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The different types of Data Recovery are Hardware Recovery and Software Recovery.

Hardware Recovery:

As, we know, the hard drive contains a number of disks called platters. The platters are coated with a magnetic substance which spins at higher speed under mechanical arm that moves backwards and forwards over the surface of each platter. The files that you store on computer are encoded into the magnetic substance. Hard Disks are complex. They have a circuit board and a number of moving parts. In terms of data recovery, the first thing that you must evaluate is whether it is a hardware problem that is stopping you from accessing your data. Common hardware problems include a faulty circuit board or problems with the actuator arm. A faulty circuit board is characterize by a drive that does not 'spin up', meaning that platters are not turning underneath the copper wire. A faulty actuator arm or more serious mechanical error is characterized by an abnormal clicking noise or a grinding noise.

The best advice in determining whether you have a hardware problem is to listen to the sound of your hard drive. If you cannot hear the platters spinning or you hear more serious noises then you should stop using the drive immediately and you will need to send your drive to a hardware data recovery service. Hardware data recovery can be expensive because technicians may need to disassemble your hard drive to fix the problem. This usually needs to be done in a 'clean room' as hard drives are sealed to avoid errors caused by dust or other particles. Also hard drives are finely tuned machinery and it takes specialist equipment to read the platters from a physically damaged drive. If you are sending your hard drive to a data recovery specialist then you should attempt to obtain an upfront estimate of fees that if you send your hard drive for quotation purposes will they send it back to you in the same condition if you choose not to use the service, and make sure you send it to a reputable company as you may only get one chance at data recovery.

Software Recovery:

In Software Recovery, the data loss can occur not due to any physical problems in your hard drive but because it has problems accessing the data it contains software. The purpose of a data recovery software is to divide all the magnetic space on the hard drive into small storage areas. These storage areas are known as sectors, however for efficiency purposes. We can save a very small file to your computer it will fit within 1 storage cluster on the hard drive. If you save a very large file it may fill up many clusters, that is, as many clusters as it takes to hold all the content of the file. The amount of fragmentation in a file can also reduce your ability to recover deleted data as we will explain later in this article. So we can now think of our hard drive as being broken down into many clusters which hold the contents of our files. A cluster that is being used to store a file is called an allocated cluster and it is not being used to store a file.

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