2026-04-23

Protecting Data from Severe Weather

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM03 mins

You can protect your data by following some simple precautions. With that said, even the most well-protected hard drives can crash, fail, quit, click, die… you get the picture. So here are a few tips for how to respond when extreme weather does damage your computer equipment.

1. Summer heat can be a significant problem as overheating can lead to drive failures can result. Keep your computer in a cool, dry area to prevent overheating.

2. Make sure your servers have adequate air conditioning. Increases in computer processor speed have resulted in more power requirements, which in turn require better cooling – especially important during the summer months.

3. To prevent damage caused by lightning strikes, install a surge protector between the power source and the computer’s power cable to handle any power spikes or surges.

4. Invest in some form of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), which uses batteries to keep computers running during power outages. UPS systems also help manage an orderly shutdown of the computer – unexpected shutdowns from power surge problems can cause data loss.

5. Check protection devices regularly: At least once a year you should inspect your power protection devices to make sure that they are functioning properly.

Responding to Data Loss Caused by Severe Weather

1. Do not attempt to operate visibly damaged computers or hard drives.

2. Do not shake, disassemble or attempt to clean any hard drive or server that has been damaged – improper handling can make recovery operations more difficult which can lead to valuable information being lost.

3. Never attempt to dry water-damaged media by opening it or exposing it to heat – such as that from a hairdryer. In fact, keeping a water-damaged drive damp can improve your chances for recovery.

4. Do not use data recovery software to attempt recovery on a physically damaged hard drive. Data recovery software is only designed for use on a drive that is fully functioning mechanically.

5. Choose a professional data recovery company to help you.

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Primary Partition On A Hard Drive Must be Active! Why?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM01 mins

Why must the primary partition on a hard drive be active?

The primary partition must be set to a status of Active, otherwise it is not possible to boot off that primary partition. Please note that only the primary partition on the primary Master drive can be set to a status of Active.

To check whether your partition is active, or to activate the partition if it is not active, use FDISK.

  1. Boot your system with a Windows startup disk and type FDISK at the A:\ prompt and press ENTER.
  2. If your partition is not active, you will see a warning message at the main menu of FDISK stating Warning – No active partitions set at the bottom of the screen.
  3. To set the partition as active, select 2 Set Active Partition and choose Partition 1 when prompted to select the partition.
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Glossary of Hard Disk Drive Terminology (Letter H)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM05 mins

Half-Duplex
A communications protocol that permits transmission in both directions but in only one direction at a time.

Half-height Drives
Standard 3.5-inch hard drives are available in heights of 1.0-inch and 1.6-inches. Half-height drives measure 1.6-inches in height.

Hard Drive
An electromechanical device used for information storage and retrieval, incorporating one or more rotating disks on which data is recorded, stored and read magnetically. Western Digital’s principal product.

Hard Drive Industry
The combined manufacturers of hard drives. In the United States, the industry is led by IBM, Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum and Western Digital.

Hard Error
An error that is repeatable every time the same area on a disk is accessed.

Hard Sectored
A technique that uses a digital signal to indicate the beginning of a sector on a track.

Head
The minute electromagnetic coil and metal pole which write and read back magnetic patterns on the disk. Also known as a read/write head. A drive with several disk surfaces or platters will have a separate head for each data surface. See also MR Head.

Head Actuator
A motor that moves the head stack assembly in a hard drive to align read/write heads with magnetic tracks on the disks.

Head Crash
Refers to the damage incurred to a read/write head when the head comes into contact with the disk surface. A head crash might be caused by severe shock, dust, fingerprints, or smoke, and can cause damage to the surface of the disk and/or the head.

Head Disk Assembly (HDA)
The mechanical components of a hard drive, including the disks, heads, spindle motor and actuator.

Head Loading Zone
An area on the disk specifically reserved for the heads to use when taking off or landing when power to the drive is turned on or off. No data storage occurs in the head loading zone.

Head Stack Assembly
The electromechanical mechanism containing read/write heads and their supporting devices.

Headerless Format
The lack of a header or ID fields (track format). This enables greater format efficiency and increased user capacity.

High-end Market
The enterprise market.

High-Level Format
A high-level format must be performed (with EZ-Drive or the Format command) on your new Western Digital hard drive before you can use it. Formatting erases all the information on a hard drive and it sets up the file system needed for storing and retrieving files.

Host
The computer that other computers and peripherals connect to. See also initiator.

Host Adapter
A plug-in board that acts as the interface between a computer system bus and the disk drive.

Host Interface
The point at which the host and the drive are connected to each other.

Host Transfer Rate
Speed at which the host computer can transfer data across the SCSI interface; or, the speed at which the host computer can transfer data across the EIDE interface. Processor Input/Output (PIO) modes and Direct Memory Access (DMA) modes are defined in the ATA-4 industry specifications for the EIDE interface.

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