Knowing the Basics of Data Recovery

Did you ever experience that some of your saved files cannot be retrieved in your computer? This is what most people never dreamed of happening. This is thought to be one of the most frustrating events when using a computer. Why does this happen? The lost of saved data in a system is actually caused from a damaged, corrupted, or failure of storage media. No matter how you retrieve it in a normal way it cannot be opened. This is when data recovery will set in. Data's recovery is a process in which a stored data will be retrieved from damaged, failed, corrupted storage media like hard disc drives, compact disc, Digital versatile disc, flash drives, memory cards, and storage tapes. The Damage of the storage media may also be the cause of the lost file. The most common form of data recovery procedure is the transferring of desired data to be retrieved. This can be done by using a backup disc (it can be a CD, DVD, flash drives, and other storage media). The first step is to activate the affected storage media and slowly transfer all saved data to a safe form of storage. Make sure that the backup storage is free from virus, malwares, and damages to prevent the same problem from reoccurring.

Another common form of data recovery is retrieving a saved data that has been deleted. This is what most people experienced especially during a system reformat. The deleted data is not totally erased from the system, and it can still be found within the system’s directory list. As we get further with this topic we will be talking about the ways on how to retrieve a saved data from a physical and a logical damage within the system.  How would we recover a data after a certain physical damage within the system?  A data recovery from storage media that has been physically damage may depend largely on the extent of the damage. If the affected parts will include the hard disc’s reader and writer then, most probably the data can never be recovered. In data saved within compact discs, the outcome of the recovery may depend also to the extent of damage. Let us take, for example, you saved a certain data in a digital versatile disc and all out of a sudden the metallic part was broken. If this case happened the recovery of the data within the DVD is difficult.

 Recovering a certain data after a logical damage is like having half of a slice or nothing at all. The logical damage will take place when you are in the process of saving a file and suddenly the power runs out or runs low. In this case, the power needed to save the data in the system is not enough. This means that the saving process will not push through, leaving your data unsaved. How would you prevent logical damage? The only way you can do for now is to have a certain file system (e.g.  NTFS 5.0 and XFS) that is capable of retrieving back the data, even if it was not yet saved. In this case, the only data that will be erased from your computer are those saved data within the system’s cache (a specific folder where duplicated files from the main storage are saved).  

Another problem with a data in a system is the overwriting of files. This is also one of the most common problems among computer users. Majority of us would think that whenever a certain file is overwritten the primary saved file will never be retrieved. In the world of experts, they would say that the primary saved file can still be recovered. Thanks to Peter Guttmann who had the idea of using a (STEM) scanning transmission electron microscope to retrieve an overwritten file. A STEM is like a microscope that is capable of emitting an electron towards a given specimen. This device will serve as a scanner to look for the different pieces of the overwritten data. This method is not a hundred percent effective because it cannot recover all parts of the overwritten data. Data's recovery is not an easy task. It really requires a lot of processes to recover a certain file. The primary solution for this issue is to make a backup file after you are done dealing with a certain data, and also if in case you are in doubt of the system’s performance.