Folks act like a dead drive is the end of the line. It is not. Since the very beginning of the age of personal computers I’ve had 4 drives shoot craps on me and I was able to retrieve the data from every one of them. The easiest ones to deal with typically suffer from a software corruption but hardware failures are a little more involved because it means taking it apart and repairing it especially if the data is important. I have never lost any data but if one is not tech savvy then a repair shop is your best shot. Even the Geeks at Best Buy know how to repair and retrieve your hard drive. This is why investors feel secure putting their crypto-keys on hard drives and this is why a single format of the drive won’t get rid of your secrets. If it’s important enough to hide and get rid of then use a military grade disk wiper available online.
Folks act like a dead drive is the end of the line. It is not. Since the very beginning of the age of personal computers I’ve had 4 drives shoot craps on me and I was able to retrieve the data from every one of them. The easiest ones to deal with typically suffer from a software corruption but hardware failures are a little more involved because it means taking it apart and repairing it especially if the data is important. I have never lost any data but if one is not tech savvy then a repair shop is your best shot. Even the Geeks at Best Buy know how to repair and retrieve your hard drive. This is why investors feel secure putting their crypto-keys on hard drives and this is why a single format of the drive won’t get rid of your secrets. If it’s important enough to hide and get rid of then use a military grade disk wiper available online.