Hard Drives and the Ever Present Threat of Danger Data Loss

Once you have lost data due to any cause, there are many things you can do to get your data back. However, what is even more important is that you should know what not to do.

What Not to Do

Losing data from a hard drive is a very traumatic event for any computer user. When this occurs, the first priority for anyone is to get the files back as soon as possible. This is because digital data (artistic work, spreadsheets, presentations, book manuscripts, financial details, etc.) is a valuable resource whose sudden loss can have severe and negative consequences for any individual or company in terms of missed deadlines, cancelled contracts, financial losses and other problems.

Once you have lost data from your hard drive, you should be very careful as you can easily make matters worse and the data even harder to recover by committing many mistakes. In case of hardware or even software errors, your lost data is very much residing on the disk platters. It has not evaporated into thin air and is fully recoverable. The operating system is unable to see the data, but it is there somewhere on the hard disk.

The moment you lose data, you should immediately stop working on the computer. Do not even type letters or browse the Internet. Simply stop working and leave the machine alone. At no cost should you try to save anything on the hard disk. Overwriting is the surest way of destroying data permanently. In fact, many commercially available data-erasure programs use the technique of overwriting the data six or seven times with garbage. When you save some file on the hard disk, there is always the danger that it may get saved at exactly the same location where your lost data was residing.

This will complicate matters with no end and may lead to permanent loss of data by making its recovery impossible. Even when you browse the Internet, many temporary files keep getting downloaded onto your hard disk without your knowledge, which again increases the danger of overwriting. Whenever you work upon a file and save it to the disk, you increase the probability of your lost data being overwritten. Also, never download anything from the Internet onto your computer, not even a data recovery software.

What to Do

If your data is lost due to some software errors, your best bet to get it back quickly and cheaply is by using a Do It Yourself (DIY) data recovery software. There are many companies on the Internet offering such software through their websites. You have to pay online through credit card and download the recovery software onto your computer. You can then proceed to find and extract your missing data by following the simple instructions given in the software. However, there is a catch.

If you download the software onto your hard disk, you may risk overwriting of your lost data. Therefore, what you should do is download the recovery software to another computer, burn a CD and run it on your hard disk where the missing file exists. Another option is to connect your computer through a network to another computer and run the recovery software from the other machine to hunt the missing file on your disk. DIY recovery software can recover most cases of data loss due to software errors, even from such severe ones such as accidental reformatting of the data-recording surface.

However, DIY software would be of no help for data loss due to hardware errors. If you hear a scratching sound coming from your hard disk and are unable to access any data, that means that the read / write head has crashed. There is nothing much that you can do in these cases. The only option for you is to choose a professional data recovery, unscrew the hard disk from the CPU and post it to its address. Once the recovery company engineers receive it, they will disassemble the disk in a clean room, diagnose the problem, carry out repairs, extract your data and hand it back to you.

A clean room is essential for carrying out hard disk repairs because these devices are sensitive to even microscopic particles of dust. These can get wedged between the platters and head and cause a crash. You should make it a point to send your disk to reputed recovery companies known for their experience and expertise, and not merely to someone who promises to charge the lowest.

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