What is my biggest risk when undertaking data recovery?

Our Answer:

Succinctly defined and simply put, your biggest risk in pursuing data recovery is needlessly and permanently losing your data.  This sort of loss will nearly always come about by means of unintended results which are the outcome of failed data recovery measures.

In this instance we are not talking about a failed hard disk drive that has catastrophically crashed and would not be recoverable by any means (this severity of failure repercussion is not common).  In such a case, even though you may not yet know it, there is no risk — because there is no chance of successful data recovery.

Risk then, means that given best practices and well chosen means, all of the important data stored on your now faulty hard drive could be recovered and returned to you, but the measures you chose to use failed in the recovery attempt, AND not only did the attempt fail, but the attempt itself caused a worsening of the disk drive's recording media condition so that now, through the various events taking place after the drive failure (i.e., these same failed or otherwise inept data recovery attempts), the data have become unrecoverable by anyone or by any means.  Your data is gone.

The root cause of such undesirable results stem more frequently from one particular starting place than any other.  That cause is damage, unintended though it may be, to the physical magnetic recording surfaces on the disk platters inside your drive, and it is very likely to be happening any time the platters are turning but the drive is no longer functioning correctly.

If your hard disk drive has failed and your data is of high importance, don't take chances.  To avoid permanently losing your data when statistically the chances, at the time of drive failure, for retrieving your lost data are well over 90%.  By employing anything less than best practices within the art and science of data recovery, the risk of increasing physical damage to your hard drive's data recording media rises with every single revolution of the disks.  Feel free to call MicroCom, and we'll explain to you how that happens.

NOTE:  In today's disk drives, a typical spindle rotation speed is 7200 rpm; that means that the platters in the drive turn completely around 120 times every one second!  A lot of damage can take place in a short time.