The Process of Disk Data Recovery
Data recovery is an enormous and growing field.
Charges for saving information from a crashed disk can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and barely ever has any guarantees.
However, as more and more information goes digital, the field continues to grow, in both quantity supplied and demanded.
The easiest form of data recovery is to back up on a regular basis.
If a user does that, they won't have to worry about expensive data recovery techniques that may or may not work.
There are a number of ways to do this.
One is using RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, which is a form of getting more out of a hard drive by using multiple disks.
RAID 0, for example, copies all data to both of two disks, which means that if one disk gets damaged, the other disk will still contain all of the data.
This increases data write time but decreases data read time.
Other forms of securing data include keeping it all on a separate disk from the operating system, thereby preventing the operating system from accidentally corrupting it, disk imaging, and similar means.
Once a disk does crash, however, a user may still need to salvage some data using various means of disk data recovery.
How this works will be based on whether the problem lies in software damage or if the disk was physically damaged.
Typically physical damage will be harder.
If the problem lies with software the data can probably be fairly easily recovered by connecting the victim hard drive to another computer, which may allow data recovery.
However, in certain situations, the problem may be worse but still software-related, such as logical damage on the file system level.
This would require consistency checking or data carving, normally by using bootable recovery software.
This is normally a time consuming process that may or may not yield results.
Physical damage is more straightforward to recover than logical damage.
The first attempt is normally to try to repair the hard drive, possibly by substituting parts from a good hard drive into the bad hard drive.
This is fairly easy to predict the results and whether or not it can be successful, and won't take that much time if possible.
If it is successful the damaged hard drive can simply be connected to a computer and the missing data read.
Unfortunately, as solid-state drives become more prevalent, this form of data recovery is getting more difficult.
Charges for saving information from a crashed disk can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and barely ever has any guarantees.
However, as more and more information goes digital, the field continues to grow, in both quantity supplied and demanded.
The easiest form of data recovery is to back up on a regular basis.
If a user does that, they won't have to worry about expensive data recovery techniques that may or may not work.
There are a number of ways to do this.
One is using RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, which is a form of getting more out of a hard drive by using multiple disks.
RAID 0, for example, copies all data to both of two disks, which means that if one disk gets damaged, the other disk will still contain all of the data.
This increases data write time but decreases data read time.
Other forms of securing data include keeping it all on a separate disk from the operating system, thereby preventing the operating system from accidentally corrupting it, disk imaging, and similar means.
Once a disk does crash, however, a user may still need to salvage some data using various means of disk data recovery.
How this works will be based on whether the problem lies in software damage or if the disk was physically damaged.
Typically physical damage will be harder.
If the problem lies with software the data can probably be fairly easily recovered by connecting the victim hard drive to another computer, which may allow data recovery.
However, in certain situations, the problem may be worse but still software-related, such as logical damage on the file system level.
This would require consistency checking or data carving, normally by using bootable recovery software.
This is normally a time consuming process that may or may not yield results.
Physical damage is more straightforward to recover than logical damage.
The first attempt is normally to try to repair the hard drive, possibly by substituting parts from a good hard drive into the bad hard drive.
This is fairly easy to predict the results and whether or not it can be successful, and won't take that much time if possible.
If it is successful the damaged hard drive can simply be connected to a computer and the missing data read.
Unfortunately, as solid-state drives become more prevalent, this form of data recovery is getting more difficult.