Everyone including individuals to top business organizations store their data on computers nowadays. Storage devices like hard disks, magnetic tapes; CDs, DVDs, etc are used to store hundreds of megabytes of data related to business for making critical decisions. What if this data and can it get corrupted? What if one fine day you suddenly find that important file of yours are missing? Don't worry. There are various data recovery techniques that can recover data from the worst failures of storage devices.

Data recovery is the process of making data available from seemingly unusable storage devices by applying some logical and/or physical methods.

Why do data storage devices fail or become inaccessible?

There are a variety reasons why data storage devices can fail or become inaccessible. These could lead to problems in either logical or physical access of the data.

Logical access inaccessibility could be due to a corrupted file or operating system, or a virus corrupting the boot sector or file sectors or files simply being deleted knowingly or unknowingly.

Physical problems include hard disks being corrupted by power problems (spikes in power supply), physical damage due to a fall or incorrect handling and read/write heads crashing. CDs and DVDs can get scratched. Magnetic tapes can break. In such cases, data is either inaccessible or data structure is lost.

How can we recover our lost data/information from such storage devices?

Data Recovery techniques

There are many methods and techniques that can help recover data from failed storage devices. These can be categorized as logical recovery and physical recovery.

Storage devices that are suffering from logical access problems can have their data recovered using methods like

· Consistency Checking: Involves scanning the entire surface of the storage device using a software tool. The logical structure of the device is checked and errors notified. The best known example of this type of checking is ScanDisk by Microsoft.

· Zero Knowledge Analysis: Involves scanning the entire system and trying to rebuild the complete file structure system again from scratch. This is done using knowledge acquired from any undamaged files during the scan.

Physical damages can have data recovered using

· Repairing the hardware, Replacing the faulty components of the storage device

· Imaging: A raw image of the entire system is created (after the logical analysis of the data storage device) and files are made usable using that image. DCFLdd is a popular tool used to recover data from most physical problems.

However, an important note is that always consult an expert to perform a data recovery

To get support with your data recovery contact our Data Recovery Specialists, or see our London Data Recovery support centre