Depending on the situation, solutions involve repairing the logical file system, partition table or master boot record, or updating the firmware or drive recovery techniques ranging from software-based recovery of corrupted data, hardware- and software-based recovery of damaged service areas (also known as the hard disk drive's 'firmware'), to hardware replacement on a physically damaged drive which allows for extraction of data to a new drive. In any of these cases, the data is not easily read from the media devices. Such cases can often be mitigated by disk partitioning and consistently storing valuable data files (or copies of them) on a different partition from the replaceable OS system files.Īnother scenario involves a drive-level failure, such as a compromised file system or drive partition, or a hard disk drive failure. Many Live CDs or DVDs provide a means to mount the system drive and backup drives or removable media, and to move the files from the system drive to the backup media with a file manager or optical disc authoring software. This can be accomplished using a Live CD or DVD by booting directly from a ROM instead of the corrupted drive in question. (typically, on a single-drive, single- partition, single-OS system), in which case the ultimate goal is simply to copy all important files from the damaged media to another new drive.

The most common data recovery scenarios involve an operating system failure, malfunction of a storage device, logical failure of storage devices, accidental damage or deletion, etc.

3.1 Corrupt partitions and file systems, media errors.

External hard drive windows 7