Data Recovery: Hard Disk Drive Failure

A hard disk drive is a digitally encoded non-volatile storage device which stores data on rapidly rotating disks with magnetic surfaces called hard disk platters. The read-write heads of the hard disk drive are used to record and retrieve the data stored on the hard disk as the platters rotate at a very high speed. Hard disk drives operate under extreme stress and will eventually fail due to general wear and tear accrued through age or some form of malfunction or failure.

The phenomenon of hard disk failure is increasing

The chances of hard disk drive failure increase greatly over time and ironically as hard disk drives improve and develop; as the read and write speed and capacity are increased. Today we have the latest hard disk rotating at 15,000 rpm, which generates a massive centrifugal force, a single adverse affect in the course of normal operation can cause severe hard disk failure.

Hard disk drive failures can be generally classified into two categories. The first is physical failure, which is when the internal components of the drive have been physically damaged. The second is a firmware or bad sector damage, which corrupts and englufs the data and so it becomes inaccessible.

The following are the main causes of hard drive failure:

• Firmware corruption
• Electronic failure & circuit board malfunction
• Logical errors
• Human errors

Read more about hard disk failure here...