Computer Repair in Kalamazoo

Hard drives fail all the time. It’s just a fact. That’s why we, at Geek Easy Computers, stress having a recent & reliable backup is so important. But what happens when your hard drive fails and you don’t have a backup? Usually your only option is data recovery, if possible.

What is Data Recovery?

Data recovery is the process of restoring data that has been lost, accidentally deleted, corrupted or made inaccessible. The data recovery process can vary depending on the cause of the data loss. Data recovery is usually performed by software tools, but sometimes the data can be unretrievable by them. In those cases, data recovery services which have access to very advanced recovery tools are an option: albeit an expensive one.

Typical causes of data loss include power outages, natural disasters, equipment failures or malfunctions, damaged hard drive read/write heads, software crashes, or firmware corruption.

The majority of data loss is caused by human error such as: accidental deletion of data, unintentionally formatting a hard drive, continued use of a computer after signs of failure, physical damage to hard drives, laptop theft, and spilling liquid on a computer. Situations such as liquid damage & physical damage can make data recovery impossible.

Are there other factors?

The type of medium the data was saved to can also affect its chances of recovery. Data on a physically damaged flash drive is usually not accessible by most retrieval methods. SSDs that are built into the computers motherboard are also typically not recoverable.

Deleted file recovery chances greatly depend on the actual cause of data loss and further user’s actions. To get the best possible deleted file recovery result, it is strongly recommended to prevent any possibility of anything being written to the storage medium and immediately run deleted file recovery software. Any deleted file remains on the storage until the storage space is reused by other data. After file deletion, the operating system may reuse disk space to save a new file. Thus, even a minor piece of information written to the storage can cause permanent loss of a deleted file. Using a web browser might result in overwriting deleted files through caching or saving cookies to the storage. If you install any software to the storage medium, your deleted file can be overwritten as well.

With all that being said, the BEST solution is to have a current, reliable backup of your data. If that isn’t the case, then data recovery is most likely your only option to recover your data. Need help setting up a backup routine? Stop in and talk to one of our backup experts at Geek Easy Computers. We want to make keeping your data safe easier!

Adonis Pointer is a photographer, a collector of vintage razors, and a certified technology geek! Adonis has been involved in computer technology since well, a LONG time! He has been involved in nearly every aspect of the industry from sales to repair to training to consulting. As the Social Media Manager he writes the majority of the posts on the Geek Easy Computers blog.