Can I Recover My Own Data?

I understand why many of our clients attempt to recover their own data before turning to us. Like most of us these days, I am reluctant to pay for anything I can do myself. While we hope you need our services, we also prefer to work on the tougher cases, so if your situation is not so severe, perhaps our do-it-yourself data recovery steps can help you.

To help make sure you do as little as possible to jeopardize our chances of a successful recovery should you need us, we have put together a list of steps to determine how you can recover your own data or whether you will need our services.

NOTE* If you are not technically comfortable with these procedures or cannot afford to live without your data, PLEASE do nothing but contact Memofix! Additionally, PLEASE do not open your sealed hard drive. There is nothing you can do to repair your hard drive if it is failing due to physical damage.

DIY Data Recovery Step by Step

1. Take a deep breath. Do not panic. Remain calm & patient.
2. Do not allow the computer to perform any additional operations, such as reformatting, re-installing the operating system, or repairing the operating system.
3. Shut the computer off. Re-apply power & listen to it power up.
4. If there are unusual noises coming from the hard drive/computer, shut it down & contact Memofix for a free quote.
5. Otherwise while powering up the computer, watch the screen to see if the BIOS recognizes your hard drive properly. You should see it identify a drive model with a capacity. If it is not recognized properly, shut down the system & contact Memofix for a free quote.
6. If your drive is recognized properly, attach it to another working & bootable computer using its internal SATA ports or preferably using a USB attached external hard drive case.
7. Power up the working computer & confirm your hard drive is still recognized.
8. Once your working computer has booted up, open Windows “My Computer” or look on your Mac’s desktop to see if your hard drive is mounted & accessible.
9. If your drive is showing up ok, attach another new drive & copy your data to the new drive.
10. If your drive does NOT mount OR it fails or hangs during the copy, your drive may still have issues.
11. Download and try a data recovery program (free trials exist). If successful, attach another new drive & copy your data to the new drive.
12. If the software fails, the drive likely has an issue due to read errors or defective read/write head(s). Contact Memofix for a free quote.

© 2019, David Foster. All rights reserved.