There is a particular sound a mechanical hard drive makes when it is dying. A soft rhythmic click, about once a second, like a tiny metronome under the desk. People usually describe it as a tick or a knock, and almost everyone's first instinct is to restart the computer and see if it goes away.
That instinct is the most expensive thirty seconds in home computing.
That click is the read head failing to find its position and resetting, over and over, a few nanometres above a platter spinning at 5,400 or 7,200 revolutions per minute. Every cycle risks the head touching the surface and scraping away the magnetic layer your files are written on. A drive that could have been recovered in a lab on Monday can be genuinely unrecoverable by Monday afternoon, purely because it was left running while someone waited to see what would happen.
So before anything else: if a drive is clicking, beeping, grinding or has suddenly disappeared from your computer, power it off. Not sleep, not restart. Off. Then read on.
First, work out which problem you actually have
These five look similar from the outside and need completely different responses.
You deleted something by accident. The drive is fine. This is the best case and often free to fix. Go to the next section.
The drive is making noise or was dropped. Physical failure. Nothing you install or run will help, and most things will hurt. This needs a lab.
The computer will not start, or the drive is not detected. Could be either. Could also be a dead power supply or a loose cable, which is why it is worth having someone look before you assume the worst.
Files are there but will not open, or have odd names and symbols. Usually file system corruption. Often recoverable, but only if you stop writing to the drive now.
Everything has been renamed with a strange extension and there is a ransom note. Ransomware. Do not pay, do not reformat, and do not let anyone talk you into a quick fix. That drive needs to be imaged before anyone touches it.
Check the free places first
A surprising number of "lost forever" files are sitting somewhere obvious. Fifteen minutes here can save you a bill.
- Recycle Bin on Windows, Trash on Mac. Obvious, but check it before you empty it out of habit.
- iPhone and iPad, Recently Deleted. Photos, and separately Notes, Messages and Files, all hold deleted items for 30 days.
- Google Photos bin. Backed up photos and videos sit there for 60 days before they are gone for good. If backup was not switched on, it is 30 days.
- OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox web recycle bins. These are separate from the bin on your computer, and they often hold things the local bin no longer has.
- Version history. Microsoft 365, Google Docs and Dropbox all keep previous versions of a file. If a document was overwritten rather than deleted, this is usually the fastest fix.
- Windows File History or Time Machine. If either was ever switched on, even a while ago, there may be an older copy of the whole folder.
- The other device. Photos deleted from a phone often still exist on the laptop that last synced with it, at least until it syncs again.
One important warning about cloud storage. Deleting a file on one device deletes it everywhere within seconds. If you have realised something is missing, do not open the app on your other devices while you sort it out.
The thing almost nobody knows about SSDs
This is the single most useful piece of knowledge in this article, and it changes what you should do.
On an old fashioned mechanical hard drive, deleting a file does not erase it. The computer just removes the signpost pointing to it and marks the space as available. The data physically stays on the platter until something else happens to be written on top of it. That is why recovery software works, and why it works better the sooner you stop using the drive.
Solid state drives do not behave that way. SSDs use a command called TRIM, which tells the drive which blocks are no longer needed so it can clear them in advance and stay fast. The effect is that when you delete a file from an SSD, the actual contents are usually wiped within seconds or minutes, permanently, by the drive itself. Not overwritten by new data eventually. Zeroed out, on purpose, almost immediately.
What that means in practice:
- Deleted a file from a mechanical hard drive? Stop using it and your odds are good, sometimes excellent.
- Deleted a file from an SSD, which includes almost every laptop made in the last eight years? If it is not in the Recycle Bin or a backup, it is very likely gone, and no amount of software will bring it back.
This is not a reason to give up before checking. Recovery is sometimes still possible depending on how the drive handles its housekeeping and how quickly you acted. But it is a very good reason not to spend three hundred dollars on recovery software for an SSD before someone has looked at the situation properly.
Five things that destroy your chances
Continuing to use the computer. Every minute a machine is running it writes temporary files, log entries and updates, any of which can land on top of what you are trying to recover. If the files matter, shut it down.
Installing recovery software onto the affected drive. This is genuinely common and genuinely painful. The installer writes to exactly the free space holding your deleted files. Recovery tools should always be run from a separate drive, ideally with the affected disk removed and connected to another computer.
