1 Logical failure

    This is the less alarming case as the hard drive is not physically damaged.
Very often, it is caused by a "human error".

We can recover data most of the time because the data is just corrupted or disorganized (it is unaccessible from the OS).

A logical failure may be caused by:

- a boot error: "no boot device found"

- a lost partition: A parition is not accessible to the user.

- a virus: Some viruses are meant to damaged you hard disk drive
(format, delete some files). Do not forget to update your antivirus regularly.

- deleted data: Some data is deleted by accident or intentionally.

2 Electronic failure

An electronic failure occurs when the hard drive controller card is damaged.
An electronic failure implies a repair work before recovering the data.

Electronic failures may be caused by an short circuit on the card after an overvoltage or a power cut.
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Very often, it is necessary to replace several electronic components or the entire card before recovering the data.

3 Mechanical failure

Mechanical failures are quite serious since the hard drive has to be open to repair it.

Nevertheless, a hard drive is a very fragile medium.

That is why we have a class 100 clean room to recover data on hard drives suffering a mechanical failure.


A mechanical failure may be caused by:

- damaged writing/reading heads: The hard drive heads are unable to read and with the disk heads are repositioning themselves constantly (clicking or banging noise).
In the case of a metallic noise, this could be due to a hard drive head crash.

- a defective hard drive motor: I fyou can hear a grating noise, the hard drive motor is likely to be defective. We are able to repair it and recover the data.