It may not happen often, but when it does, a pooched hard-drive can make you wish you never woke up in the morning. Problem is, most people store all of their personal data on their hard disk and don’t make any backups, and that is possibly the single most reason why a pooched Hard Drive  situation becomes the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. So the question is, can the data on your hard disk be recovered? The answer is usually a resounding yes, but it all depends on what has gone wrong with your hard drive.

First things first, before we get into hardisk and data recovery, I want to talk something that’s going to save you a lot of grief down the road, data backup. Backing up your data is just the smart thing to do. There are just so many things that can go wrong on your computer that will seriously mess up your precious photos and documents that it is foolish not to back up your data. Backing up your data is so simple and quick that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be doing it all the time. All you need to do is copy your important files onto  DVDs, and then store those dvds in a safe place, and don’t forget to label them so that you don’t spend half a year looking for the files that are important. What I do is I create a printout of everything that I save onto a specific hard disk and then store that hard disk and data sheet together. If I need to find something, all I need to do is pull out the data sheet to see the contents of the disk. It’s so brainless and easy, and will be a great benefit to you.

We’ll assume that you have not backed up your data and now need to do some on the fly Data recovery. Unfortunately, Data Recovery can be a very easy or complicated matter depending on what exactly is wrong with your hard drive. For simple Microsoft Windows issues, where the OS isn’t booting up properly but your hard disk is in good shape, you can often boot into safe mode and retrieve your data that way. If the OS is completely inaccessible, you can usually restore your system with your windows backup disk or some OS recovery disk, caution: do not format your hard disk if you are using a restore disk. My preference is to remove the hard drive from one computer and attach it to another working computer. Windows automatically detects the new hard drive and assigns a partition name to it, then it’s just a simple matter of copying the information from the problem hardisk to a working one. If the partitions themselves are messed up, you can use file recovery software like File Recovery by PC Inspector that will help you retrieve your files and partitions for you.

Ok, so the above is the easy part and most people with basic working knowledge of their computers can usually find a way of getting their data back. But what if your hard drive crash due to a physical problem witht the hard disk or its working components? At this point, the only option available to you is to take your hard disk to a  data recovery lab, it’s the only way to retrieve your data. Unfortunately, you can expect to pay ‘Through the Nose’ for services rendered by a data recovery labs, so unless the information that you need to retrieve is of real value to you, then this option is probably something you’ll want to forgo.

This data recovery business is a lot of work, which makes backing up your data the wisest thing you can do. It will save you time, money and most of all grief. Back up your data please.

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