Data Recovery for Maxtor Hard Drives By Chloe Weston

Data loss due to hard drive failure is an all too common problem, which can cause anything from personal frustration to a complete shutdown of your business. It's a problem that strikes without warning and can be very difficult to recover from. Fortunately, in many cases your data can be recovered by a professional if you take the right steps.

The first course of action is to attempt to determine why your hard drive has failed. There are many types of hard drive failure, some of which you may be able to fix on your own, but in most cases it is best to consult with a reputable data recovery specialist who can troubleshoot the problem and decide on the best way to recover your files.

Causes of Failure
Maxtor hard drives can fail for any one of a number of different reasons. There are two types of failures you can encounter - Logical failure and physical failure.
Logical failures include problems such as:

• Computer viruses.
• File deletion.
• Lost partition structure.
• A damaged or overwritten MFT.
• Lost passwords.
• Formatted partitions.

Physical failures include things like:

• Head crash.
• Controller error.
• Damaged motor.
• Bad sectors.
• Electrical, heat or water damage.
• Power surges.
• Actuator failure.
• Media damage.
• Firmware corruption.

If the drive is recognized by the system BIOS, but you still can't access your data, chances are that you have a logical failure. If your system BIOS doesn't recognize the presence of the drive, then your drive has likely experienced a physical failure.

What to do

Maxtor hard drives are among the most reliable computer drives in the world, with a failure rate due to physical damage of only about 0.1% over a ten year lifespan. Despite the physical reliability, Maxtor drives can be prone to failure due to the Windows DLL files that are used to operate the hardware. These files can become corrupted due to the frequency of their use and can be initiated by any problems you may have during the start up or shutdown of your computer.

This type of failure can be remedied by reinstalling the Windows operating system. However, before doing so you will need to access the Maxtor drive and retrieve your data. There are computer programs available for this, which will open the crashed drive and allow you access to your files. But these programs could compromise your data if you are unsure of how to operate them, or if there are other problems occurring with the drive. Data recovery experts will have a much better success rate in case of these errors.

If you are trying to retrieve files from an internal disk, you can't download and install a file retrieval program on to the same computer that holds the corrupt drive, or you will overwrite files on the disk that you may want to recover. You will likely have to use a second computer to install the program and create a recovery disk. This disk can then be used on the compromised computer to recover your data. This can be a complex procedure, and something that should be left to data recovery professionals - especially if you cannot afford to lose the data on the damaged or corrupted drive.

If you have physical damage to the Maxtor hard drive, you will need to send the drive to a data recovery company who can physically repair the drive. This requires a dust free clean room environment and specialized tools and should not be attempted by the average person. Maxtor hard drives can be vulnerable to heat related damage and power surges so it's important to protect your computer from excess heat and to always use a surge protector. Of course, the best way to protect your important files is to back them up to an external source on a regular basis. This may seem time consuming and unnecessary, but it is the first and best line of defence in protecting you from data loss and the headaches it can create. credit:  By Chloe Weston