How To Use File Recovery Software Safely
Don’t Panic! You’ve been busy working on that deadline project for weeks and you suddenly find that you have accidently deleted a major document that is essential and full of days or weeks of research results, what do you do? Some people will try data recovery software to start with but this can harm your data surprisingly enough.
There are some important rules to ensure you follow or are aware of when using data recovery utilities for recovering lost files:
Firstly and a big mistake many people make is not to install the software on the same computer you have been using, why? If you have deleted the file when you install any further software or save anything back to the disk, as the operating system will use what it considers free space to load the program you could end up overwriting the document or part of the document you are trying to recover.
Secondly, have you mysteriously lost any file before? If yes your drive may be degraded so a proper data recovery would be a more suitable option.
Next, try to use trial software, all good data recovery applications offer a free trial version that allows you to determine if your files are recoverable before you make a purchase. You may not be able to see the content of the files but the presence of the file name should indicate whether it is recoverable or not.
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.
Often data recovery software will allocate the space on the hard drive before recovering the file, once the space has been allocated the data may already be partially over-written.
If your data is simply too valuable to trust in the hands of software, particularly if you are not familiar with the data recovery software and the manner in which it works, it is sensible to contact a data recovery professional.
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 repair in a clean room environment or there is any sign of mechanical failure then a main data recovery services company will be your best option.
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That is cool software that does it all for frequent online banking users… I was always wondering how this kind of automatic backup and system checking tools out there..
Educational institutions must make it a point to have the local back-up of files and folders, removable disks for near-line archiving to ensure that important data are secured and safe.