Working with huge quantities of information? You know the panic moment when you realize that you need something that you deleted a long time ago. This is the subject of this article : Recycle bin data recovery. 1st lets start with some general data recovery tricks, valid for all type of data devices, PC’s, Mac’s, phones.

Most laptops and even desktop computers come with just one hard drive. In such case, a crashed hard drive can be a real disaster. Not only do you lose access to your operating system, but you also lose your pictures, documents, videos, application data, and everything else that was stored on the computer. A free partition editor, such as GParted, allows you to create extra partitions on a single hard drive and thus separate the OS and programs from data. The newly created partitions will be located on the same physical disk, but the extra layer of separation between them gives you a useful protection against damage caused by human error and malware.

Your hard drive is like a car in many ways. You know how it performs, how it sounds, how it looks, and how long it takes to get from point A to point B on a daily basis. If something begins to feel askew with your car, you typically can sense it happening and can tell the end is nigh. The same thing goes for your computer’s hard drive. That being said, make sure to routinely back up your hard drive, especially if you repeatedly experience the symptoms below.

On being struck with a logical failure, the hard drive won’t make any noises, but it won’t boot up or let you access the data. And here’s the good part. When a hard drive fails, or you accidentally format it or delete data from it, the data doesn’t disappear. It stays on the drive until something else is overwritten on it. Usually, with a properly working hard drive, all data has its own dedicated storage space. Deleted data or formatted storage or in this case, storage on the failed hard drive is marked as “fit for overwriting”.

If Your Drives Spins Ups and Is Detected by Your Computer, But Hangs When You Try to Access It: This usually means that the magnetic media is degraded. Basically, there are a large amount of bad sectors that the drive is trying to read, failing to do so, and hanging. This is a common problem that occurs over time and can be worked around, but only with professional data recovery equipment, more specifically a hard imager. If you look at the SMART values of the drive you’ll notice and large amount of reallocated sectors to confirm your suspicions. If the data is important then send it off to the pros.

Recovery services are also the only viable option if the machine was exposed to water, or if it was dropped and it’s likely some part of the drive was broken. If you hear loud clicking noises, or the machine was immersed in liquid, then the best route is to turn it off and keep it off. Never use a hairdryer or other hot air on the machine as this can push the liquid into further components and create an environment of high humidity. Simply find a recovery service and let the experts handle it. There are hundreds of software utility tools that can be downloaded off the internet for free, and offer promises of fast and easy data retrieval. Unfortunately, many of these are filled with malware, and using them will expose the data to theft or worse. Avoid using free utility services that do not have an established reputation as effective and virus-free tools.

DoYourData can help you easily recover deleted, formatted or lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive including WD Elements 500GB, WD Elements 750GB, WD Elements 1TB, WD Elements 1.5TB, WD Elements 2TB etc. DoYourData also can recover lost data from other kind of devices, such as hard drive, USB drive, Memory card, SD card etc. See extra details on Recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive.