My hard drive crashed after removing a virus. I  also encountered slow pc performance. The hard drive is however detected in BIOS, but I am not able to access it. How can I recover all my data?

Do not panic! You can easily recover data from a crashed hard drive with the help of data recovery software. It is very important to first analyze the cause for hard drive crash, before proceeding further with the subsequent steps.Hard drive crashes can be caused due to number of reasons, and they can be disastrous at times. However, these causes are broadly classified into physical and logical types of data loss.

Hard drive crashes that occur due to physical damage to the hard drive, like, read/write heads sticking into disk platters, read/write head crash, spindle motor system failure, PCB failure etc., are very severe, and involves expertise handling. These types of crashes can be detected by the unusual grinding or knocking sound from the hard drive.

Note:In case of physical hard drive failure, turn off the system immediately and consult the hard  drive recovery expert for help.

Hard drive crashes due to logical issues are the simpler and easier ones to handle. Logical hard drive failure is encountered when your files become inaccessible, or the system becomes slow in response. Logical hard drive crashes can occur due to various reasons like virus attack, power surge, sabotage etc. In this case, the hard drive is not physically damaged, and the problem can be easily resolved using data recovery software.

Since your hard drive is getting detected in the BIOS, the cause for the hard drive crash could be purely logical and hence, data recovery is very much possible.

Based on the file system present on your hard drive, you can use the FAT data recovery or NTFS data recovery options, to recover the lost data. REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition lets you recover files from both FAT and NTFS file systems. REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition software, is both safe, and reliable. In addition, it’s distinctively designed recovery algorithms allow home and business users to recover lost data quickly.

Follow the simple steps given in the subsequent pages, to perform efficient data recovery.

Steps to be followed to recover data from a crashed hard drive:

Step 1: Remove the crashed hard drive from your PC and connect it to another healthy PC as a slave.

Step 2: Download and install REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition software on the PC to which your crashed hard drive has been connected.

NOTE: Do not install the software or save any recovered files, on the drive, which contains the deleted / lost data. This may overwrite deleted / lost data and you will lose your data permanently.

Step 3: Launch REMO Recover (Windows) Pro Edition either from start menu or from desktop shortcut. The main application window pops up as shown in Figure a.

Figure a: Application main window

Step 4: Click the Recover – Advanced button from the available four choices in the wizard. The application will now display a window with two options: NTFS Partition Recovery and FAT Partition Recovery as shown in Figure b.

Figure b: Select appropriate partition recovery

Step 5: As you click the NTFS Partition Recovery button, a new Wizard is displayed. Launch the wizard by clicking the Wizard button present on the top left corner of the window. The software will now display the wizard as shown in Figure c.

Figure c: Wizard

Step 6: Select the Recover your Data option, and click on the Next button to continue. As you click the Next button, a window is displayed as shown in Figure d. All the detected drives are listed in this window. Select the physical drive from which you wish to recover your data (See Figure d), and click the Next button.

Figure d: Select source disk

Note: There are two options listed at the bottom of this window, Display default partition(s) and Search for lost partition(s). By default the processing mode is set to Display default partition(s). If the partition you are looking for is not listed, you can choose the Search for lost partition(s) option.  As you click on Next button, the application analyzes the drive and lists all the found partitions in a table format, as shown in Figure e.

Figure e: Partition Table

Step 7: Select a partition for processing and click the Finish button. The application processes the partition and displays the found files and folders in a tree structure as shown in Figure f.

Figure f: Found files and folders

Step 8:The final step of the recovery process is to save the recovered data. If you want to recover all the listed files and folders, click on the root folder, to mark the entire data and click on the Save All button. As soon as you click the Save all button, a window to select destination location is displayed as shown in Figure g.

Figure g: Select local drive

Data can be saved to any destination drive on the local hard drive(s). Select a path and click on the OK button. As you click the OK button, the saving process is initiated. Once saving process is complete, you will receive a pop up message intimating the same.

NOTE:If your drive has FAT file system, you can choose, FAT Partition Recovery in Step 4, and proceed further with the recovery process.

Tags: hard drive partition recovery, partition recovery, recover lost data