Situations When Data Recovery is Impossible Although data recovery is usually achievable even when it seems everything has gone wrong, sometimes it can just be impossible to get back those important files with professional data recovery companies even being unable to help.

	Most of the time data recovery is impossible when the hard drive has been physically damaged beyond repair. This can happen in a number of ways. The first is when the platter on the hard drive is impaired, which often occurs when the head that reads the data has collided with the platter and scratched it. This then makes that part of the drive inaccessible and, as such, your data lost. It’s worthy to bear in mind that if you hear any sort of odd noises coming from inside your drive that you power down your computer immediately and inspecting the problem before potentially causing any further damaging. A second type of physical harm is when the electronics have been damaged. This could happen due to something like elemental impairment from water or overheating. Obviously if your drive has been burnt to a crisp then there’s nothing anyone can do, but even light damage could cause the sensitive electronics of a drive to stop functioning. The chip board is very delicate and made precisely for a certain drive and reconstructing it is near impossible. It sounds obvious, but make sure that your computer is kept away from anything flammable and isn’t placed near something that could cause damage to the inners. If you delete a file from your hard drive then there are still ways to restore it due to the way that the device handles data. Parts of the file can still exist in some shape or form and they can be pieced back together in order to recreate what was once missing. However, the more often you use your drive then the more unlikely it becomes that you can get the file back. In fact, the industry standard is to overwrite seven times in order to ensure that the data has been properly disposed of. As you read and write to your drive you could be overwriting where that file was once stored without even knowing it. Chances are that if you’ve been actively using the drive for several months then the probability of getting that data back is slim (although it’s always worth a shot). Data that has been lost due to a failed RAID can also be difficult to recover. RAID data is striped across several volumes, making it incredibly hard to piece that data back together, especially if one or more drives are damaged. The bottom line is that the majority of the time it will be possible to get your data back. Perhaps not all of it, but trained specialists can resolve a lot of problems that hard drives create. The most easiest type of error to recover is that of a human’s (if a file is accidentally deleted, for example), but you shouldn’t give up hope straight away even if you think there’s no chance of getting anything back. It’s no magic trick, though, and sometimes the recovery is impossible, at which point you’ll sadly just have to cut your losses and move on.
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