What Is Data Recovery Information Technology Essay

Many companies try to increase the amount of storage space in data storage devices. Because of this reason, the probability of losing the data tends to go up. The relevance of lost data can be different greatly.

Nowadays, all people use computer to do their work. It is a fact that all the business companies use computer to save and store a large amount of vital organizational related data and information and every day they update these data to be able to compete with the other business companies. Also all the hospitals keep the data of patients on computers. On the other hand, the most of websites use the database technology to increase the number of their websites and make them more dynamic.

In general data storing can have a big effect on the personal lives and performances of companies because they use the computer technology to write and save their data.

Different reasons of losing:

Data loss can happen from unexpected event including natural events such as storms, floods and earthquakes.

In some cases you do not do anything wrongly but you lose some data from hard drives because of power failure and also sudden power surges can cause the computer’s hard drive to be damaged.

Some times you delete a file or format a hard drive or floppy disk accidentally and unconsciously

When you lose any valuable data or information like an important file or document, there are several steps that you can take them to retrieve our data. Do not forget this fact that if you have erased a file accidentally, this file may not be vanished from your computer and it my have left in a storage device like computer’s hard drive but in a different format that can not be read by human. Data recovery involves finding data and transforming it into a readable form, but all data may not be recoverable. You have this opportunity to hire a professional person or contract with a service company, which provide computer services like data recovery. They can help you to solve your problem.

Some times you don’t need any one. If you are experienced in the field of computer, you can carry out the data recovery operations on your own computer but if you know what you are doing exactly. In this process there are wide range of software’s, which are available to assist you in data recovery process.

On the other hand, data recovery can become so complicated if you overwrite on the storage medium that has the lost data. Because of this reason if you are not professional and you don’t know what you are doing. It is better to contact a professional service company to help you.

In these service firms there are some professionals who are expert in data recovering process from all kinds of media and from different kind of damages done. And also there are many specialists out there who have gotten many years of experience in the IT field. People think that data recovery by the help of new software’s is simple process but they should know this fact that the method of recovering the data that is chosen is so important and it depends on some factors such as: the kind of storage device, the amount of damage done and also the kind of operation system used like Windows, Macintosh or Linux.

According to the above factors, in some situation doing the data recovery process is impossible. However do not become disappointed because a high percentage of data recovery performances are successful.

Meanwhile, do not forget this important sentence that “Prevention is better than Treatment “Of course the best way is to prevent data loss in the first place.

Data backup allows to user to restore data if data loss occurs. Personal computer users can down load related software on their PCs to carry out regularly scheduled backup operations. Consider an unauthorized and uninformed user use your computer and its hard drive and unconsciously delete a file or make a change. The restore tool can be useful to retrieve deleted data or restore the computer’s setting from an earlier time.

A useful and reliable data recovery process should involve several performing drills to make sure that data is restored correctly. And also you should use some additional protection methods to prevent your data from damages from external environment. These methods include protection from sunlight and temperature extremes.

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(MTS.2009)

Take note:

Do not keep both original file and backup file on the same storage medium. The backup file should be kept at a secured place.

Use a surge protector rather than an ordinary outlet because it can be a protection layer from electricity fluctuations.

Have an anti-virus on your computer and also update it frequently.

All the companies have the experience of data loss at least one time and in this situation the best way is not to be scared or ignore the situation. Counting on data loss can make you prepare to encounter with any such event. (Jelling.2009)

History of data recovery

Many years ago all the companies should keep all information and data on papers and notes but with presence of technology everything is changed. One of these technologies is computer. Nowadays all the companies use computer in their work system and save all the information on it. These information are so important for company for example, data about accounting system, financial resources, secret data of company, long-term and short-term plan of company and many other important information. By encountering with some problems such as: information theft, software theft, accidentally deleting, accidentally formatting and so on, the companies understand that they need to have a system to retrieve their data. Because of this big and important need the entire software producer companies tried to create data recovery software. And this way data recovery came to our life and became a necessary part of our life.

How long does the data recovery process take?

All the data recovery companies work on the recovery process and this process two to five days and the maximum time is about two weeks to become completed. The professionals in the field of data recovery analyze the damaged media and determine the kind of damage caused to the media and after that they start the work.

Some times our damaged data are so important and critical, due to this reason we need to immediate recovery technicians to retrieve our data as soon as possible. (DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE.2006)

What are the techniques used to recover data?

As I mentioned before data loss can have logical or physical reasons and after determining the kind of damage we can use the useful technique to recover data. Some of the data recovery techniques are:

Logical data recovery

In some situation of data loss you understand that your computer’s hard drive is perfectly fine and the BIOS recognizes the hard drive but it reports a read error. In this situation the logical data recovery can be a useful and helpful technique to rebuild the damaged data, which are corrupted by any virus attack or user error with out need to the hard drive repairing.

