Hard drive failure and the accompanying data loss is an experience that can range from merely frustrating to potentially devastating for your home or small business.

As always, the best protection is to regularly back up your data to an external drive, but even if your data is not backed up, in many cases, it can still be recovered if you take steps to protect your computer and get professional help. Dell offers a hard drive recovery service that can help you get your data back if your drive fails.

Hard drive failure

Your Dell hard drive can fail and cause you to lose data for a number of different reasons. The main ones include:

Fire
Flood
Computer viruses
Physical damage
Wear and tear
Accidental deletion of files
Power surges
Head stack failures
Clicking hard drives
Human error
Disk reformatting
Overwritten files

Prosupport Hard Drive Recovery Service

Dell offers its Prosupport Data Recovery Service to help retrieve data for all owners of Dell computers. Dell Prosupport offers:

Servicing in a clean room environment if needed. Dell offers a dust free clean room environment that meets ISO 14644-1 standards. Dell’s technicians will take your drive apart, examine it and attempt to retrieve your data.
Possible rebuilding of your drive if necessary to recover your data.
Options to receive your recovered data in a USB key or USB drive or other external media for easy access.
All customers receive access to the Dell Data Protection Portal, which allows you to check the status of your data recovery.
All recovered data will be stored at the recovery lab that services your hard disk for 30 days and then destroyed.

To access the Hard Drive Recovery Service, call Dell’s technical support line when you have a data loss problem or experience drive failure. The technician will evaluate your computer by phone and if you have a problem that is covered by warranty, Dell will send you a new hard drive to replace the damaged one. You can then send your compromised hard drive to Dell for repair. Dell’s data protection Services lab will examine your hard drive and return any data that they can recover to you as soon as possible.

It’s important to keep in mind that Dell is not responsible for any data that is lost. As a customer, it’s your responsibility to make sure that your data is protected and that you back up your files regularly. While Dell will do everything possible to recover your files, in some cases, the data simply cannot be recovered.

Raid data recovery

Dell does not cover data lost in RAID systems, but you can call an independent data recovery company to help retrieve data stored in a RAID array. Dell PowerEdge RAID servers can be vulnerable to the following problems:

Single Drive Failure. Losing a single drive can result in degraded performance of your RAID 5 configuration.
Drive Drops. Sometimes these systems can drop two or more drives from the array container, seriously compromising the integrity of your array.
Reconstruction Problems. Trying to rebuild a drive on your RAID system after you’ve been operating with a failed drive can cause catastrophic failure of your system. It’s important to get professional help if this happens.

It’s important to get professional help if you experience a problem with your RAID array. It’s very difficult to repair the array on your own and any action you take could potentially degrade the array even more. There are a number of data recovery companies out there that can provide RAID array repair for a reasonable cost. They can help you get your data back and get your business or personal use back online.

To give yourself the best possible chance of recovering your data, make sure that you shut down your computer as soon as you can safely do so to prevent any more damage. If you send your hard disk out to be fixed, it’s best to send it in the manufacturer’s original packaging.

Not many things in the personal computer world invoke as much panic and confusion as the subject of data recovery and trying to recover deleted files.

The statistics show that at one time or another in your life you are going to have issues with a hard drive or even just accidentally deleted a file and without the right tools on hand you may end up losing important personal files in the form of memories, paperwork for work or school or even tax information. But with the right tools on hand you can easily go in and restore your lost files in no time.

When you talk about data recovery, you have to look at the two types of damage that can be done to your hard drive that makes it impossible to access your data like you normally do.

#1 Physical failure is severe and in every case, no matter if you like the idea or not, has to be taken care of by a professional. That is because something within the housing of the hard drive has physically broken or failed. That means if you continue trying to access data you could be causing permanent damage to the surface of the hard drive making data recovery nearly impossible.

This type of issue with any form of storage is much less common, but still requires professional help because of the specialized equipment necessary to do the work and recover deleted files or lost data.

#2 More commonly, people experience logical data loss. This can be as simple as accidentally deleting a file to damage from a virus or power surge making a once readable section of the hard drive scrambled and corrupt. But these situations are exactly where data recovery software shines. Because it is specially designed to go in and read that scrambled data and then rebuild it from the ground up then move it to a new, secure location temporarily so that it can once again be accessed so you can recover deleted files with data recovery software.

There are free versions of data recovery software out there, but many times these programs often times lack the versatility and ease of use that the paid versions offer. Not to mention the lack of available support if you have any questions about the software. What good is a data recovery option that you cannot use or you are unable to get help on?