How To Data Recovery From Broken External Hard Drive?

Your external hard drive dropped you, and it contained Data Recovery (photos, files) that you want to recover? Depending on the type of failure, it may be possible to save them. Celside Magazine explains how to do it… You use  an external hard drive, and, disaster, it is now broken! 

It does not work anymore. Connected to your computer, laptop or desktop, you can no longer access the Data Recovery. This may be due to a shock, incorrect use, a virus, corrupted files… This disc does contain files that you need. 

You absolutely want to Data Recovery from this broken hard drive, but how? Depending on the type of problem, this will be simple, sometimes complicated, or even impossible.

Without going into details, and to simplify, the operating principle of a hard drive (external or internal) is as follows: the data is stored on rotating platters sensitive to magnetic excitation. During read or write operations, the disks rotate at very high speed, and read heads “float”  on the rotating platters, creating a variable intensity of the magnetic field, allowing reading and writing. 

Therefore, some damage is irreversible, especially if the hard drive is dropped.. If the platters have been deeply damaged, it will be impossible to recover Twitter data from the broken external hard drive. Some older hard drives have glass platters, which can break into a thousand pieces. Similarly, in the event of a shock, a reading head can come to rest on the platter. Or, if the ventilation fails, dust may settle between the playback head and the platter. 

In both cases, the surface of the trays is “planed”, causing a pile of black dust that extends the damage to the entire hard drive. A misaligned reading head can also cause scratches or impacts. Some may make any future reading of the trays impossible. In all these cases, unfortunately, you will never be able to recover the valuable data from that broken hard drive. On the other hand, many failures affect either the internal architecture of the disk, or the operation of the reading heads or the motors, and have left your files intact. In these cases, recovery is possible.