How to Recover Data
You may have heard about data recovery in passing and you might even understand that IT professionals and services know how to recover data from damaged hard drives but until data loss happens to you, you probably haven't given it much thought.
But now, here you are and the damage is done. You want to learn how to recover data so that you can get your own lost files back. Recovering data isn't just for the IT team or specialized services anymore. Today, dozens of data recovery software utilities are on the market capable of recovering data from your hard drive – even if you re-formatted it.
Before you learn how to recover data, it's important that you stop using the damaged drive. This is because the window for recovering data gets smaller and smaller the more you use your computer. With each new process, program, or file that accesses your hard drive, the greater your risk for permanent data loss.
Recovery is possible when data is deleted and emptied from the Recycle Bin, reformatted, or otherwise missing so long as the underlying data hasn't been overwritten by new data. When you erase a file, you aren't actually removing it from the hard drive. You are simply giving Windows the okay to overwrite the file when it needs the hard drive space. If you can get to the deleted file before it gets overwritten, you can recover the data.
Depending on your needs, you can find out how to recover data for specific scenarios such as recovering a damaged Access database or corrupt Excel spreadsheet. In addition, if you have a current backup, the easiest way to get your data back is to restore it from the backup.
Restoring data is quite different from restoring damaged system or program files because your data is as unique as you are. Restoring a MS Office program file is easy; simply use the included Detect and Repair utility and you'll be back up and running. Restoring a MS Word document such as your latest sales report is a file you created and unless you have a copy of it somewhere, you might be out of luck.
For general data recovery, such as when a file, folder, or an entire partition is missing or deleted, you'll need a special utility program to go in and find the data. Data recovery utilities come in a variety of forms from specialized utilities designed for retrieving certain types of files such as MP3 files or photos to entire suites of data recovery tools that IT professionals use to recover data from enterprise systems and RAID drives.
Once you've found a suitable data recovery utility, you will need to learn how to recover data using that particular utility. Most of the products marketed to the general public feature easy-to-use interfaces much like Windows Explorer. If you can browse your PC with Windows Explorer, you'll be able to use these utilities.
When you've lost data, take a deep breath, stop using your computer, and get your hands on a reliable data recovery program.
