When your computer's hard drive has failed, you might be tempted to use a file recovery software program to recover from the crash. In some instances, a file recovery program is not a good solution to your problem.

Investigating WHY your hard drive has malfunctioned should be the first thing that you do in this situation. If your computer has been damaged physically, say by a flood or fire, using file recovery software is probably one of the worst things that you can do. Hard drive recovery programs are designed to repair logical damage, and if you attempt to recover a drive using software that has physical damage you may render any information on the drive unrecoverable.

In an earlier article, I mentioned the two types of hard drive failures. Physical, or hardware failure, is caused by damage to the hard drive itself. Fire, electrical surge, or water damage are the three main causes of physical failure. Logical failure is caused by corrupt or deleted data, either thru a sudden power loss or user error. If your file problem was caused by a logical failure, then a file recovery software package is probably right for you. A software package will be both quicker and more cost effective then sending your equipment to a hard drive recovery service.

To sum it up, it's very important to investigate the actual source of your hard drive failure before you decide on an appropriate solution. File recovery services can be expensive, and take far more time than running a file recovery software package yourself. However, sometimes a file recovery is needed, especially if the problem was caused by physical failure of your media. Thoroughly investigating the cause of your file loss will help you make a well informed decision on which solution is right for you.