Data Loss Due To Hard Drive Failure

Introduction

It is a fact of life that no storage device or medium lasts forever. It is but inevitable that a computer's hard drive too would succumb to external forces at some point or another.

For the computer user, the hard drive giving up the ghost may result in data loss. There are many reasons that can lead to the failure or crash of a hard drive and further lead to data loss.

Power surges, normal wear and tear, natural disasters and accidents, corruption of file system, crashing of the operating system itself, formatting issues, virus infections, damages to the inner components, contamination due to dust, and human error are just some of the reasons that lead to hard drive failure.

50 % of hard drives crash within 5 years and nearly the same percentage of users will lose data every year. A single incident of data loss can cost a company slightly less than $ 3000. A study by Datamonitor concludes that as many as one third of the companies that went through a major data loss incident filed for bankruptcy within a year.

With IT playing an ever more important role in a company's operations, increase in capacity of storage media and decreasing costs of storage, corporates and other users are storing more and more data. Moore's Law (Gordon Moore, co founder, Intel) stated as early as 1965, that technology would advance at such a pace that every 18 to 24 months, the number of transistors on a single piece of silicon would double at the same cost.

Why do hard drives fail?

Four main causes contribute to hard drive failure - firmware problems, logical failure, electronic failures and mechanical problems. Firmware or software is stored on disk platters in the hard drive and controls operations. If the software is outdated, corrupt or riddled with infections, then it will result in hard drive failure. The firmware design is complex and sometimes even this leads to the failure of the hard drive. Like any other component of the computer, over a period of time, even software can become damaged and will need to be replaced. Logical errors very often are the easiest to deal with and can happen due to invalid entries in a file allocation table to data loss on a severely fragmented drive. Thus there is nothing physically wrong with the disk but only on the information stored on it. Errors in PCB or printed circuit boards lead to electronic failures. When there is damage to the physical components of a computer due to mechanical failures and accidents then it leads to physical damage, perhaps the most difficult situation for a data recovery operation.

Reducing the possibility of hard drive failure

Manufacturers of hard drives state that they have a failure rate of less than 1 %. Other studies contradict this. Carnegie Mellon University finds that a 2 to 4 % rate is more common and this rate may sometimes peak up to 13 % in some cases. So what can the normal user do to minimize hard drive failure? Conducting regular health checkups for the drive, performing corrective actions,managing drive life cycle with drive selection, doing burn ins, and routine replacements could be a few steps.
There are signs and symptoms to indicate that a hard drive is going into failure and lead to data loss. For instance system noises, error messages of some kind, the disk is not being read or detected and boot failures.

When you are faced with a computer that is making strange noises like clicks and buzzes, there are certain things that you can do to minimize complete failure. You could unplug the computer and remove the drive without rebooting from this drive. If there is no critical data on the drive or disk, then a DIY data recovery can be attempted. Data retrieval software can be applied if the failure is definitely related to the file system. Under no circumstances should the hard drive be opened. It needs more than squeaky clean surroundings. The overriding word of caution is not to attempt something without being armed with the tools of information, skill and specialist equipment. It could lead to irreversible loss of data.

Hard drive failure accounts for 38 % of data loss incidents. A research by a data recovery services company covered 50 data recovery firms in 14 countries and came up with the following findings -

Reducing the extent of data loss due to hard drive failure

While the prospect of drive failure is a frightening reality that we deal with almost every day, we can also take a few steps to minimize data loss due to this failure. Using RAID, sharing files and creating backups, streamlining data continuously with cleanups and compression software to name a few steps.

Data loss in cases of hard drive failure is either recoverable or permanently lost. With careful planning, users and corporations need not go through the trauma of lost data. Instead a company needs only deal with the costs of retrieving the data and dealing with business losses during the downtime.

A typical data loss incident might result in loss of productivity by 25 %.

Most companies also have in house teams to retrieve data if the loss has been caused by human error, virus infections, or software malfunctions. This happens in almost 40 % of cases. But in almost 70% of severe data loss cases, the loss has been triggered by hard drive failures and here, it is best to bring in a data recovery specialist.
The cost of such an exercise will vary vastly depending on factors such as the deadlines for data recovery, the type and size of the disk, the degree of damage and the availability of spare parts. The highest rates apply for data recovery services be it hard drive recovery or RAID data recovery that needs to be done within a short time.

What happens to lost data?

Hard drive failures do not always wipe out all the data. A lot of the data can be dug out with professional support and intervention. A survey states that 15 % of non recoverable data loss situations were created because they were subject to non professional recovery attempts. These attempts can be methods like application of system software which may repair the file system but overwrites and permanently deletes data.

Lost data can be recovered by methods such as drive restoration, disk imaging, and mechanical work.