Data Loss & Recovery

In this digital world everyone has some kind of data on their computers. Some have important business files then others have precious family pictures. Whether it’s photos or other data, it is stored on a machine like computer, phones, digital cameras, USB flash drives, external drives etc.

What if these devices stop working all of the sudden? For those who think they have lost all their data as soon as the computer stops working, I have to inform them that it is not true. If the machine has stopped working, then there may be two kinds of problems, hardware and software. A hardware problem is something like some part of that device like computer or phone has stopped working. Software fault is the failure of an application like Operating System. Whether it is a software or hardware problem, data can still be retrieved.

Depending of the severity of the problem in most cases data retrieval is guaranteed. There is only one situation when data cannot be recovered and that is when the platter of the hard drive so severely damaged by the drive head. Talking of head, I realize that I should explain what kind of hardware is involved inside a hard disk.

There are several parts inside a hard drive. A PCB (circuit board) can also be named as the motherboard of the drive, a drive head, a motor, platter etc. All the data is stored on platter in the form of 1’s and 0’s. Motor rotates the platter and head is used to read the data or machine language and is pushed to the computer processor via the motherboard of the hard drive. Any part listed above can be moved back and forth. Usually anything can be transplanted to read the platter.

If a transplant is required then it may be an expensive recovery. Many companies will charge a lot of money to recover data from such a drive. The reason is because parts are usually expensive and the cost of these parts even increases with shipping and handling when these are ordered from another country. And of course labor to perform the recovery job is another part of the price. Some types of recoveries like raid are expensive as more than two drives are involved in the recovery process. Complicated data recovery is always done in a separate dust free room. In many cases data can be retrieved onsite.

Software problems can be caused by files corruption or even hardware. Many times it will be a software problem if the machine is not starting. This means the data will still be available. This is possible because data is stored on hard drive, which is known as permanent storage. In this type of situation data recovery professionals will access these storage device using special devices. Most of the software problems these days occur due to viruses and spyware. Power failure also takes part in the data loss process. A bad hardware like motherboard or power supply can cause to fail a hard disk failure too.

This article describe in detail about data loss and recovery from computers and other devices like digital cameras and phones. Readers get an understanding of how data loss occurs and how data is recovered. It also mentions the whole process of recovery and cost of recovery. This article describes kinds of recoveries and reasons of data loss.


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