Hard drive failure is increasingly common these days. While manufacturers’ are developing more reliable and optimized hard drives, logical errors and improper drive use for an extended time often cause drive failure that leads to data loss.
Fun Fact: Approximately 140,000+ hard drives fail in the United States every week.
A hard drive may also fail due to events beyond one’s control and following common problems:
With adequate data protection measures and monitoring the hard drive, one can timely detect a failing hard drive and prevent data loss situations. You can use tools such as ‘Drive Monitor’ that comes embedded with Stellar Data Recovery Professional software.
Figure 2: Monitor Drive with Drive Monitor
The Drive Monitor actively monitors the hard drive for disk errors and logical issues. It displays vital disk health stat, temperature, and performance score that helps you understand disk status and if the drive is failing.
Alternatively, you can manually observe the following signs of a failing hard drive:
Start with installing the Stellar Data Recovery Professional — a hard drive recovery software. Launch the software and choose ‘Monitor Drive’ to run the Drive Monitor tool.
WARNING: You may run CHKDSK scan in an attempt to fix the hard drive errors—such as file system error and corruption. But be warned, this can cause further damage to the drive, data corruption, and permanent data loss due to drive errors and failure.
For safe data recovery from a failing hard drive, continue to follow the steps given below.
(Ct=Count)
Figure 3: Check SMART Disk Status to detect anomalies
Figure 4: Clone Failing Hard Drive Before It Fails
If you don’t have a new disk, close the Drive Monitor utility and click ‘Recover Data’ to proceed with failing hard drive recovery.
IMPORTANT NOTE: To save the recovered files after the scan, you will require a license key to activate the software. Without a license key, you can only preview the recovered files but can’t save them.
Figure 5: Select Files to recover from failing hard drive
Figure 6: Choose failing or crashed hard drive volume for recovery
NOTE: If the hard drive volume is not listed under ‘Connected Drives’, click ‘Can’t Find Drive’ to find the missing partitions. You may also use the Disk Management tool to check whether your Windows PC recognizes the hard drive.
Figure 7: Scan Hard Drive and Restore Data
Figure 8: Preview Files before Recovery
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not select save location on any partition of the failing hard drive. Use a different internal or external hard drive or SSD volume to save the recovered files.
Figure 9: Save the recovered files from failing or logically dead hard drive at the desired location
TIP: In case your system is running low on storage space, you can save the recovered files in a compressed folder(s). The feature helps you store a large number of files in comparatively much less space. The option is visible when you click ‘Recover’ button, under ‘Advanced Settings’
Figure 10: Option to save recovered files in a compressed folder(s)
This hard drive recovery software can also help you recover data from a crashed, severely corrupt, formatted, or logically dead hard drive.
The post discusses why a hard drive fails and how to timely detect a failing hard drive by analyzing the signs of failure. Further, we have discussed the steps to recover lost data from a failing hard drive on a Windows PC with the help of Stellar Data Recovery Professional tool.
So follow the steps as mentioned in the post and quickly recover data from a failing hard drive. Also, create a backup after hard drive recovery to prevent future data loss due to such unforeseen reasons.
Further, you can use the Drive Monitor tool that comes embedded into the Stellar Data Recovery Professional software to keep an eye on the vital disk stats. The tool empowers you to detect anomalies and act promptly to prevent data loss.
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