Dead Hard Drive Recovery

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Dead Hard Drive Recovery Mean?

Dead hard drive recovery is the process of recovering, restoring and copying data from a hard disk that is technically dead, unusable or inaccessible.

Advertisements

It involves the use of manual and automated methods to recover a dead hard drive experiencing software- or hardware-based problems.

Techopedia Explains Dead Hard Drive Recovery

A hard drive can be considered dead due to two primary reasons:

  • Logical/software problem such as a damaged file system or firmware
  • Technical/hardware problem such as a faulty drive controller board or IC malfunction

Typically, dead drives with logical errors such as bad file systems can be viewed on a Linux system as long as the file system is Windows based. Moreover, some data/disk recovery software can bypass file systems and can directly access the data. Dead hard drives with hardware problems can be recovered by repairing or replacing faulty components.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.