Despite many news articles and data recovery sections on IT websites, the majority of customers have little or no idea just how vulnerable a hard disk drive is to failure. It has also become clear with several recent cases and online articles, that even when there are clear signs of an impending failure, they are often ignored.
It is also alarming as well that in many of these cases the drive does not report any indication of that a failure is about to occur, with no key indicators showing in the drives S.M.A.R.T. data. The current trend in computer cases is for sound proofing panels, allowing a computer to operate almost silently, but this has the downside that any clicking or scraping noises from the hard disk will almost certainly not be heard.
It is now often the case, that the first indication of an issue with the hard disk drive is when the operating system starts to crash, takes a long time to boot up, applications are slow to load or crash. At such a point, some damage may have already occurred, but if you seek help immediately there is a much higher chance that your critical data files will not have been affected.
As mentioned earlier, many computer users do not realise that a hard disk drive can even fail, demonstrated by questions asked in online forums and also comments they make when sending their hard drives for data recovery. Many users therefore think a backup is not necessary and even many professionals, who know they can fail, are often too lazy to ensure their data is backed up regularly.
Such naivety or laziness are the main reason for data loss and the need for data recovery. A lack of understanding, combined with a little knowledge can lead to the dangerous decision to attempt do-it-yourself data recovery. Such attempts, especially if the hard disk is failing, are ill-advised and in the worst cases can lead to a total destruction of the data. Even in the best case, where no real harm is done, it may still complicate the data recovery process.