How To

The following arcticle was written by Jason Perry

Regardless of which hard drive brand you own, it is just a matter of time before you will need data recovery. Whether it is due to mechanical failure or otherwise, hard drive data recovery for laptops, single hard drive servers, and RAID servers are required for a variety of reasons;


Data corruption due to a virus
Hard drive repair due to natural disasters (fire, flooding, lightning)
Data restoration for crushed or physically damaged hard drives
Hard drive failure due to corrupted operating system upgrades
Data loss due to formatting a hard drive
Multiple hard drive failures in a RAID array
At least there's a little bit of good news: It is very likely that your data is not deleted and lost forever, especially if you take a few steps to protect your critical data ahead of time.

If you'd like to reduce your chances of requiring data recovery, consider giving some of these free or low-cost tips a try.

1. Back-up your critical files. With the ability to store data on CDs on a weekly or monthly basis, a small investment in a stack of CDs will save you from loosing your critical documents, files, priceless images and MP3s.

2. Run some sort of Anti-Virus Program. Viruses get into your computer a variety of ways; by reading an infected attachment in your e-mail, by sharing files (which are already infected), and by visiting websites that take advantage of security flaws to compromise and destroy your data.

3. Use power surge protectors. A power surge, either from the power company or a lightning storm, is one of the most common occurrences that can damage your data and potentially cause a hard drive failure.

4. Experience required. Never attempt any operation, like hard drive installations or hard drive repairs, which you don't have experience with. If you don't know how to install a second hard drive or rebuild a RAID, it would be best to get expert assistance before you accidently cause yourself data loss.

5. Shut down your computer. Always quit your programs before shutting down your computer. When you quit a program, it saves vital data and then exits the program. If you just turn off your computer without properly exiting your applications and closing your files, you run the risk of loosing your data.

6. Never shake or remove the covers on hard drives or tapes. Please don't disassemble your hard drive. In nearly all examples of this, data is usually not recoverable once an inexperienced person attempts to 'investigate' where that 'strange clicking noise' is coming from. Leave the diagnostics to a data recovery specialist who has experience with all types of hard drives and knows how to perform a successful data recovery.

7. Store your backup data offsite. While it is always a good idea to backup your critical data, if your data is stored at the same location as your server and there is a natural disaster, a fire or flood for example, odds are that you will still require data recovery on the hard drives, or tape restoration to get your data restored.

8. Beware of diagnostic programs. While it is a good idea to check the health of your computer running diagnostics software, be careful with allowing such programs to repair data files it may find. Check Disk can be your friend, but also may make it more difficult to recover data from a hard drive which has had such diagnostic programs run on it.

9. Be aware of your surroundings. Keep your computers and servers in safe and secure locations from accidentally getting knocked over, dropped, or spilled on. Laptops, while convenient to use, are often dropped and require hard drive data recovery. Just because it is a nice day and you are casually working by the pool with your laptop, don't assume that the guy jumping into the pool realizes his tidal splash will not only soak you...but ruin your laptop and require hard drive recovery for your critical data.

10. Backup your critical files. Worth mentioning again. Using CDs or even an external USB hard drive for data storage can potentially save you from having to hire a data recovery service to perform hard drive data recovery on your hard drive or RAID server.