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Working with big quantities of information? You know the panic moment when you realize that you need some data that you deleted a long time ago. This is the subject of this article : Deleted file recovery. First lets start with some general data recovery tips, valid for all type of data devices, PC’s, Mac’s, phones.

Never used a damaged or faulty storage medium more than you have to. It sounds obvious, but, in reality, we as people love to procrastinate on things that are unpleasant to deal with, such as purchasing a new hard drive or SD card when the old one starts showing early signs of failure. However, by postponing the replacement of your storage device, you increase the chance of it failing catastrophically each time you use it. When that happens, there’s often little you can do.

Your hard drive is like a car in many ways. You know how it performs, how it sounds, how it looks, and how long it takes to get from point A to point B on a daily basis. If something begins to feel askew with your car, you typically can sense it happening and can tell the end is nigh. The same thing goes for your computer’s hard drive. That being said, make sure to routinely back up your hard drive, especially if you repeatedly experience the symptoms below.

Is the drive making no sounds on being connected or accessed? If the drive isn’t making any clicking or other sounds at all, it isn’t spinning at all. That is a clear indication of an issue with the drive’s PCB (the green circuit board attached to the bottom of the drive). In such a case, you’ll need to replace the PCB with a matching one from another matching hard drive.

If the TVS diodes don’t smell burnt and show the correct digits when measuring them, then the problem is the PCB itself. A replacement PCB is required, but not just a straight swap. There is an 8 pin ROM chip on most PCBs that contains unique firmware info that is required to start up the drive. This needs to be moved from the old PCB to the new in order for the replacement to work. Some hard drives, especially Western Digitals, do not have this 8 pin chip—the firmware is stored in the main controller which is virtually impossible to move.

Older laptops that were constructed with traditional hard drives were fairly simple to pop open and fix. You could unscrew a few screws holding the case together, and then plug into the drive via a universal SATA port to retrieve the data. Opening the actual drive itself is not without risk, or advisable, as dust could and will enter the drive, causing contamination and potentially additional damage during the process. For example, older drives would be subject to something called stiction, and sometimes became ‘stuck’, whereby the head and actuator were locked or stuck and the motor failed to spin, causing the hard drive platters to spin improperly. One trick that had some reported success involved placing a hard drive in the freezer, which would cause the metal to contract and become unstuck, at least long enough to offload the data.

Data recovery service is not a bad idea when you want to recover lost data. But this kind of solution is very expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, other people will see your recovered files and information. The best solution for recovering lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive is file recovery software. Powerful file recovery software can let you easily and safely recover lost WD Elements data on your own. With file recovery software, you can conveniently recover lost files from WD Elements portable hard drive by yourself. See more info at Recover lost data from WD external hard drive.