Data Recovery Secrets

Data Recovery
Hard Drive Recovery and the recovery of apparently lost files and date can often be restored with some simple
Now how’s or data recovery software. What a great world we live in. Computers are one of the best tools that have come into the hands of man since the convenience of toilet paper. Your computer offers you the ability to store all your valuable files and data in one convenient place and in most cases makes it portable. But in the event of a Hard Drive Crash or the loss of important or valued data, files, pictures, movies etc., that wonderful computer turns into an expensive paper weight taking up space on your desk or kitchen table. Sometimes we tend to convince ourselves that our lost or deleted files are gone forever and that hours or weeks of work to replace them are required. But in many cases lost files and data, even a Hard Disk Recovery can be done in moments. Lost or deleted files can be located and recovered. Often you may just find it sitting in your trash. To recover it, simply click and drag it onto your computer desktop. If you would like to replace it back into its original place or folder simply right click it and choose that. On occasion, you start up your computer and can't find that file you worked on so hard. Before you start yelling out to your spouse or children a simple search of files on your computer may bring it up. Often we quickly save our files not noticing where our computer decided to save them to. Often they are in a folder we have not thought of. To find that file click on "Start" and use your search function there. Type in part or all of the name of your file and you may just find it! In the event that you or someone has accidentally deleted your wanted file or data then all is not lost. Data recovery software will search your computer and restore it for you. Imagine a file being like a painting. It is painted over white ready for next use, but the painting, or in this case the data, is still there underneath. You just need to remove the white paint. Data recovery software does the job for you. It scans your computer for recoverable items and asks you if you want to recover any or all of them. You may be surprised what you find! Hard Drive Recovery Tools are also available. When your computer starts choking on memory, freezing, crashing to a halt or re-starting itself or you hear strange noises coming from your hard drive then a crash may well be on the way. You'll probably start seeing serious looking error messages, note these done before you click them away. In most cases free computer support is available. Click your "Start" button, then right click on "My Computer" then choose "Properties" then "Support". It should show you a phone number and times to ring for free computer support. Support will walk you through steps to rectify your problems but may end-up recommending you completely recover your computer losing all files on your "C Drive". Effectively your computer returns to the day you brought it home from the shop. The good news is that a full recovery of your computer doesn't involve your "D Drive" so placing important and large files there is good advice. It also frees up your "C Drive" which does most of your work and the all the complaining within your computer. To prevent hard drive crashes and the need for hard drive recovery we are always warned to back-up our files. Unfortunately we often don't or not as often as we should do. Hard drive recovery experts are somewhat available at a cost, but nowadays the simple use of Hard Drive Recovery Software is, luckily, at our finger tips.

How Do Data Loss Occur and How Do You Prevent It?
Data Loss Is Not a Small Thing The impact of a data loss on a business can be visualized if you consider a manufacturing operation with over a thousand employees, whose pay details are kept in the company’s computer system. Imagine what could happen if these pay details become inaccessible owing to system problems, operator errors or a malicious virus attack. Reconstructing the details is not going to be a short-term operation. Yet such reconstruction is unavoidable not only to pay the employees correctly but also to comply with regulatory requirements under employment and taxation laws. The cost of such a reconstruction is going to be a major expense item for the company, not to mention the disruption to business operations. On the other hand, if the company had taken proper actions to make recovery of the lost data possible, the time, business disruption and money costs would be insignificant compared to a complete reconstruction from scratch. How Data Gets Lost An awareness of the different ways data could get lost should be the starting step in organizing your defenses. So we look at these first. Data stored on a computer disk can be lost in several ways.

User Action
The computer user deletes a data file or computer program thinking that it is no more needed. It could later turn out that the deletion was premature.

Accidents
User deletes file or program, but not with full awareness of what he is doing. For example, a blanket deletion of a large number of files could result in deleting some important files that the user would not have consciously deleted.

The files or programs were stored on removable storage media like floppy or compact disks or USB drives that were misplaced and could not be found when needed. Errors made by network administrators and other administrative persons could lead to the loss of important files or programs that their users might not have deleted.

System or Infrastructure Problems
Power could fail before the data could be saved to permanent memory and the user might be unaware that it has not been saved.
Different kinds of hardware failure, such as contact between the read-write head and the rotating disk platter in a hard disk drive (in normal operation, there is a minute cushion of air between the two), could lead to the data on the disk becoming unreadable.
Software crashes, as when an application or the operating system suddenly gets stuck halfway through a work session, could result in the work not being saved.
Data corruption as when the file system or database gets corrupted and the data in the files or database becomes unreadable, or when unintended changes during transmission or retrieval results in erroneous data.