Fragmentation

This method can be very efficient just for restoring the file size smaller than the clusters size and it is not useful in recovery the larger file. When the FAT entry is lost because of any accidentally reason like: accidental file deletion, formatting or partition deletion that particular block of hard drive becomes inaccessible. Some data recovery software makes an attempt to rebuild the files without a FAT entry.

MFM (Magnetic Force Microscopy)

MFM is the last technique that uses a sharp tip attached to a flexible cantilever placed near to the surface of the damaged device where it interacts with the stray magnetic field. When the tip is moving across the magnetic device, it is evaluated to determine the lost data. The technique changes each track that contains an image of everything ever written to it, and finally recovers the lost data. (DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE.2006)

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(Databacknow.2009)

How do I recover the lost files and folders?

Some times users are working with computers and they delete some files or folders because at that moment they have thought that these data are not usable but after deleting they understand that in those files have existed some important data. When you delete a file in fact it does not get deleted but it will be moved to the recycle bin and in this situation you can restore the file easily.

On the other hand the file or folder is deleted and also it is not in recycle bin because of some reasons like using some special feature keys or using some delete application; we can restore these files or folders as just their names are removed from the list of recycle bin. For this process we can use the proper recovery software. (DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE.2006)

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(Business Directory.2009)

How data recovery works?

If you have ever wanted to know how data recovery works, you should read this part carefully;

As I mentioned before over and over, the duty of data recovery process is retrieving the lost data and in this way we can use so many software because data recovery software have extremely powerful tools and they can recover your damaged or lost data from variety of data storage media like hard drives, USB drives, CDs, DVDs, flash drives and so on. (Madhav.2009)

When you delete a single file or folder, it does not undergo the digital equivalent of shredding. Instead, all that happens is the reference to the written document is removed from the operating system index. So the single file or folder still exists but the operating system cannot recognize where to look for it because it has been removed and as such just can’t be detected. Even so, data recovery specialists can rebuild the file index that the operating system needs to locate your computers file. When that is executed you can get 100% data recovery. While you have removed a file, the place on the hard drive can be re-used and the original file will be overwritten. (S.Harney.2000-2007)

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(Pendriveapps.2006-2009)

What data recovery service firms do?

Normally, the process of data recovery will be started by customer calling or referring to the one of data recovery companies. They should send the hard drive to the firm for analysis and inspection. After that a data recovery technician come and after analyzing and evaluating process will determine the kind of damage and the cost and prepare a report which will provide the following information:

Kind of the media failure for example: logical, physical, electro-mechanical etc;

Is the data recoverable or not and if is, what the percentage of success to recover data;

How much is the cost of data recovery process exactly according to the fees standards and amount of damage.

How long does the whole data recovery process take;

This report will be emailed within maximum 24 hours to the customer and they wait for customer’s response. After receiving the approval they will start the work on hard drive.

There are two different situation: your hard drive is repairable and passes all the “hard drive fitness test”, in this case they will return all the data on your repaired hard drive.

On the other hand, hard drive may be not repairable and the technician should return recovered data on another storage medium like DVD or CD or on a new hard drive.

If you have brought your laptop or personal computer for data recovery, they can replace the faulty hard drive, reload the Operating System and copy the recovered data back onto the computer’s new hard drive. (Datarecovery247.com. 2001-2008)

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(Microsoft.TechNet.2009)

Advantage of data recovery:

Data recovery process makes it possible to restore the data from damaged backup disks that are not more able to read operating system. If you exposure to this problem that the hard disk crash or backup media is damaged you may require the services specializing in retrieval of data from physically damaged hardware such as hard disk drives.

Data recovery offers different alternatives depending on your plan to use the data recovery service. You can offer the latest data recovery technology or use the traditional method of data recovery.

The other advantage of data recovery is the ability of recovering the data from the most of platforms, operating systems or media types. In each case, data recovery applies the best steps to recover the data.(XDATA BACKUP.2006)

Disadvantages of data recovery:

Users are not able to recover their own data and they need an administrative process to recover user data.

Users cannot determine what kind of data can be recovered by data recovery process and what kind of data cannot be recovered by data recovery process.

The process of data recover happens by default on file-by-file basis.

Data recovery process can recover just the data and not the user keys. Thus after finishing the process of recovering the data, the user must re-enroll for the new certificates.

