By: Ellie Lewis
How many times have you been told if you do not back up your computer, eventually you will be faced with an emergency? The good news is there is a way to perform hard drive recovery. This can save your files and most of what is on your computer and you will have learned your lesson. A data hard drive recovery is hard work and can be very expensive. The first thing you should do is make sure the problem is what you think it is. There are a number of things that can go wrong, so you want to be sure you are fixing the appropriate thing. You can test the current problem by hooking up the computer to an external computer. This will tell you if what you think has crashed really are the problem. To do this you might need a USB adapter, but these are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to a whole new computer.
If your files do not appear once you have hooked up to another computer, you likely have serious damage. An attempt to save the lost materials can cost hundreds of dollars or more. The process can take a long period of time and you might still be left with a number of missing files. However, sometimes the process saves the files and everything can be restored. The same computer forensics procedures used to restore things people thought were deleted is used to restore materials that are unintentionally deleted.
There are two ways your computer can crash. One is a mechanical failure and the other is a logical failure. When the failure is logical, the components of the computer are not damaged. It usually occurs because of a corrupt file system or a formatting error that is accidental. This leaves the computer unable to navigate its own data. Without an overwriting procedure, you should still be able to recover anything stored on the computer.
When the failure is mechanical, this means the computer is actually broken. You might hear a clicking sound, which means the files might still be there, but you have a long road ahead of you. The process could cost you up to $2500 to fix and restore your information and materials. Obviously, computer users should hope for a logical failure because it is much easier to fix. However, there are solutions to both problems, especially if you know who to contact for help.
Once everything is restored, if restoration is possible, make sure you begin backing up your work. In the future, you will be able to rebuild your system fairly quickly. You can wipe out the problem, fix it, and put the materials back onto your machine. You might lose a few things depending on how long it is between the times you back up, but the majority of your files will be kept up to date and restoration will be a fairly simple process. It usually only takes one crash for someone to realize they need to start backing up their computers.
