By: Ellie Lewis
How many times have you been told if you do
not back up your computer, eventually you will be faced with an
emergency? The good news is there is a way to perform hard drive
recovery. This can save your files and most of what is on your computer
and you will have learned your lesson. A data hard drive recovery is
hard work and can be very expensive. The first thing you should do is
make sure the problem is what you think it is. There are a number of
things that can go wrong, so you want to be sure you are fixing the
appropriate thing. You can test the current problem by hooking up the
computer to an external computer. This will tell you if what you think
has crashed really are the problem. To do this you might need a USB
adapter, but these are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to a
whole new computer.
If your files do not appear once you have hooked up to another
computer, you likely have serious damage. An attempt to save the lost
materials can cost hundreds of dollars or more. The process can take a
long period of time and you might still be left with a number of missing
files. However, sometimes the process saves the files and everything
can be restored. The same computer forensics procedures used to restore
things people thought were deleted is used to restore materials that are
unintentionally deleted.
There are two ways your computer can crash. One is a mechanical
failure and the other is a logical failure. When the failure is logical,
the components of the computer are not damaged. It usually occurs
because of a corrupt file system or a formatting error that is
accidental. This leaves the computer unable to navigate its own data.
Without an overwriting procedure, you should still be able to recover
anything stored on the computer.
When the failure is mechanical, this means the computer is actually
broken. You might hear a clicking sound, which means the files might
still be there, but you have a long road ahead of you. The process could
cost you up to $2500 to fix and restore your information and materials.
Obviously, computer users should hope for a logical failure because it
is much easier to fix. However, there are solutions to both problems,
especially if you know who to contact for help.
Once everything is restored, if restoration is possible, make sure
you begin backing up your work. In the future, you will be able to
rebuild your system fairly quickly. You can wipe out the problem, fix
it, and put the materials back onto your machine. You might lose a few
things depending on how long it is between the times you back up, but
the majority of your files will be kept up to date and restoration will
be a fairly simple process. It usually only takes one crash for someone
to realize they need to start backing up their computers.
