Do It Yourself Data Recovery
It’s a horrible moment when you realise that your report, college work, digital photos or other computer files have disappeared from your computer. But the situation isn’t as bad as it seems. The chances are that your files are still there. Your computer just can’t find them.
The most common reason why files are lost is that they were deleted. Perhaps you deleted them by mistake, or ran a disk cleanup utility that did it for you. The good news is that the data still exists. Only the pointers to where the data is have been erased. If it has not been long since the files were deleted, the space they occupied on the disk will not have been reused by another file, and there is a good chance that they can be recovered.
Another reason for data loss is overwriting. You save a file using the same name as another one, destroying the original. Again, the computer may not have used the same bit of disk space to store the new file as was occupied by the old one. The original data may still exist, even though it is no longer accessible by its filename.
Sometimes the file system becomes corrupt, and the computer loses track of things. This can result in missing files, corrupted files or even a computer that won’t start up at all. In this situation many people think that everything is lost, whereas in fact, this kind of problem is very often recoverable. Even if the system can’t be restored to a state in which it will run Windows, Mac OS or whatever operating system you are using, it is generally possible to recover your data files before reformatting the disk and reinstalling the operating system.
Hard disks and other storage media can be physically damaged, resulting in read errors when you try to access certain files. This is often recoverable. Even complete hardware failure does not mean the data is lost. The magnetic encoding of the data on the surface of the disk is probably 100% intact, though in this case you will probably need a data recovery service to repair the fault and make the disk readable again.
Data Recovery
So the data may still be there. How to go about recovering it? Data recovery is a time-consuming process, and using a data recovery service is consequently expensive. There may be no alternative to using a recovery service if the data is too important to risk losing it through a careless amateur recovery attempt, or if the drive that held it is not accessible at all. But in most cases data can easily be recovered using do it yourself data recovery software.
Data recovery tools used to be quite technical in nature, but you can now get data recovery utilities that can be used by the most non-technical of computer users. Such programs use familiar user interface concepts such as a “wizard” to walk you through the recovery process. All you need to do is tell the software where the data was held, wait while it scans the drive recovering files, and then examine the results, saving the files you want to keep to another drive.
If the data recovery software you choose doesn’t find your data, it is worth trying some different software. The most effective data recovery products are generally those you have to pay for. The best tools employ advanced algorithms to detect lost files where lesser tools miss them.
It’s normal with such tools that many files are recovered that contain rubbish. An algorithm can only go so far - it takes a human or the application that reads and writes that type of file to give the final verdict on whether it contains valid data. So you must be prepared to spend some time recovering your data.
With do it yourself data recovery software, losing important files from your computer is no longer the disaster it used to be, and recovering from the disaster need not be an expensive exercise.
Julian Moss has more than 30 years experience in the computer industry. He runs DiskInternals UK which sells href="http://www.diskinternals.co.uk">DiskInternals data recovery software in the UK.
Tags: Data Recovery, help, recover lost files, support, undelete, unerase
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.