External Factors - A natural disaster like an earthquake, flood or tornado destroys the equipment including the data storage media.
External Interference
A worm or virus attack results in damage to data
A hacker intrudes into the system and erases/damages the data
A thief steals the physical media
Of the above, hardware failure and human errors reportedly account for 75% of the incidents. Data loss through natural disasters is rare. However, if that happens, there is no way to recover the data unless you had stored backups in a physically separate location. Let us now look at ways to minimize data loss. You can only minimize it; absolute protection even against minor losses is impracticable. We also look at the possibilities of data recovery if data does indeed get lost. Organizing Against Data Loss Backups: You copy all data and programs to a secondary media, preferably removable media that can be stored in a separate location. You can then restore the system or the data from these backup copies in case of a data loss. While in theory, backup is a foolproof safeguard; in practice things are quite complex. First comes the organizational aspect.

Taking backups after every change
Selecting the media to store the backup, having regard to the costs and recovery steps involved
Keeping track of what data is on what media and which are the latest ones
Auditing the backup procedures and media to ensure that they are indeed reliable
Numerous options are available for backup.
Media for storage could be magnetic tapes (least expensive but slow retrieval), hard disks (fast retrieval possible but was comparatively quite expensive until recent times)
Data could be backed up fully, or incrementally, or continuously, with different cost and recovery implications
The backed up data could be stored in a way that enables immediate online access or in offsite vaults or disaster recovery centers
Remote third party backup services could be utilized getting the benefit of their expertise and facilities
The above options are actually only illustrative. There are more options and sub-options available to suit different requirements. The availability of the options and their different implications make selection of a backup policy a complex exercise. In practice, backup is mostly unsatisfactory in implementation and far from adequately dependable. RAID: RAID through hardware or software implements redundant storage so that the failure of a single disk does not result in data loss. RAID implementations have different levels with different degrees of safeguards against data loss. RAID is not only a data loss safeguard; it is a means for higher speed data access. Journaling: An apparently single write operation actually involves several write operations. If some disturbance prevents one of these several operations being completed, the result would be invalid data. One remedy against such an event is maintaining a journal of all changes before actually doing the write operation. If the write is not completed successfully, the operation can be replayed using the journal and completed successfully. Antivirus: Practically every computer user would have by now become familiar with antivirus software that helps you prevent virus attacks and even recover any damage done by such attacks. Firewalls: Firewalls act as a barrier between networks of different trust levels. The Internet is a network of no trust level while an internal network has a higher trust level. A firewall could control the data flow between the networks by either allowing only previously allowed network connections or preventing specifically blocked connections. In practice, firewall implementation tends to be inefficient. User Education: Considering the fact that user errors are a major factor for data loss, proper user education could go a long way in preventing data loss. Data Recovery Expert data recovery consultants could recover much of the “lost” data not only because of their specialized training and experience but also because they have the necessary facilities, such as Class 100 Clean Rooms kept free of dust. Even minute specks of dust could make the thickly packed data on disks unreadable. These companies use techniques like repairing the file system damage so that the image on the disk could be deciphered as meaningful data, replacing damaged PCBs or read-write heads with matching, healthy ones, removing the platters from the damaged drive and installing them in a healthy drive or a combination of these measures. It would be apparent that these are procedures requiring high precision, considerable expertise and specialized facilities. Attempting to do it in-house is only likely to make the data completely irrecoverable.

Tips for Data Recovery
Anytime your hard drive crashes or you lose your data, you'll need to turn to data recovery to properly restore your information. Data recovery is something most computer users are familiar with, as a majority of us have had to turn to data recovery at some point in time. Even though hard drives are becoming better and better, they are still mechanical and will always encounter problems. The first thing to do, before any problems happen, is to always backup your data. If you create backups of your information, you'll be well prepared in the event of a disaster. This way, even if your hard drive cannot be repaired and the data is lost forever, you'll have the backup to continue going normally. If you didn't make backups, you'll find the situation very traumatic when you discover that your data cannot be recovered. Most hard drives will last for years before they start to encounter any type of malfunction or hardware problems. You can help prevent data loss by turning off your computer when it isn't in use, or shutting it down when you hear the hard drive making an odd noise. If the hard drive starts to malfunction, letting it continue to run will only do more damage. If you shut it off immediately and take it to a specialist, you'll have a much better chance of getting it repaired. With natural disasters, hackers, viruses, or other problems, you won't have the time to react. Before you know it, your hard drive will be damaged and your data will be gone. Although this can be very frustrating, data recovery can normally bring your information back. All you need to do is taking the hard drive to a local specialist, and then let them work their magic and show you the power of data recovery. There are software programs out there that claim to recover lost data, although you should avoid them at all costs. Most of the time, these software programs will do your hard drive more harm than good. Even though software may cost a lot less than professional data recovery services, the professional services will guarantee their work. If you turn to software and it only makes things worse, you're more or less out of luck, as the software doesn't guarantee anything. Anytime your hard drive fails and you seem to have lost your data, you should turn to professional data recovery services immediately. They may cost you a fair amount of money, but they do the job right the first time. When it comes to your data, you really don't want to take any chances, especially if you have important documents and files stored on your hard drive.
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