Data Recovery

It's a sickening feeling
the moment you realise that some important document
or irreplaceable photos have vanished from your computer. But that is no reason to despair. The chances are that the data is still present
even if you know you deleted it. Your computer operating system just does not know how to find it any more.

The four most common reasons for data loss are:

* Deletion. You deleted the file by accident during a disk cleanup
or because you thought it was no longer required. It is not in the Recycle Bin. However
the data will still exist until the space it occupied on the disk is are-used by another file.
* Overwriting. You saved a new file over the top of the old one. However
the old data may still exist
and be recoverable.
* File system corruption. The disk suddenly appears empty
or the file and folder names contain gibberish. The files probably still exist
but the pointers to them have been lost or corrupted and the operating system cannot find them.
* Physical damage or hardware failure. You receive error messages when you try to read the disk
or it is not recognised by the computer at all. The data is still likely to be present on the disk itself
but the drive is incapable of accessing it.

In each case
there is a good chance that the data still exists. The computer operating system isn't able to see it
but data recovery software may be able to. If the problem is a hardware failure then a data recovery service may be able to get back the data using special equipment.

Prepare for data recovery

There is one cardinal rule of data recovery: for the best chance of recovering the files you must not write any new data to the disk they were stored on. The old data will only remain on the disk until the space it occupied is used by another file. If the disk is your computer's main drive
then the drive is being written to all the time. You should turn off the computer immediately
and use another computer to search for a solution to recover your data. You should put your computer's hard disk in another computer to do the data recovery
or use data recovery that runs from a CD or floppy disk
because installing the data recovery software on the drive could overwrite the very data you want to recover.

Choosing the data recovery method

Data recovery tools use different methods to try to recover data. Some tools are designed for recovering deleted files
others are better at restoring overwritten files
or recovering files from disks that are physically damaged. Some data recovery software products have been developed specifically for recovering photo images
or Microsoft Word or Excel document files. Such products may succeed where others fail because they understand what these files look like
and can recognise their data when other clues to its existence have vanished.

It can be difficult to choose the most appropriate data recovery method. Tech-Pro has created a website called Get Data Back. It has a Data Recovery Wizard that asks questions about the data you have lost and how it was lost
and then recommends the product that is most likely to be successful. It will also advise you if it would be better to use a professional data recovery service. Give the Get Data Back data recovery site (http://www.get-data-back.com) a try if you need to recover lost files.