Ask the big IT giants a common question – “In this world of free-flowing data and information, what is THE most singular and important thing that matters the most?” and they will give you a faint smile and tell you that the answer lies in the question itself. If you were not able to guess, it’s DATA. Every bit of it you send over the Net matters equally and secured over their servers for “future reference”.
So imagine the power of data. If data of totally unknown people is so imperative for them, what value can you put on your own data? Priceless probably right! Depending on how sensitive the content of your data is of course.
Reasons for data loss
There are n number of reasons that can lead to your data on the verge of being lost forever because let’s face it all of it is mechanical and electronic. They also have a life, limited durability and are of course susceptible to wear and tear. The most common reasons for data loss are crashing of your hard disk, error in the partitioning, hacking etc. Other reasons include theft of your device, a malware attack, a corrupted OS etc. all of which exposes your data to vulnerability. Data which could be an important presentation for a multi-million dollar deal or years of your memories captured and stored as photographs or anything.
What is data recovery?
As the name suggests naïvely, it is the procedure of attempting to recover all or some of the data present on the hard disk. It may not look or sound like much, but it is a really volatile process. One small mistake and poof! Your data is gone forever.
As soon as you realize you have a failed hard drive, rush it as soon as you can to an expert. Because as days pass, the more complicated, difficult and risky it becomes to attempt a data recovery. This attempt at recovering data recovery is done through various sophisticated methods depending on the situation and the cause of the failed hardware. All these methods ultimately have one and one goal only – to recover all your existing files such as documents, spreadsheets, photos, codes or whatever as well as their backups if you had created any.
What not to do?
Probably the first and the only rule. Don’t try and act smart and start messing around with things that you have no idea about. Instead of solving your problem you will only increase it tenfold.
Second of all, while taking your hard drive for recovery, do not go to an un-trusted place. Either go to the service center or a proper shop which guarantee the safety of ALL your data and who can be trusted when it would come to confidentiality. Basically, a professional workspace because they will actually tell the truth to your face, whether the data is recoverable or not. If yes, how much can be recovered depending on the damage.
What to do
The first course of action is to calm yourself down and ask yourself whether going for a data recovery is actually needed or not. Maybe it is possible you may have kept a backup of it online or someplace else. If that is not the situation, again introspect whether a recovery is of utmost need or not. Because however the sophisticated technology may get, there is always that 1% chance of losing all the data instead.
Shalini Madhav