We expect our devices to be reliable. When they’re not, the results can be devastating. Typically the data stored on an external hard drive is only stored there as a backup, meaning that if the drive fails, the data can usually be recovered from its secondary storage space. But when the data on your hard drive is stored exclusively on that hard drive — a drive crash can mean losing your files for good.
Recovering data from an external hard drive can be difficult and expensive. Sometimes, it’s even impossible. If you’ve taken the standard steps to recover the data from your hard drive on your own to no avail, your options to retrieving your data may be slim. If external hard drive recovery fails, take these steps next:
Have you exhausted all other options?
Assuming you’ve already made sure that the failure is with your external hard drive and not your port, have you tried everything to recover data from the failed hard drive yourself? If you’ve considered the most common reasons for drive failure and have applied their solutions to your drive to no avail, it might be time to take the next step.
Before you do, make sure you haven’t overlooked these causes and solutions.
Seek a professional external hard drive recovery specialist
If you’ve considered all of the above and weren’t able to repair your drive, or you don’t have the technical knowledge to hack at it yourself, there may still be some hope. Professional data recovery services can help you recover data from your hard drive. Depending on the cause of your drive failure, some, all or none of your data may be recovered from these services.
Before you decide to go this route, consider how valuable the data is to you. Is it worth hundreds of dollars? What about thousands? While there’s no guarantee all of your data will be able to be recovered, it’s a good last option if your data is important to you or your business. If the cost to recover the data doesn’t outweigh the importance of your data, it may be a good time to throw in the towel on retrieving it.
Prevent another occurrence:
Sometimes the best thing to do when you’ve lost your data due to a technical failure is to prevent it from happening to you again. Whether or not you were able to recover your data with professional recovery services, imagine the time, money and headaches you could save yourself just by taking a few preventative measures to safeguard your data.
Physical devices are vulnerable. They break, they crash, they get lost or damaged. And when these catastrophes happen, your data can go with them. Because of this, you should never depend on a physical device as the only means to store the data you need.
If you want to be able to access and retrieve your data at any time, despite device failures, you need cloud backup. Cloud backup is the only foolproof way to backup your data so that it’s always accessible and secure.
Cloud backup, unlike cloud storage, backs up all of the files, photos, documents and other data on your devices and keeps them in a secure, off-site location where it’s safe from the elements. If your data is ever deleted or you’ve lost access to it, you’re always able to retrieve it through the cloud — from anywhere with an internet connection.
Cloud backup is a much more thorough means of backup compared to an external hard drive or other removable media. Some of the reasons cloud backup makes such a better means to backing up your data include:
- Remote Restore — if a file is ever deleted, accidently changed, or even if your entire device crashes and you lose everything, the remote restore feature of a cloud backup will allow you to recover everything you need from wherever you are — so long as you have an internet connection. This means having the ability to recover what you need, as quickly as possible without having to hack away at your device, or take it to a professional to help you salvage your data.
- Continuous — your files are backed up continuously, as changes are being made to them, so that you never lose your most recent changes. This is all done without you needing to schedule system backups. The backup runs quietly and continuously in the background so that your files are updated to the backup, without interrupting your activity.
- Previous File Versioning — how many times have you made a change to a file and then wished you could go back? With previous file versioning, you can recover any previous version of a file so that the one you need is the one that’s restored to your computer.
- Off-site and secure — the cloud backup provider you select will store your data in secure data centers where it’s kept safe from the elements. To give you an idea of the security this provides for your data, at Nordic Backup, your files on redundant storage systems. All facilities, hardware and procedures are engineered to exceed industry regulations to ensure that your data gets the best protection possible. Our data centers are equipped with multiple levels of access control including armed guards, video surveillance, gated perimeter, locked server cabinets, security checkpoints with biometric scanners, uninterruptible power supplies, and more — all to ensure your data is kept safe and always available to you when you need it.
While you can’t prevent your drive from crashing and burning, you can prevent data loss if you approach data storage appropriately.
Prevent data loss from happening to you the next time your drive crashes by investing in a cloud backup solution. From being able to recover previous file versions and encrypt data with military level security, to being able to recover all of your data in the event of a data loss incident, cloud backup protects your data from vulnerabilities. You can backup your data today, free for 30 days with a secure cloud backup plan from Nordic Backup.
Nordic Backup automatically and continuously creates a backup of your data and provides limitless cloud storage, remote recovery, end-to-end encryption, unlimited version history and more to keep your data in good hands, no matter what threat it faces.
