You’re sitting at your favorite table in your local café, working away on your laptop, when suddenly, it starts acting weird and making strange noises. You decide to reboot, but nothing happens. You try again and again, but your laptop is completely dead. What do you do now? Is there a way to recover all those files and photos?

It sounds like a nightmare, but it can happen. I have friend whose hard drive melted while he was working on a project. The screen started looking funny, like paint running down a canvas and then it died. Fortunately, it was his work laptop, so he just took it to the IT department, where they recovered all the files and gave him a new one. But what do you do if you don’t have an IT department that can help you?

You have a few options:

USB Universal Drive Adapter & Second Computer
If it’s the mechanics of the laptop that are broken, but the hard drive is still intact, it’s super easy to recover the files. You need a USB universal drive adapter (costs around $30) and access to another computer. Just unplug your laptop (and remove the battery) and remove the hard drive (typically by loosening a few screws on the underside of the laptop – check your manual for full instructions), connect it to the drive adapter and plug the adapter’s USB connector into the other computer. Your laptop hard drive will show up on Explorer as any other external drive would and you can just copy the files over.

Laptop Data Recovery Software
If the hard drive is damaged, you can use data recovery software to recover the flies, even if you had deleted them. There are tons of these software programs to choose from, and they can recover files not only from computer hard drives, but also from digital cameras, iPods, memory cards, flash drives, SIM cards, etc.

Many companies offer free downloads that will scan your drive and tell you how much/which data may be salvageable, so you know what you can expect before investing in their software. (the software can cost anywhere from $60 and up). There are also lots of data recovery freeware programs, and some people have good luck with them.

Laptop Data Recovery Services
If you’d rather not mess around with removing a hard drive or installing software yourself, or if your drive is so badly damaged that you can’t fix it, you may want to contact a data recovery company. Just bring them (or send) your laptop and they will take a look at it and let you know what they can do. Some will even come to your house and do on-site recovery. Another option if the hardware is still working properly is remote data recovery, where the company helps you recover your files over the internet. The cost (for any of these options) can be anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousands, but most companies will inspect your system and give you an estimate before starting recovery.

Your best bet is always going to be to back up your data daily (or at least weekly) to at least one other storage device – an external hard drive or DVDs for example. I think most people who have experienced a total hard disk meltdown will be able to remember to do that.