Data recovery is the process of retrieving inaccessible or deleted data from deleted, formatted, damaged or corrupt secondary storage devices. To salvage your data out of these situations, there are various data recovery techniques as we shall see in this article. These techniques require extra hardware and software for accessing, reconstructing and repairing the affected storage media to enhance data recovery.
Based on the accessibility loss to the device and the type of damage, Data recovery techniques are basically categorized into two major categories.
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Logical Data Recovery Technique
When the error is not related to the device hardware and can be solved using a software, then it is referred to as a ‘Logical Data Recovery’ technique. Logical damage to your device hard drive causes corruption, making the data and drive inaccessible. In such a case, you are required to perform a logical data recovery.
Here are some of the logical damage scenarios:
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Deleted, Formatted or Damaged Partition
Cases of hard disk becoming unreadable is normally caused by a damage to the disk file system and partition table due to bad sectors that slowly develop during the hard drive usage. When a hard drive fails or data is deleted, it is advisable that you carefully remove the hard disk and connect it to another PC in a read-only mode to avoid permanent data loss. This also applies to other devices such as SD cards, thumb drives etc.
In case you lose your data, you need to seek a reliable hard drive recovery services to help you salvage your data.
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Overwritten Data
When you delete a file from the Windows operating system, the deleted file is considered as a free space by the operating system. Thus, when you copy a file to your system or install a program, it overwrites your lost files making recovery impossible. Therefore it is advisable that when you face a data loss, stop using your hard drive or system to prevent further damage to deleted or lost data.
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Physical Data Recovery
After hardware failures, human errors are rated the second most common cause of data loss. A hard disk is compact and quite fragile, hence a small shock may result in a hard disk drive failure and a permanent data loss. Therefore, it is crucial that you handle hard drives with utmost care.
Here are some common data physical damage scenarios:
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Complexity
The distance between the disk platter and an actuator head is just 5 and platter of the hard drive is just 5nm. This makes you understand how delicate and complex a hard drive is. Most physically damaged drives cannot be repaired by end users since opening a hard disk to repair a physical damage requires a controlled environment that should be temperature controlled and dust-free. The physically damaged hard drive also requires specialized hard drive recovery services with professional tools and equipment.
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Hardware Repair
Before you make any move on your disk drive hardware repair, it is important that you get an expert for this delicate job. A physically damaged SATA hard drive or SSD hard drive can be repaired by replacing the faulty part of the disk drive by professionals to make it accessible for data recovery purposes.
Conclusion
We have seen what data recovery is and the two data recovery techniques that can be used depending on accessibility and cause of data loss. For physically damaged hard drives recovery, you must be very careful when handling the drive. It is advisable that you hard drive recovery experts as soon as possible to help you salvage your data.