8 Factors May Cause Data Recovery to Fail

Nowadays, we use computers in our daily life and work. Hence, we will store data on the computers. However, these files may be lost due to various reasons. Once the data gets lost, the first thing we may think of is to recover data using software.

There are many data recovery programs on the market. When you use them to recover data on the computer, there is a certain chance that you will fail. Why does data recovery software fail? This is the topic of this post. In general, you can refer to the following reasons.

Reason 1. You Have Full Formatted the Drive

When you format a drive on Windows using File Explorer or Disk Management, the Quick Format option or the Perform a quick format option will be selected in most cases. If these options are unchecked, you are performing a full format.

Quick Format just delete files. Therefore, you can recover these deleted files. However, Full Format will erase the original data, write zeros to the whole partition, and finally erase zeroes again to avoid the possibility of data recovery. Therefore, Full Format will cause data recovery failure.

Tip: If you use commands to format a partition, “format fs=ntfs” performs a full format, while“format fs=ntfs quick” performs a quick format.

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Reason 2. You Have Erased the Data

You have used a data erasure tool to erase data on a disk. In this case, the data on the disk will be overwritten with 0 and 1 many times, causing the data recovery failure.

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Reason 3. There Are Bad Sectors on the Disk

When you write data to a disk, the unit is the sector, which is the smallest unit of a disk. A bad sector is an unreadable one. Upon taking damage, all information stored in that sector will be lost.

Bad sectors are classified into logical bad sectors and physical bad sectors. You can recover data from logical bad sectors using the chkdsk /b command, but you cannot recover data from the physical bad sectors with any data recovery software.

Reason 4. You have Password Protected the Disk

Why does data recovery software fail? Many people will ignore this factor. If you have enabled BitLocker on your disk, you cannot recover data from the password protected partition, unless you decrypt the disk first.

The reason is that the encryption has changed the codes of the data using its algorithm. If you don’t decrypt the disk, the recovered data is just a bunch of gibberish.

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Reason 5. The Data Is Overwritten

If the deleted or lost is overwritten by 0 and 1. You cannot recover them with software. The Full Format and data erasure are such a case. In addition to these cases, the data will be overwritten if you do the following things.

• Reinstall the system.
• Store data in the place where data is deleted or lost.
• Other computer operations.

Reason 6. Unsupported File System or File Formats

To recover a file from a partition successfully, the data recovery software should support the partition’s file system and the file’s file format. If not, data recovery failure will occur. If you want to recover data from a Windows PC, I recommend you use MiniTool Partition Wizard.

MiniTool Partition Wizard DemoClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

This software supports most Windows file systems including NTFS, FAT32, ReFS, exFAT, etc. It also supports the Mac file system HFS+. In addition, it also supports many common file formats.

Reason 7. The Improper Use of Data Recovery Software

If you don’t use the data recovery software properly, the data recovery failure will also occur, for example:

• You install the data recovery software on the partition where data is lost. This may cause the lost data to be overwritten.
• You save the recovered files into the partition where the data is lost. The recovered data may be lost again or lost will be overwritten.

Reason 8. Physical Damage on the Disk

If the disk is physically damaged or the interface of the disk is not working, the data recovery software will also fail to recover data.

Why does data recovery software fail? Do you know other reasons? Share them with us in the following comment zone.