Errors, Failures and Data Recovery

More than 20 years have been passed in personal computing. But still some issues have not been resolved completely. One of them is data backup and recovery. There are many ways one can lose his or her critical files and data either accidentally deletion of file or media corruption. This can happen with a single user as well as with an organization. In any case, important data files always remain important.

In most of the cases, we usually store our data on hard disk drives. There are some common errors by which data can be lost. Some of them are:

• User Errors • Software error • Hard drive electronic failures • Hard drive arm failures • Hard drive platter failures

What ever the failure case is, a question arises how we can prevent our data files from failure? There are two solutions of this problem.

1. Prevent data before data corruption/loss 2. Recover data after data corruption/loss

Prevention before data loss

The above specified user errors and software errors fall in this category. In this scenario, we can save our critical files on more than one media. In other words, we must take backups of data on regular basis.
Tip! Facilities – When considering a data recovery company, always consider whether they have the right equipment and facilities to deal with your data recovery needs.

The other solution of this is to use third party data prevention tool. These tools keep record of every deleted file by the operating system and can recover it if it is not overwritten by any newly created file. One example of this is UnErase in Norton Utilities software package. There are others too available which provide this type of solutions.

Recover data after loss

No doubt, taking backups on regular basis and using third party tools to prevent accidentally deletion of file is a good practice. But what if, you have used all these techniques and you face media failure? In other words, the media on which data is being stored has been corrupted. This can be due to hard drive arm failure, hard drive platter failure or electronic failures. By happening this type of failure, your hard drive can make noises or even not detectable by the computer system.

So how we can recover and use our hard drive? If the case is only data file loss and hard drive condition is fine, we can try recovery softwares. These softwares actually read the file system table and then try to recover files. When a file is deleted, the operating system marks the file name with a character that informs the computer that it has been deleted. The deleted data is actually remains on the drive until the file system overwrites it, but the operating system can no longer access it. The process of hard disk recovery finds the data that the operating system is unaware of, but still exists in individual clusters on the hard drive. So we can say, a file can never be lost but can be overwritten. We can try to recover these files by any recovery software. But the risk remains as the softwares can make mishaps.
Tip! Invest in Maintenance – While using precious hours backing up and maintaining your RAID can prove to be taxing, and by all means unnecessary, you only have to look at a professional data recovery bill to realize that it was all worth it.

On the other hand, if the case is media failure then what? As there are organizations which provide better storage solutions, there are also those who provide better recovery services. The purpose of this is to provide the recovery solution on large scale basis as well as individual users. In critical situation, they take responsibility of your data. This is some how an expensive solution but usually 80-90 % of the lost data can be recovered on emergency and regular basis. However for free data recovery evaluation service visit Optimum Data Recovery Labs.

In above discussion, I have provided the example of hard disk. But remember, whatever the storage media is e.g. tape drives, RAID, Flash, Floppy etc., all these things can happen with them too. So make sure you have proper recovery solutions and backup plan for your organization's data.

-------------------------------------------------------------- About Author Shahbaz Ahmad is working in software industry since 2002. His programming experience includes C++,C#, Java and .NET. His current area of interests is .NET, C#, ASP.NET and SEO. He is working as software engineer. He has also worked on ATMEL micro controller programming, GPS (Geographical Positioning System) and VLSI design & Analysis. He holds Bachelor and Master Degree in Computer Sciences.