Hard Drive Data Recovery Facts

Have you managed to delete important data from your hard drive? There should be no reason to worry as there are many data recovery solutions on the market capable of recovering your lost data for you, the key, when using software to recover your files is to follow a process that prevents any further harm coming to your data.

There are some important rules to ensure you follow or are aware of when using data recovery utilities for recovering lost files:

When using data recovery software it is important that the software is installed on a different computer to the one that you are trying to recover. Installing further data to the same storage device that you have lost your files on may cause the lost data to be overwritten, making it irretrievable.

Secondly, has your drive been making any strange sounds recently, if the answer is yes your hard drive may be failing so a recovery company would be better suited to recover your data to be on the safe side.

Thirdly whilst in all probability your prime focus will be to get your data back as soon as possible avoid the temptation to suddenly dive right in and purchase some software straight away. Most file recovery software will offer a free trial so at the very least you can do a scan to see if the document is actually still recognisable on your hard disk or even recoverable for that matter.

Assuming your drive is exhibiting no signs of failure and having used the software you have managed to find the file (intact) and it is recoverable you’ll now need to save the data somewhere. Under no circumstances save it back to the same drive as you may end up saving the data on back to the same area that the data is being recovered from resulting in a corrupted file.

If the recovery software has already reserved a disk area to write files back to some of the data can get overwritten especially if the drive is heavily fragmented.

Of course before embarking on a DIY data recovery project ascertain the value of your data because if the data loss would be job threatening, costly to your business or simply un-replaceable then don’t take the risk.

The cost of data recovery is nowhere near (or shouldn’t be ) the cost it used to be due to advances in technology and often you will find that once you deduct the cost of any software purchase and deduct the time to learn what you are trying to do the extra cost of having your data recovered by a professional is not too bad at all.

And finally don’t forget to vet your data recovery provider if you go this route, do they have a certified clean room themselves if they need to open the drive for any reason, or would they need to outsource this aspect of the job elsewhere?

If they do not have the facilities for hard drive recovery and repair in a clean room environment or there is any sign of mechanical failure then a main data recovery company will be your best option.