Lost Data – What NOT to Do

Computers store data on a hard disk which is a marvel of precision engineering. Its platters sit in an air-tight clamshell and spin at a mind-boggling speed with the read / write suspended just a hair’s breadth above. The spinning movement of the platters is controlled by complex electronic circuitry.

Today’s hard drive is a very dependable and rugged piece of machinery, meant for years of trouble-free use for storing your data. Many disk manufacturers are so confident of their product that they now offer a five-year replacement warranty. Still, with so many moving parts that spin wildly, sooner or later something is bound to go wrong and the disk is going to crash, leaving you high and dry.

The multiple gigabytes of data – emails, address books, manuscripts, software, treasured photos – that was stored on your computer’s hard disk over the years will become instantly inaccessible and you will be left staring at a blacked-out screen. The horror of such a situation can well be imagined! Many companies have been known to have folded up after they lost all their data and customer records due to some such catastrophe.

You can lose data in many ways:

i) Attack of a malicious virus that has entered your operating system through the Internet or some digital storage media

ii) Electric outage that fries your hard disk, especially when your PC has been connected directly to the electric outlet without a UPS

iii) Mechanical failure of your hard disk

iv) Employee sabotage

v) Logical (software) failure in terms of how the operating system stores and accesses your files

vi) Physical trauma to the hard drive like dropping it on the ground

vii) Disasters like fire, earthquake, floods, storms and even a terrorist strike

viii) Accidental deletion of a file

ix) Corruption of data

x) Reformatting of hard disk drive

However, the good news is that most of the data loss due to the above conditions can be made good and all your files recovered, only if you take care of a few basic things.

Things Not to Do When You Lose Data

1. Despite a variety of quick-fix, do-it-yourself software recovery packages available off-the-shelf for under USD 50, it is best not to indulge in the recovery process yourself. If the lost data is critical that you cannot live without, always call in the experts. By tinkering with the computer yourself, you may worsen the problem, cause more damage and even professionals may not be able to recover your data later. The off-the-shelf recovery packages that you try to run on the computer may cause more damage. These actually cannot recover any data but are designed to correct any anomaly in the file system so that your computer becomes operational again.

2. If you hear an ominous clicking or crunching sound coming from your computer’s hard drive, shut it off immediately. Whatever you do, do not attempt to start it again to see if it boots up and everything becomes fine. The crunching sound is a tell-tail sign of a serious mechanical fault inside the hard drive. The read/write head may have got stuck on the platter. When you switch on the computer, the platters will start spinning and the head will scratch the entire surface. Data from a scratched magnetic surface is almost impossible to recover. What you should do is to immediately give a call to the data-recovery experts who will take the hard disk to a clean room, open it and see how the problem can be fixed.

3. Do not let “in-house experts” or friends experiment with the computer. Recovering lost files requires special skills that only a trained person can have. All the tips and tricks that a lay person may have heard about recovering data will be of no use and may further compound the problem.

4. Once you have lost a file by accidental deletion, reformatting or emptying the recycle bin, do not work on the computer even for a second, not even for browsing the Internet or sending an email. When a file is deleted, it still exists on the hard drive. The operating system only deletes the pointers to it and makes its space available to other files. When you work on the computer, the operating system may choose the same location to copy a new file. This overwriting will destroy the file that you want recovered. Overwritten files are very difficult to recover. If a file has been written over multiple times, even professionals will not be able to extract it. In fact, overwriting a file many times is the technique used by commercial file-shredders to permanently destroy it.

5. If the hard drive has been submerged in water, do not try to open it, clean it or blow-dry it. This will only damage it further. Do not attempt to power a computer up again that had been submerged even partly in water or damaged by a rainy storm. Drying a water-soaked disk will only make the contaminants inside to stick harder to its platters. Call for professional help to transport the drive safely to the recovery lab.

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