Data Recovery Software – Are they Useful?

Have you ever heard the word data recovery? If YES, then you might be aware about the data loss situations. But if you say NO then you are one of the lucky person who have not experienced the situations of data loss, hard drive crashes which demand data recovery.

What is Data Loss?

Data Loss is a situation where you lose the data stored on your hard drive or it becomes inaccessible. This data could be the important business files, music, personal collection of pictures, emails, videos or anything. Now why this happens? This situation generally occurs when the hard drive fails or crashes, files get corrupt or damaged, there are virus attacks on your computer system, hard drive corrupts due to water-fire damages, poor usage of the hard drive, ad ware – spy ware attacks etc. Because of these reasons you might lose access to your data or it can get corrupt. But the relief is that this inaccessible data ca be recovered back. It’s possible almost in 95%of the cases. Data Recovery Software are the best means to recover the lost, deleted, inaccessible, corrupt, damaged data from the hard drive, files and folders and other storage media.

What is Data Recovery Software?

By Data Recovery Software I mean to say, software which can recover back the lost data by scanning your hard drive. Similar in the way as you see other software which have different functions and working. For instance, anti-virus software will stop, remove and protect your computer system from virus attacks, and any password recovery software will help you to restore the lost / forgotten passwords of your email id which were stored in your PC.

According to Surveys,

"Viruses: Survey finds PCs infected at a rate of more than 10% each month" -- (ICSA Labs, 2002)

"35% of all PCs sold to businesses are laptops and 1 in 5 of these laptops will suffer hardware failure in the first 3 years" -- Gartner analyst Brian Gammage, The Changing Spectrum of Mobile PC Usage, October 30, 2002

"Data Recovery is possible in 85% of all data loss cases" --Dan Pelosi, Data Recovery 911, December 2002

Thus it can be concluded that data recovery has its own importance when people loose their important data. Data recovery software is useful for file repair, file recovery, database recovery, backup recovery, email data recovery and forensic data recovery.

How to use Data Recovery Software?market is flooded with many data recovery software range. There are renowned companies and small manufacturers too which perform data recovery at small scale. But data recovery is not an easy task to perform. It requires determination, expertise, appropriate recovery tools, Class 100 Clean rooms, biometric environment and of course a data recovery technician who can perform the data recovery – thus resulting into data recovery services.

Data Recovery Software is developed to minimize the possibilities of data recovery services thus enabling the end user to himself perform data recovery on his PC. The do-it yourself data recovery software available in the market completely scan your damaged hard drive and retrieves the lost data. When you finalize the data recovery software, always look for the software support provided by the data recovery company on their website:

• You can view the Animated Working Demos – how the software works, provided by the company. These working demos are the best option to know and view the GUI and functions of the software.

• You can also look for any software user’s guide made available by the company on their website. The manual has the step by step procedure to perform data recovery. Follow these steps and evaluate the software.

• When you download the software, view help manual accompanied with the software. It guides you with step by step recovery procedure.

Generally, demo version of the data recovery software are available for FREE downloads. It’s free because the companies want you to test the recovery possibilities of your data and then only purchase the software. The demo versions are not enabled with saving feature for the recovered data. You can download the demo version and run it on your computer system.

Word of Caution: The point which should be noted here is that you should not run the data recovery software on the corrupt drive. As this might overwrite the original data which then gets deleted. Always perform data recovery on the copy of corrupt data and a good device.

Install demo version of the data recovery software and analyze its working, features and the amount of data which the software can recover. If the software displays the lost, deleted data then the software surely can get back your data to you and you can also purchase it. When you run the demo version always ensure;

• How much time does the software take to recover data?
• Is the software able to recover the deleted files also?
• Can it recover attachments?
• Can it recover data damaged due to virus attacks?
• Is the software provider data recovery company recognized in the market?
• What is the recovery percentage of the software?
• Is the software purchase amount refunded, if the software is unable to recover data?
• View the clients of the company, if possible contact them and gather feedback about the company.
• Read client testimonials of the company
• Consult with the support staff of the company and ask queries related to your data loss situation? Like, according to them which would be the appropriate data recovery software for your case of data corruption? As this would help in purchasing the right software.
• Compare 2-3 data recovery companies with their recovery percentage, client satisfaction percentage, data recovery techniques, range of data recovery software provided by the company.

After performing all these checks you can purchase the software and recover your data.

Please Note: While you are performing check on data recovery companies, always try to find out real data recovery figures of the company, as many companies add false figures to their websites and in the end are able to empty your pockets.

Conclusion:

It can be concluded that data recovery software are boon for such individuals and companies who lose their data due to accidental deletions, virus attacks, unexpected system shutdowns, hard drive failures, system crashes and other undefined reasons. The data recovery software is definitely useful in the hour of need and data recovery services prove themselves when the software is unable to get back data. You can also give a try to data recovery services when there is a severe damage caused to your device.

Virus Attacks: Can You Save Your Data?

With the high tech professionals increasing day by day, chances of virus attacks have also increased. Viruses come unannounced and uninvited, stay there as an unwanted guest and cause harm to your precious data and files. Sometimes in the cases of severe virus attacks, complete data from the hard disk gets erased, hard drives get overwritten and even the physical drive media gets corrupt.

25% of the data loss is caused by virus attacks excluding the human errors and software malfunctions. Fortunately we have some preventive measures through which data loss situations caused by virus attacks can be avoided:

Good Anti-virus Software: As your first defense, you should always install good anti-virus software to safeguard data. At the time of installation, always ensure that the program provides automatic updates, so that whenever there is a virus attack, automatic updates can counteract them. Make sure that the installed anti-virus program scans all the incoming and outgoing emails as this is the easiest passage for viruses to enter your computer system.

Never Open Doubtful Attachments: Email attachments which seem doubtful to you should be deleted immediately as these may be the viruses which get activated by mere clicking on the attachment. Be careful with the suspicious file extension types as these files are nothing but virus files.

Regularly Install System Updates: All the viruses are targeted towards the popular windows operating system. As the system vulnerabilities are announced, the virus writers start creating virus to takeover the weaknesses and attack those system owners who are not upgraded with the available updates.

Always Perform Backups: And the most important way to protect your data is regular backup process. Always create backups of your important data on an external media. Backups created on regular basis help in situations when an anti-virus program may fail to protect your important data.

Conclusion:

In the end when everything fails, the performed backup of your data will prove beneficial to recover the damaged, corrupt data from virus attacks and other corruption mediums. The data recovery software also proves beneficial in the case of virus attacks.