Lost Your Data?

These digital products are great enabling tools. Computers are becoming increasingly powerful as scientists manage to squeeze more and more transistors onto a silicon chip. Benefiting from fast processors, software too becomes more complex and elaborate, thus empowering users to do a lot more work. More powerful software generates a need for even more powerful processors. It is a virtuous circle.

Digital cameras have totally changed the way we used to think about photography. They enable one to take and delete pictures at will till a perfect shot is captured – all without using a film. The photos can be transmitted over wires in an instant to someone sitting thousands of miles away and can be processed on a computer to get the colour tones right. Laptops are getting smaller and smaller and you can carry their phenomenal processing power wherever you go. Really, it is amazing what digital technology can do to make things better.

All digital devices process data and need a place where it can be stored. A variety of digital data storage media exist to suit different equipment. Computers have hard disks as non-removable storage and CDs, DVDs, tape drives and pen drives as removable storage. Digital cameras mainly use memory cards.

Digital devices have great advantages over the traditional way of doing things. However, there is one major drawback – the data they generate is volatile. If care is not taken, it is easy to lose all of it, which obviously can be a catastrophe for anyone.

The most common data-loss scenario computer users have to face is hard-disk crash. The hard disk is a fine example of engineering. It has platters arranged one over another that rotate at a great speed. The data is stored on their magnetic surface. Many things can go wrong with the disk. The read / write head may crash on the platter surface, the spindle motor may stop working and the controller card may get fried in an electric surge.

Otherwise too, a hard disk has a life of about four to five years after which it can collapse anytime due to normal wear and tear. CDs and DVDs can get spoilt if they are roughly handled, there are scratches on the surface or they are left near a heat source.

So don’t be surprised if one fine morning you try to boot up the computer and it just won’t recognise the hard disk. Or you find all pictures missing from the memory card of your digital camera. Many times, data loss can be user-inflicted due to accidental deletion of data files.

If such a thing happens to you, do not panic. Keep in mind that there is a vast data recovery industry in existence out there that caters to exactly such a scenario. Some like Fields Data Recovery have a recovery rate of as much as 95 percent!

Self-Help Recovery Software

If you lost data due to a software error, the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) software available at many websites is a good option. These packages are built by data recovery companies and are quite cheap. After paying online, you have to download the software on your hard disk.

Once installed, you can follow the commands to recover files that you cannot find on the computer or those that got accidentally deleted. These can recover files even after you have emptied the Recycle Bin! They also work with CDs and DVDs to extract lost data.

The off-the-shelf recovery software have one drawback, however. They have to be downloaded on the hard disk to run. By chance, if the files get stored in the same place where the missing data file is, things will become worse as overwriting is a sure way to permanently destroy data. You have to be very careful.

Recognising this problem, some DIY software now have the facility of being run straight from the installation CD. Still, if the data that you want to recover is important enough to make or break your future, then do not attempt to do any data recovery yourself. Call the professionals.

Professional Recovery Companies

The professional data recovery companies specialise in extracting data from a variety of devices like hard drives, tape drives, memory cards, CDs and DVDs. Most of these volunteer to analyse your storage device for free and give an assessment regarding how much data can be recovered, how much it will cost and how much time it will take. After this, they charge money only if they are able to recover the data that you need according to their “no data, no charge” policy.

There is a fierce competition in the data recovery industry which ensures high standards of work and customer service from most companies. Go for outfits which are reputed and have the entire infrastructure under one roof, including the clean room.

Do a search on the Internet and ask around for companies that have the most experienced and qualified technical staff as well as specialised software and hardware to tackle challenges of data recovery.

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