fail and are familiar with some of the most popular hard drive repair and recovery solutions, you have much better chances of seeing your files again.
Now that you know what causes hard drive failure, we have for you a list of top 10 best HDD repair software tools that you can use to analyze, avoid, and solve virtually all common hard drive issues.
Disk Drill is a powerful and user-friendly hard drive recovery tool that handles many data loss scenarios, from accidentally deleted files to lost partitions, corrupted drives, and even unbootable hard drives.
Whether you’re dealing with an internal or external hard drive, a RAID array, a NAS device, or a virtual drive, Disk Drill has got you covered with its advanced scanning algorithms with support for over 400 different file types and an intuitive interface that makes it easy to recover your valuable data.
Another key feature of Disk Drill is its S.M.A.R.T. monitoring, which allows you to monitor your drive’s health and detect potential issues before they lead to data loss. Disk Drill also offers a preview of recoverable files, byte-by-byte disk copies, and cross-platform scanning. With its comprehensive set of features and its ability to handle a wide range of data loss scenarios, Disk Drill is an essential tool for anyone looking to recover lost or deleted data from their hard drive.
👤 User experience:
“Definitely get the DiskDrill software. I have gotten files back from damaged hard drives that even repair shops said they couldn’t fix without sending it to a lab and doing the $10k full physical procedure.” – @Quincinerate, Twitter user
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“I’ve used WinDirStat to scan the drive and tell you where the large files are. Its a free program that has been around forever and works really well.” – mrfrankvegas, Reddit user.
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Clonezilla is one of the most useful free hard drive repair software tools. It allows you to easily create full partition and disk backups, which can be deployed on other computers. Clonezilla supports far more file systems than most IT professionals can name, and it even features some basic boot repair tools.
👤 User experience:
“Clonezilla is free (as in Open source). Most of what Macrium and TrueImage can do can also be done with Clonezilla.” – Splendid, Tomshardware forum moderator.
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Unfortunately, not all hard drives can be repaired. Sometimes, it’s wiser to move all data to another storage device and securely wipe the damaged hard drive before throwing it away. If you value your privacy and security, you should know that the disk format utilities that comes with Windows and macOS don’t guarantee complete data removal. They merely mark the storage space as free, allowing anyone with a good data recovery tool, such as Disk Drill, to recover the deleted data back. Featuring multiple military-grade erasure methods, DBAN can wipe any storage device clean and don’t leave behind even a trace of the original content.
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GParted is a free, graphical partition editor that you can use to resize, copy, and move partitions without data loss or file corruption. You may want to shrink a partition to create space for another operating system or a backup partition. GParted is part of many other hard disk tools, such as Clonezilla or Partclone. It can also be downloaded from the official website as a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86 based computers and used from a USB flash drive.
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While Windows comes with a built-in hard disk repair tool capable of fixing bad sectors and file access issues caused by them, it pales in comparison with HDD Regenerator. This special-purpose hard drive repair tool has the ability to detect physical bad sectors on a hard disk drive surface and repair them a recovery technology called Hysteresis loops generator. Originally developed by Dmitriy Primochenko, Hysteresis can make unreadable data readable again, and HDD Regenerator makes it easy to apply it on Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10.
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Despite its name AOMEI Partition Assistant isn’t yet another tool for moving, resizing, and creating partitions. It’s actually a feature-packed hard disk manager capable of solving virtually all commonly encountered issues related to hard drives. For example, you can use it to convert MBR drives to the GPT partitioning scheme, migrate your entire operating system to a different hard drive, or shred sensitive files in a way that makes it impossible to recover them in the future—not even with a professional data recovery tool like Disk Drill.
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Considering that the last version of SpinRite, an application for recovering lost files from magnetic data storage devices such as hard disks, was released back in 2004, you might be surprised to see it featured on this list. The reason why we decided to include it is simple: it remains the best hard drive repair tool for older computers. Since it runs inside a live version of FreeDOS, you can use it to scan just about any computer—even one that doesn’t work properly anymore. The tool supports not only Windows file systems but also DOS FAT, all Linux file systems, Novell, Macintosh, and more.
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Victoria for Windows is a hard disk drive information and diagnostic utility that allows users to view detailed information about their hard drives and troubleshoot hard drive-related issues. One of its most useful features is its ability to scan hard drives for bad sectors and remap them to working ones. Since bad sectors are a sign of hard drive corruption, remapping them may allow you to restore the hard drive to a working state to recover all of your remaining data. Although its outdated interface may deter some, there’s no doubt that it is an impressive tool with a lot of practical uses. And, best of all, it’s completely free.
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There are many different ways to repair a hard disk that doesn’t work properly, and each is useful in a slightly different situation. Listed below are seven repair methods that can help you repair most logical hard drive issues that are preventing you from accessing your data.
Many strains of malware, such as ransomware, can prevent you from accessing important files or even being able to boot up your computer at all. The good news is that Windows comes with a capable antivirus, called Windows Defender, and it takes just a few simple steps to instruct it to scan your entire computer:
Full scan will check all files and running programs on your hard disk, so it may take a while to complete.
