In our last post, we talked about three do-it-yourself data recovery solutions that could actually render all the data on a hard drive unrecoverable. Private individuals and IT staff, alike, sometimes give in to the temptation to attempt do-it-yourself data recovery. But to minimize downtime and maximize the chances of complete recovery of your mission critical data, it’s best to call data recovery experts at the first signs of hard drive failure if you can’t access your files.

Here are 5 more DIY data recovery methods that rarely work and are not recommended by experts. 

1.  Don’t bang a hard drive on the table or hit it with a hammer or any tool to try to un-stick the platters. – Hard disk drives (HDDs) are delicate pieces of machinery and, even if banging on the drive, or banging the drive on a counter, to unstick the platters does work, it’s likely to cause additional damage to the drive, making it harder to recover lost data. 

2. Don’t attempt to swap out parts on a damaged hard drive. –  It can be very tempting, especially for IT pros, to save your company money by swapping out broken or damaged parts on another hard drive in order to access data from a failed HDD. This hardly ever works and will, additionally, void the hard drive’s warranty. 

3. Don’t freeze a damaged hard drive. – Freezing a failed hard drive rarely helps recover lost data, but the moisture in a freezer can cause additional damage to the delicate electronics within an HDD or a solid state drive.

What’s the best course of action when you’re facing a failed hard drive or solid state drive and the loss of important data files? 

Call a data recovery service immediately, or save time and start the data recovery process online with 24 Hour Data. Have the make and model number of your failed hard drive handy. After collecting your information, we’ll provide you with shipping instructions for your drive and, within 48 hours of receiving your HDD, solid state drive, RAID drive or other storage media, we’ll provide a free and honest price quote. It’s that easy… no tools required.