Physical And Logical Data Loss
Data recovery companies categorises data loss into 2 different types, physical and logical. The signs for both sometimes overlap, but mostly are independent of each other.
Physical Data Loss
Signs To Look Out For
- weird noises (clicking, scraping etc)
- the storage media does not show signs of activation
- the media is not there! (stolen or lost)
What It Means
Weird Noises:
If you hear weird noises, it can mean many things. Sometimes screws in the CPU cases aren’t properly tightened, clogged fans, tilted base and so on. These are minor incidents, and are easily fixed.
however, there is a great possibility of read write head failure if you hear clicking sounds.
See How HDD WorksIf the internal read write head of a device touches a platter, it will grind away the magnetic surface. The read write head hover's just micrometers from the platters plane, which makes this incident very common.
What makes it worse is the fact that once the read write head cannot read the data on the platters; it will reset and try to access the data again. This scratches the platters severely.
So, if anytime you hear clicking sounds, TURN IT OFF! Do not use your drive (or any hdd based storage media like ipods) and send it to a professional data recovery company if your data is very important.
Storage Media Does Not Show Signs of Activation
If your hard disk doesn't show any signs of activity even if your other components do (like your cpu fan or even the ipod screen), one of the components in the hard disk has failed.
This could mean failed spindle motor, burnt pcb board and more. Again, here you need to send to a professional data recovery company to recover your data.