Modern files systems, such as NTFS, are robust and reliable, but they’re not entirely immune to various errors, which can lead to data corruption and file access issues. The good news is that most of these errors can be fixed with built-in hard disk repair tools, namely CHKDKS.
The /f parameter tells CHKDSK to fix all hard disk errors.
In this article, we’ve described several hard drive repair tools, including HDD Regenerator and SpinRite. Both of these tools can be used to check the file system and file system metadata of a volume for logical errors, and we highly recommend you give them a try before attempting more drastic fixes.
If you decide to use a hard drive repair tool that isn’t featured in this article, then make sure to verify that it really does what it promises to do. There are many software applications that promise almost miraculous results but, in reality, won’t do much more than infect your computer with malware.
Sometimes, hard disk issues are caused by faulty drivers and firmware. For example, a bug in the firmware of some SAS SSDs (Serial-Attached SCSI solid-state drives) produced by Hewlett Packard can cause the hard drives to fail after reaching 40,000 hours of operation (roughly 4 years).
Fortunately, reinstalling hard disk drivers and updating to the latest firmware is easy, and you won’t lose any data.
To reinstall hard disk drivers:
Windows will automatically reinstall the latest version of hard disk drivers.
As far as firmware updates go, you should start by visiting the support website of the company that has manufactured your SSD. There, look for available firmware updates and follow the manufacturer’s instructions to install the latest update available.
Formatting a hard disk that refuses to work properly is a drastic option, but its effectiveness can’t be denied. When you format a hard disk, you recreate the entire file system and start from scratch, fixing all issues with bad sectors and data corruption in the process.
To format a non-system drive in Windows:
If you want to format your system drive, then we recommend begin the installation of the Windows operating system and choose the Custom install option. You will then be able to format or delete any partition.
Your hard drive is most likely connected to your motherboard with two cables:
If any of these two cables is loose or damaged, then you may experience all kinds of hard drive issues, ranging from minor to serious. A quick inspection won’t take you more than a minute or two, but it can save you from wasting on software fixes that don’t address the core issue.
If none of the above-described fixes have solved your problems, then you should rule out the possibility that some other component, such as your motherboard is to blame for them. You can easily do that by disconnecting your hard disk and connecting it to a different computer.
Should the problems magically disappear, then you know that the hard drive itself is fine, and you need to identify and fix the real issue.
Just because there are multiple easy-to-apply DIY fixes doesn’t mean that you have to do everything on your own. If fixing your hard drive and recovering lost data is important to you, then it makes sense to let data recovery professionals with plenty of experience and state-of-the-art equipment take care of everything for you.
Sure, it will cost you some money (but probably not as much as you think), but you’ll be able to achieve the best data recovery results possible.
When selecting a professional data recovery service, you should always check their data recovery guarantee to verify that you won’t be billed anything if the recovery attempt ends up being unsuccessful.
Hard disks are mechanical devices, and, like all mechanical devices, they can fail without notice. Some hard disk failures are entirely avoidable, but many others are governed only by luck and chance.
Every traditional hard disk comes with an air filter that equalizes the atmospheric pressure and moisture between the enclosure and the outside environment. It’s critical for the filter to prevent all dust particles from getting inside the enclosure as even the smallest speck of dust can cause a head crash if the head happens to run over it.
Often, a head crash is caused by a sudden jolt, such as when a user throws his or her laptop on a bed instead of carefully laying it down.
In recent years, we’ve seen massive growth in the number of ransomware infections. Ransomware attacks don’t technically corrupt files; they encrypt them. However, from the point of view of a user who’s unwilling to pay several hundreds or thousands of dollars to the ransomware creators, the result is the same.
As we’ve explained in this article, it’s often possible to recover from hard drive data loss. However, it’s always much better to prevent it in the first place by following these best practices:
Of course, you can do a lot more to prevent hard drive data loss, but these five best practices are enough to provide a solid foundation that you can then build on as you see fit.
Does it seem that your hard drive is dying? Don’t despair. There are many wonderful hard disk repair software tools that you can use to diagnose and fix hard drive issues. Most of these tools don’t cost anything, which cannot be said about the service offered by most data recovery businesses.
Yes, hard drives are repairable. But keep in mind that it is not recommended to try to fix a hard dry by yourself since it is very easy to make things worse. If you want to repair a hard drive, the best option for you is to resort to a professional service.
The price for repairing a hard drive depends on the hard drive type, how severe the damage is, and, of course, on the repair service you choose. In general, the cost starts somewhere around $200 and can even go up to $1000 or more.
Here’s what you can try to repair a damaged hard drive:
If nothing helps, it’s possible that the hard drive has a much more complex problem or has physical damage. In such a case, the only option left is to allow a professional service to fix your damaged hard drive.
Yes, even if the hard drive is dead, there still is a chance for it to get fixed. But you won’t be able to repair it by yourself (unless you’re an expert in this area). So if your HDD died and you wish to recover data from it, it is best to get professional help.
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