How to Recover Lost Data

In this article you will learn how to recover lost data from the physically damaged hard drives, data recovery tips, and basic recovery methods. In the world of computers, disk problems are a serious issue. A failing hard disk can mean loss of data and/or failure of an entire system. Hard drive data recovery is the process of recovering lost data from a hard drive when the data cannot be readily accessed through normal retrieval methods. Whether your hard drive has locked up or has completely crashed there is a good chance the data can be recovered by using a variety of hard drive data recovering techniques. There are different causes of the data loss such as Electro-mechanical failure, natural disaster, viruses, sabotage, human error and data corruption. Generally speaking hard drives last 3 to 5 years. If yours is beyond this then there's not much harm in replacing it anyways. They're cheap nowadays and you'll probably end up with a bigger, faster one just because even the cheapest ones are bigger and faster. The other side of it is that their consistency is far from perfect and they are often burdened with mechanical defects and failures. The hard drive is a magnetic disc which spins and has an extended arm that collected data from any area of the hard drive. If the arm fails to function or the motor overheats or stops spinning, then there is a chance your hard drive will crash rendering data seemingly inaccessible from all hard drive areas. Most hard drive data recovery firms utilize the latest tools like magnetometers to retrieve the lost bits from the magnetic media. The recovered raw bits from the damaged hard drive are used to construct a new disk image, and the logical damage can be repaired.

As you probably know, many different things can cause hard disk failure. When you’re troubleshooting such a problem, it’s usually best to start with the simple and work toward the more complex techniques—unless you happen to know exactly what the problem is.

Here are some of the good tips on how to recover lost data.

1. Recovery through software: First try to find some good software that can recover your lost data from your friends. They may have some good data recovery software.
2. Hardware Crash: If you have detected that your hard drive is crashed then tries the normal shutting down procedures. Just pull out the plug and do not wait. Never try to save or recover the data at this time as you may lose the other saved data as well.
3. Identify the trouble in the hard disk: If you are not sure of the problem listen to your hard disk for any unusual sounds. If this is the case then you will need data recover service.
4. Verify the health of the drive: If you have determined that the drive is healthy, then you may still be able to recover the data by yourself, try using the software that can recover the data.
5. Use the drive as Slave disks: Try to connect the drive as a slave to another computer. In this way, you might be able to recover all the data. I have practically used this technique and I was successful in recovering the data.
6. Locate the corruption: You should locate the corrupted partition and this can easily be done by booting the system from the any bootable disc or using the Fdisk command.
7. Shop over the internet: Do an online research in Google for the data recovery software and see what software is ranked best and suits you. Usually the data recovery software is not free so you will have to buy it and it will surely recover your lost data if the problem is not severely mechanical.
8. RAID Drive Crash: Replace the RAID data drive that fails and never ever use it again.
9. RAID Drives: Label the multiple drives in the RAID array.
10. Database files: In case of Microsoft Exchange or SQL failure, never try the direct recovery operations on the corrupted database file instead make a copy of the database files and then start recovery on these files.
11. Utilities: Do not try to run the system utilities such as Defragmenters and volume repair utilities.
12. Other utilities: Also avoid using Volume Repair utilities if there has been power outage or if the files system is corrupted.
13. Boot drive malfunction: If the corrupted drives also have the Operating systems then things are tricky and you can boot the system from the recovery software and in this way you can find you corrupted data and you can recover it to some safe place.
14. Avoid physical cleaning of drives: Never attempt to shake or clean the data drive at your own this can do harm to your hard drive physically.
15. Do not remove drive covers: Never try to remove the hard drive covers because they have to be used by the specialists for getting the configurations and features of the hard drive.
16. Dropping the hard disks: The hard disks should not be drop like balls.
17. Exposure to water: Never try to expose the hard drive to water because there is not dryer to dry the hard disks.
18. Analyse the workplace: Pay full attention to the places where you have placed your computer because humid environment, warm places and shaky desk can do harm and can become the cause of the hard drive failure.
19. Firewalls: Make sure that you are well protected from the viruses, adware, malware, Trojan horses. An up to date anti virus and anti spyware should be installed on your computer and you should guard your PC with by putting it behind a firewall.
20. Physically damaged drives: If the drives have been corrupted physically they must be sent to a good laboratory where experts can recover the data.