When a key lost, the certificates are also compromised and because of this reason the administrators should revoke all the old certificates. (Microsoft TechNet.2003)

Data recovery methods:

The data recovery process can be used to recover the different kind of data from verity of storage mediums according to the kind of data damage. The following methods are the common methods of data recovery:

Recover data after accidental deletion

Recover data after repartition 


Recover data after an MBR corruption


Recover data from an inaccessible volume (logical drive) 


Recover data after FAT corruption



Recover data from a hard disk drive, camera card, USB drive, Zip, floppy disk


Recover data from a crashed physical device

Recover data for any error except physical damage

Recover data after an accidental format 


(MT Solution Ltd.2009)

Different usage of data recovery:

If you are a real user of computer and spend enough time in front of computer, data recovery is an important part of your life. Most people lose their data because of different reasons such as accidentally deleting or formatting and so on. But thankfully, there are so many file recovery options that can help you to return your lost data.

File recovery is broken down into the following four parts: 


Deleted File

Nowadays it is a normal situation that user have deleted a file and after that wants to return it. All computer users have experienced in it. It is the most common and easiest recovery situation and there are so many software and recovery options, which you can choose from and use, especially in Windows data recovery field.



Lost File

A lost file is not removed, just the location of data is changed and user cannot find it. Because of many reasons this situation can be made such as: deleting a file, power outage, software application crash, virus attack, partition problem and the famous accidental format. There are many options that you can use to recover the data but it depends on what has happened. And also the price is an important factor for data recovery process. If you want cheap data recovery there are some especial options for you and if you can pay more there are more and better options for you to choose from.

File Corruption



In this situation user can find the data but can not open it and when user can open it, the content of file appears to be a bunch of gibberish. In this case you can use the same option and principles of lost file and apply to corrupt files. By the way should use data recovery software.

Damaged File

When you encounter with a damaged file, this file can be opened but cannot be read perfectly. In other words, some parts of text or picture are good and readable but the other parts are not normal and they are just a jumbled muddle. In this situation, you need a file repair utility to renovate your data. In some other cases, it may need to be reconstructed manually with a hex editor. You should be sure about the software because it should be able to repair a file. Don’t forget that file repair is different from file recovery.(ACR Data Recovery.2009)

Different types of data recovery systems

Consider you have done the data assessments, now there are several different types of recovery systems that you can use to return your data as follow:

Bare Metal Recovery

Bare Metal recovery system involves making a complete back up from the whole system including the operating system, software applications, and also the data. When you encounter with the event of data loss, this system allows you to retrieve the entire operating system in a single procedure, which can decrease the time of data recovery process by hours. Because by using this system you do not need to reinstall the operating system, software applications, and also you do not need to restore the data and settings.

Online Disk Backup

This system is so ideal for data, which are changing every moment because online disk backup system can backup the data frequently. An online disk backup service also provides tiered recovery architecture that can provide more flexibility and alternatives with organizations, which require frequent critical data backup and intermittent backup for data that is not as critical. This system is also a time saver as well as money saver. When you choose this system you can be sure about it because of the reliable and enforce security policies and rules.

Continuous Data Protection

This system is known as continuous back up system and also it can save your time. Continuous data protection is a popular and useful data recovery system for organizations because of its ability to monitor and record all modifications to data continuously and back it up both onsite and offsite. (SPAM LAWS.2009)

Things that can affect your recovery process:

When you use the data recovery process there are many different factors that can affect the success rate of the recovery of hard drive. Some of these factors are not under your control but the other factors can be made better if you take the time to take care of your files and folders on your computer systems. You can do this with the help of data recovery software.

According to the researches, one of the problems that is so bigger than the other problems when it comes to the success rate of recovery of your hard drive is fragmentation of the data. It means that there are different components of a file or files that are not in a place but they are scattered throughout of computer and shared with other programs. If you want to avoid from this problem, you should manage your hard drive and keep your hard drive in better condition. You can also solve this problem with the help of computer data recovery software. (Streetdirectory.com.2009)

Producers of data recovery software:

There are so many companies, which produce data recovery software. I make the following list from the name of some of these firms:

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(tinypic.2004-2009)

Conclusion:

Generally, according to the above-mentioned objects, data recovery is a technology that everyone needs it. It is so useful and also easy to use because nowadays all the good computer companies produce data recovery software for computer users. And it changes to a kind of business in this world. The companies compete with each other to provide the better data recovery service.

This technology has some advantages and also some disadvantages like the other technologies. I personally think that a big problem of using data recovery technology is misusing of secret information of others. Consider you are in a high position in a company and you have many information about the company and its secrets, which can be used just by managers and the other employees should not see them; you do your work and delete all information, by using data recovery technology other people who are intruder in the company can retrieve the data and use them. On the other hand, this technology has many advantages as I mentioned before.

As a result, it is necessary for all computer users to know how they can use data recovery software because we are living in technology age and we need to use all the technologies to have a good and comfort life.

What do you think about it?