Data Recovery Steps to Protect Vital Assets
Have you accidentally wiped all your photos from your digital camera or has your hard drive failed and your Data become corrupt? Don’t worry – using the latest technology, it can be restored!
Restoring lost data after disaster strikes requires planning and patience. Disaster can strike anywhere and on any day. Physical IT assets can be fully restored and your data recovered, but it takes a bit of money and time.
Data recovery is the process of restoring data that has been lost, accidentally deleted, corrupted or made inaccessible. It typically refers to the restoration of data to a desktop, laptop, server or external storage system from a backup.
What are the Main Causes of Data Loss?
The biggest part of data loss is caused by human error, rather than malicious attacks. It isn’t so popular to say, but human errors are accounted for almost 70% of these incidents. It can be caused by sending the data to the wrong person – but also can be caused by power outages, natural disasters, installing of malicious software, equipment failures or malfunctions, accidental deletion of data, unintentionally formatting a hard drive, damaged hard drive read/write heads, software crashes, firmware corruption, continued use of a computer after signs of failure, physical damage to hard drives, and spilling coffee (or anything liquid) on a computer.
Data Recovery and How It Works
The data recovery process is mostly depending on the circumstances of the data loss. Some backup software platforms allow users to restore lost files themselves. But, restoration of a corrupted database from a tape backup is a more complicated process that requires IT intervention. The good news is that you can also retrieve files that were not backed up and accidentally deleted from a computer’s file system but still remain on the hard disk in fragments.
The file and the information about that file are stored in different places, which enable data recovery. Here‘s one example – Windows OS uses a file allocation table to track which files are on the hard drive and where they are stored. The allocation table is like a book’s table of contents, while the actual files on the hard drive are like the pages in the book.
So, when we are facing difficulties or suspecting a data loss, it’s usually only the file allocation table that’s not working properly. The actual file to be recovered may still be on the hard drive in flawless condition. The thing is that file still exists, so if it isn’t damaged or encrypted, it can be recovered. But, even if it is damaged in any way, there are other ways of recovering it. Some utilities can be used to reconstruct the file headers manually, so at least some of the file can be recovered. The process often combines technologies. What we need to know is that this process consumes time, energy and money, so it is best to identify at first what can be left behind and what data must be recovered.
Get Yourself a Data Recovery Plan
Every business or organization should identify the people responsible for recovering data. They should develop or implement an existent strategy for how data will be recovered, including recovery time objectives. The strategy must include an action plan, explaining all the necessary steps to take in recovering data.
When it comes to personal computers, nobody likes to hear “I told you so” words, too. But, fortunately, there are a few tips on how to avoid hearing them.
- ✓ Locate your PC/Laptop in the most possibly safe, dry and dust-free area
- ✓ Avoid/prevent any physical damage to the computers
- ✓ Backup your data regularly
- ✓ Avoid large power surges at any cost, but remember that even low-level bursts of energy can erase the data on hard drives
