Hard Disk SMART Errors

In this post we look at 2 common hard disk problems:

How to get your data back when you get a “Disk Error” message
Recovering data from a hard drive with a SMART error

How to fix a disk error

“Disk error” is a common message to see when a hard disk stops working. The actual error message describes little about the actual problem with the disk though, instead it just tells us that something is not working and the hard disk can not longer be accessed. Here’s a typical scenario:

I boot my machine and simply says “disk error” and doesn’t go any further.
I have a folder on there that is photographs of family members on the desktop.
I think from what I can remember is I had the machine built when I ran my photography business it was my first machine. I had it built on a RAID5.
The unfortunate thing is that the guy who built it who is real great mind like yourselves died of cancer about 3 years ago. He kept logs and stuff, I know he did. But when I went back to the shop they said he had passed away. Really sad.
I cannot even sleep at night thinking about the potential that these images are gone.

First of all to try and rectify this problem and get to your files again try these simple fixes. If this doesn’t work then your hard drive has a more serious problem that will require a data recovery service – see our location pages to find a local data recovery centre near you. RAID5 data storage provides additional difficulty when recovering data – you can view our RAID 5 data recovery page here: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/raid-data-recovery/.

Recovering data from SMART errors

I have a user who has experienced a SMART error on his Seagate hard drive
I have tried unsuccessfully to recover the data using an external hard drive adapter card.
There are extremely vital emails on the drive which unfortunately have not been backed up and are required for a very important project.
Would you be able to offer any advice on whether this data is recoverable and possibly a quote for the service? I am in Manchester.

SMART errors concern the health of your hard drive. SMART is a type of disk monitoring that runs in the system background, when certain values are exceeded a flag is raised and a SMART error is generated (see here). Usually once a SMART error is produced it’s too late to run any type of file recovery software on the hard drive as the system will no longer give you access to the disk. The only option you usually have is to use a data recovery service who will be able to bypass the SMART error and hopefully retrieve your data. You can find details of Data Clinic’s Manchester office here.

data, disk, error, recovery, smart

Data Clinic Reviews

Data Clinic Ltd

4.5

Jacob Greenwood

14:38 30 Mar 18

5* customer service! Recovered my father's book from an old drive, also retrieved some long forgotten about photos. Simply cant put a price on something like that.

Jarek Roover

12:21 30 Jul 18

Go there if you lost your data

Tony Cowgill

15:56 10 Apr 13

We've used Data Clinic twice now - once for my son's laptop which held all his University work and suddenly seemed to just die, that was recovered with ease. And then secondly in connection with work when our office computer system backups were somehow corrupted. These people really know their stuff - they are very helpful and professional and quick! Thanks so much for everything.

Rob Deighton

11:33 09 Dec 16

Happy to recommend Data Clinic to anybody that suffered Data Loss on storage Media. The guys were extremely helpful and knowledgeable and made the recovery of our valuable data a stress free experience.

George Thorpe

12:19 20 Feb 14

My company provides IT support to approximately 60 Yorkshire based companies ranging from small 10-15 users up to Enterprise sized organizations. Due to disk failure a client recently lost their entire database. We contacted Data Clinic and within hours a representative was onsite, several hours later the drive was returned, again in person by Data Clinic Manchester. I would not hesitate contacting them again, outstanding service in a market that can mean life or death to a business. 10 stars if there was an option!

Kieran Collins

21:02 25 Oct 18

Fantastic. Could not fault them at all, Brilliant, 10 year old iMac full of data and they had the data back to me in 72 hours. Communication via e-mail was fast, clear and superb.

David Tett

14:36 24 Aug 18

Sent them a 4tb WD Red hard drive to recover. They quoted me £588 incl VAT and recovery media. I was a bit sceptical so I asked for it to be returned. First they sent me the wrong hard drive (a 500GB WD Blue). Not too careful about data protection then. When I eventually got the drive back it had been totally stripped and outer casing binned (would have been nice to know about this beforehand). I decided to send it to Curry's PC World. They quoted £90 + recovery media. All data recovered and both hard drives returned within a week. What more is there to say.

Elle Sweet

22:12 20 Aug 18

Awful communication, I was constantly chasing them for updates on my device. My device was with them days before work was started on it. The data this company couldn’t retrieve was later retrieve by Apple. Waste of a £110.

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