Disc Recovery
The computer before you may seem reliable and trustworthy, yet the truth is that it could potentially destroy the valuable data that you have invested in it. This can happen without warning, and can manifest itself simply as a blinking cursor the next time the computer is restarted. To tell the truth, the computer is as a whole mostly reliable, engineered to function smoothly for years. The hard drive, however, is the one component that will let you down before all others.
As the weak link in the design chain, the hard drive is perhaps the most common cause of grief when it comes to computer woes.
Whereas the rest of the computer is made out of reliable silicon components that can last for years, the hard drive is a mechanical device with fragile moving parts. In order to work, a hard drive must remain in perfect alignment. As a storage medium, the modern hard drive is a frail device, prone to failure. Although the size of the hard drive has increased exponentially in recent years, reliability has not caught up. This simply means that there is more to lose. Luckily, when a hard drive fails, there are frequently avenues of rescue. Disc recovery can be achieved through a variety of techniques, some of which can be applied at home.
When a hard drive fails, it is due to either a software or a hardware failure. Disc recovery at home is possible in the former. In the latter, an expensive professional service must be hired in order to restore lost data. Software failures include accidentally deleted files, missing or deleted partitions, and drives that have been reformatted. In any of these cases, free software utilities found online may be able to provide disc recovery.
TestDisk is perhaps the most widely used software utility available for free today. As an open source project, TestDisk is free to the public, and supports an incredible range of filesystems. When a hard drive fails, connect it to another computer. Allow the main drive of the computer to boot the operating system, and install TestDisk on the other computer. Using TestDisk, you can easily determine whether disc recovery is possible.
When a partition is deleted, or in the case of a reformat, the entire drive, the contents actually remain. Drive partitions are what the operating system uses to locate files, and without these partitions, the operating system will be unable to browse the files. This does not mean that the files are actually gone. If the files remain, programs such as TestDisk can reconstruct a partition table that the operating system can use. With a hardware failure, however, a professional service such as DriveSavers must be hired in order to restore data.
Filed under: Hard Drive Recovery