Hard Drive Recovery: Your Choices
By: Ken Roberts | Posted: 30th June 2008
Hard drive recovery is likely to become a reality for any regular computer user. It is one of those things that happens no matter how well you guard against it. You might be dealing with it at this moment. Let's get right to the point of recovery.
Using hard drive recovery tools
Hard drive recovery software is usually the first place people turn to solve their hardware recovery issues. You can usually find low-end products for common data problems like deleted files.Then there are the complex hard drive recovery tools for more difficult situations like RAID data recovery. Nine times out of ten your problem falls somewhere in the range of these two extremes.
If your problem is resolving a deleted file problem, free hard drive recovery could help. But there are usually only a handful of situations attached to this sort of drive recovery software to get a successful recovery. But don't take my word for it - try it yourself and you will know what I mean.
Low-cost hard drive recovery products can be used to resolve a deleted file problem. And it can handle some other problems too as long as the file system is still intact. If you are dealing with any situation where the components have been altered, you will need a more complete data recovery software.
It is not easy to tell one level of hard drive recovery software from another ' especially if you are unclear what to search for in the first place. This confusion stems from the fact that so many low-end recovery products claim to produce the same results as the more powerful products: recovering deleted, lost, corrupt and damaged files. They fail to mention that they are unable to recover data if the file system has been altered.
The real question is...
So which hard drive utility do you need? Unless you can decipher all the confusing technical terminology - i.e. file system corruption, damaged data, boot and partition table repair, and so forth - then you really won't know. The bottom line is, if data recovery is important to you, skip the child's play and head directly to the surest data recovery software.
How do I know what that means?
Reliable hard drive recovery applications can recover files from any situation short of a crashed hard drive. Yes, there are priced higher than the undelete tools, but you do want your data back, right? Expect to give up at least $75 to $120 for any recovery beyond undelete.
For the technicians
The hard drive utilities that are reliable will offer a variety data recovery operations. For instance, deleted partitions can be recovered using the partition recovery function. When the results aren't what you want change functions. Perhaps, you can change the process and recover your files with the file recovery function. Say that doesn't do anything. If you understand how the file system works, you can use a manual editor to rebuild the file system.
Giving your drive to a local computer shop
Sometimes help is needed. If you are unable to solve your data recovery problems, or if you just don't want to deal with recovery by yourself, you have two solutions: using the local computer shop or the recovery expert.
You may find a local computer technician to be a good option because of their availability and the price of their repair service; their prices may be a lot cheaper than if you use a hard drive recovery expert. Unless the technician you are considering is able to use a sector imaging utility which produces a backup of your primary hard drive to a different one - think strongly about walking away!
The reason for this is with hard drive recovery you will only get one chance to recover your data. That is why experts advise that you get the second sector-copy of your of your hard drive. That way the recovery can be tried on the second sector-copy as many times as is needed with no damage to your original drive.
Expert recovery services
Hard drive recovery specialists handle nothing but data recovery and data forensic cases. They are skilled experts at safely recovering data in just about any situation. In fact, they may not even be located in your city or state. There are not very many companies in existence, so when you locate one you may need to deliver your drive to them. This is not unusual because of the major investment is cost for clean room and data recovery technologies, and the experts it takes to utilize them.
Whatever you decide
Always take the safest road to recovery when it comes to data recovery to avoid losing your files for good. Avoid disassembling the drive - this can and will destroy data instantly without the right clean room environment. Why not give a recovery utility a go. If a data recovery service becomes your only option, get confirmation that a bit image is being done first; then hard drive recovery software can be used.
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While Ken Roberts spends most of his time creating hard drive recovery tools and methodologies, he also like writing and interacting with people about data recovery. More of Ken's writings can be read at www.atl-datarecovery.com. If you are interested in speaking with him call 1.800.444.3225
About the Author
You can find more written, audio and video information discussing the data recovery industry at http://www.atl-datarecovery.com . Ken Roberts has been developing data recovery software and performing data recovery services worldwide for over 15 years.
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Tags: bottom line, handful, computer user, nine times, corruption, extremes, difficult situations, data recovery software, partition table, raid data recovery, hard drive recovery, drive recovery software, hard drive recovery software