If you have been searching the web for any amount of time looking for data recovery software or services you will likely be aware of the wild claims many data recovery companies. Data recovery services often show their success rate to be as high as 90% and do so without documentation or solid verification of this level of data recovery achievement. Although this level of success would be fantastic it is more likely this high success rate is related to a particular hard drive model, or only the hard drives that they accept for data recovery attempts. Their success rates for other hard drives could possibly be nearer to 0%.

Whilst browsing the internet for hard drive data recovery solutions you will also find companies displaying extreme data recovery cases including damage caused by fire, water, bashed cases and sometimes even explosions or bullets! Often these types of data recoveries, whilst interesting, simply hide the real nature of most hardware failures; Hard drives usually cease to work because of ordinary reasons…

…Including:

• Solder traces, electronic components, connectors on the PCB (printed circuit board) can fail.
• Corrupted or damaged firmware.
• The S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) threshold can be exceeded.
• A bug in the factory firmware may have been left unfixed.
• System areas on the disk used for calibration, storing firmware, testing and parameter tables may become damaged.
• Failure of the Spindle or voice-coil motor such as a short circiut or open circuit.
• Bearing grease may breakdown.
• Bearings may seize up.
• A disk shift or miss-alignment may occur
• Overheating of the dive.
• Damage to the dives head.
• and a whole lot more can go wrong that isn’t nearly as exciting as a hard drive being shot by a bullet!

When looking for a data recovery service bear these facts in mind when looking at their data recovery success rate claims. Are they using flimsy ’showy’ data recovery examples or real solid backed-up examples of data recovery?