Lost Data: What Do You Do When It Happens To You

Most if not all forms of storage is susceptible to becoming damaged or corrupt. When your hard disk drives, CDs, DVDs or RAID arrays fail it is time to attempt recover your lost data. Data recovery describes the techniques implemented by IT professionals to salvage data that has been lost. Not only does it apply to drives that are physically or logically corrupt, data recovery is also used as a term to describe the process of retrieving and securing deleted information. Police departments and government agencies often uses these sorts of techniques for forensics purposes.

Usually the need for data recovery is because it has been accidentally deleted from the system. If this is the case, then normally most of the data can be recovered. But when data is lost due to physically damage or from malicious software, such as a virus, the chances of recovering your lost data goes down significantly. For simple data recovery, like for an accidentally deleted file, you can do-it-yourself by purchasing “Undelete” software. For physical damage, like what occurs when a computer is submerged in a flooded basement, it is best to contact a specialist to assist you.

If you decided to attempt to recover your data yourself on a physically damaged or corrupt drive you will need to keep a couple of things in mind. Do not allow your system to start up or run from the damaged drive. Instead, create a boot disk, boot from a USB stick drive, or use another hard drive to run the system from. Do not run the data recovery software from the drive needing repair. Again, try to run the software from some other source like a USB memory stick. Now a days, many operating systems come with a set of data recovery tools packaged with their installation programs. This can help make the job of recovering your lost data much easier. To find these tools, simply find your installation disks for your operating system and put the first disk in the computer. It should guide you from there.

Data Recovery After Formatting - Why It is Important to Perform Data Recovery After Formatting

If you have ever had the unfortunate experience of your computer crashing then you know how hard it is to replace all the information you had saved on the system. It is very important that you perform data recovery after formatting. This will give you the best chances of saving as much information as possible from your hard drive. There are a couple of steps you can use to make the process less painful for you.

Before you take the time to complete the data recovery after formatting process you need to test your system. Is it stable now so you can begin adding the lost data back into the hard drive? If not then your efforts at this point will be fruitless. A good way to test your system is to load information on it that really isn’t important data. It is important though to make sure that information isn’t corrupted. It should open and close for you very easily. If this all works well then it is safe to assume your system is operating normally again and at the right speed. It is now safe to begin data recovery processes.

As you begin the data recovery after formatting process you need to pay close attention to the progress it is making. If you get the impression there is any problem during the process take a close look at it. Any pop up messages that ask you about a particular file may be an indicator of a problem.

Once the data recovery has been completed you can randomly check the material. Open up several different files that offer important information. For example if you use the computer to manage your business accounts then check the Accounts Payable and Receivable accounts for access. You also want to make sure you can send and receive e-mail without complications.