Running a repair tool on a failing drive. Windows will offer to scan and fix. macOS will suggest Disk Utility First Aid. Both are fine on a healthy drive with a small file system problem, and both can be catastrophic on a drive that is physically failing, because they rewrite the file system structure while the hardware is unreliable. Repair before imaging is how salvageable data becomes lost data.
Reinstalling the operating system. People do this when a computer will not boot, assuming the files are separate. They are not.
The freezer trick. It has been circulating online for twenty years. Condensation on the platters when the drive warms up will finish off anything a professional might have saved. Do not do it. The same goes for opening the drive to have a look. The clearance between the head and the platter is smaller than a particle of cigarette smoke, which is why real labs work in filtered clean air.
When it is a lab job, and what that actually costs
Software recovery handles logical problems: deleted files, formatted drives, corrupted file systems, drives that still spin and are still detected. This is affordable and often quick.
Physical recovery is a different trade. It is needed when the drive clicks, beeps, grinds, is not detected at all, has been dropped while running, or has been through water or fire. It involves opening the drive in a clean environment, often transplanting heads or the controller board from a matching donor drive, and imaging what can be read before anything else is attempted. Expect it to run into four figures and expect an honest lab to tell you upfront that there is no guarantee.
Which is worth knowing before you decide. Sometimes the right answer is that the photos are worth whatever it costs. Sometimes it is that they were also on a phone, and there is a much cheaper path.
The backup that would have prevented all of this
The old rule still holds, and it still works. Three copies of anything you care about, on two different types of storage, with one of them somewhere else.
For a normal household that looks like: the files on your computer, an external drive that lives at home, and a cloud backup running automatically in the background.
Two things people get wrong.
Sync is not backup. Dropbox, iCloud Drive, OneDrive and Google Drive mirror what you do. Delete a file and it deletes everywhere. Get hit with ransomware and the encrypted versions sync up happily. They are wonderful for having your files everywhere and they are not a safety net on their own. A real backup keeps versions and keeps deleted files for a period, so you can go back to before the mistake.
A backup you have never tested is a hope, not a backup. Once a year, try to restore one file. That is the whole test. It takes two minutes and it is how you find out the external drive stopped working eight months ago.
The uncomfortable truth about this whole topic is that data recovery is a service people only think about once. Almost nobody who has been through it ever needs it twice, because the experience is enough to make them set up a backup properly the following week.
Common questions
My hard drive is clicking. What should I do right now?
Power it off immediately. Not sleep, not restart, off. That click is the read head failing to find its position and resetting a few nanometres above a spinning platter, and every cycle risks scraping away the magnetic layer your files are written on. A drive that could have been recovered in the morning can be beyond saving by the afternoon purely because it was left running.
Can deleted files be recovered from an SSD?
Usually not. SSDs use a command called TRIM that clears deleted blocks within seconds or minutes, permanently, by the drive itself. On an old mechanical hard drive the data physically stays on the platter until something overwrites it, which is why recovery software works there. If a file is gone from an SSD and it is not in the Recycle Bin or a backup, it is very likely gone for good.
How long do deleted photos stay recoverable?
Check the free places first. Recently Deleted on iPhone and iPad holds items for 30 days. The Google Photos bin holds backed up photos and videos for 60 days, or 30 days if backup was never switched on. OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox all have their own web recycle bins, separate from the bin on your computer.
How much does professional data recovery cost in Australia?
It depends on whether the problem is logical or physical. Deleted files, formatted drives and corrupted file systems on a drive that still works are affordable and often quick. Physical recovery, where the drive is opened in a clean environment and heads or the controller board are transplanted from a donor drive, runs into four figures, and an honest lab will tell you upfront that there is no guarantee.
How HelloTech can help
We come to you, and we start by telling you honestly which of the five situations you are in. That matters, because the advice is completely different for a deleted folder than for a drive that has failed mechanically, and getting it wrong makes things worse.
We handle recovery from healthy drives, deleted and formatted files, corrupted file systems and computers that will not start. Where a drive has physically failed we will tell you plainly that it is a lab job rather than take your money running software that cannot help. We also do backup setup: an external drive plus automatic cloud backup, configured properly, tested in front of you, and explained in a way that means you will actually keep using it.
If a drive is making a noise right now, turn the computer off and book a HelloTech technician. The sooner it stops spinning, the more there is to save.
