A hard disk crash data recovery is a procedure that any novice is supposed to follow to recover data loss in a hard drive. A hard disk may have crashed due to power surges, mishandling or other reasons associated with use. In determining approach, one must confirm first whether the problem is a physical crash or a logical one. A physical crash may involve one or all of the following: damage to the logic cards, read and write head crash, heat or fire exposure, power shocks or abuses, damaged spindles and platters. While a logical crash may involve accidental shutting down, virus attacks, loss of partitions and misuse.

In a physical crash, recovery may or may not succeed because the determinant is the extent of the damage. Often such hard disks are removed and plugged into other machines to read the extent of the damage so as to be able to make proper decisions.

A logical crash is fairly lighter and with the support of software tools available, it is possible to recover all the data or at least some good percentage depending on the facts of the matter on the ground. Tools like The Hard Drive Mechanic Gold Recovery Software are among the best in the market on all matters of data recovery. This tool will query and recover data from windows 98, XP, and 2000.