Data Recovery

Help! My hard drive has crashed, what can I do?

Slow down and take a deep breath, there is a good chance you can get your data back. Thousands of people have already experienced the frustration that you are feeling now. The good news is there is hope out there, if your hard drive has become corrupted because of a virus, file structure corruption or even bad sectors, your problem may simply be solved by getting some software that has the ability to read your corrupted disk.

Whether it be your hard drive, a CD or one of the other multitude of data stores out there. There are loads of data recovery software packages out there in a wide variety of prices, which one is right for you depends on what you need. The good thing is is that most data recovery software is available in some sort of trial version which allows you to see if you will be able to get your files first before you buy the product.

Take a look at the section on Data Recovery Software

 

My drive is fine, I just deleted a file permanently by mistake!

Again, there is a good chance that you will be able to get your file back, but before reading any further I strongly suggest that you close any unnecessary  programs that are open and stop any services that aren’t vital.

OK, now for an explanation, your file is probably still on your hard drive its just that your operating system has removed the location of the file from its memory so to speak. So the space that the file is using becomes available for other files, if nothing has been saved in that space yet, you should be able to get your file back, bad news is you’ll need to get software to get it back. Download and try the undelete software first before you buy it, to see if the software will be able  to get your file back.

The articles on Undelete could prove useful…

 

My hard drive is definitely physically damaged, I’m going to need an expert.

Now’s the time to evaluate how much the data on your disk is worth. Data recovery services are very expensive, but for a reason. A huge amount of expertise is needed and very specialised equipment is used to retrieve your data. These guys can perform miracles, sometimes succeeding in getting data off drives that have been smashed or even burnt by fire!

Phone a couple of companies first and ask them about their success rate and how their pricing works. Be cautious if their success rate is very high and make sure you understand their pricing properly. Please remember that these services can take quite a long time.

You will need to locate a service provider listed under Data Recovery Services

 

My data is fine, but I’d like to find more information on data recovery.

We’ve got a stack of articles that cover everything you need to know about data recovery. Read about techniques, software and how to prevent it from happening to you.

Refer to the articles located in Data Recovery

 

 

Articles From Other Sites

How business store and manage their data can have critical effect on data quality and consistency as well as performance and development times. This paper examines how data works and explores techniques exploited from understanding how data works Updated: [more]

A wallchart outlining the process required to develop continuous data quality within an organisation is available for download Updated: [more]

An organisation that is embarking on a data warehousing project is undertaking a long-term development and maintenance programme of a computer system. This system will be critical to the organisation and cost a significant amount of money, therefore control of the system is vital. Governance defines the model the organisation will use to ensure optimal use and re-use of the data warehouse and enforcement of corporate policies (e.g. business design, technical design, and application security) and ultimately derive value for money. Updated: [more]

All projects need documentation and many companies provide templates as part of a methodology. This document describes the templates, tools and source documents used by Data Management & Warehousing. It serves two purposes: * For projects using other methodologies or creating their own set of documents to use as a checklist. This allows the project to ensure that the documentation covers the essential areas for describing the data warehouse. * To demonstrate our approach to our clients by describing the templates and deliverables that are produced. Updated: [more]

This paper looks at a somewhat awkward data transformation, and at solutions written in SQL and in a procedural language. It describes some techniques which can be used to develop the solution in both languages. It also compares the solutions in terms of ease of development, performance and cost of maintenance. Updated: [more]

We hope that you benefit from the information on this site, and that it has helped you with your data recovery.