When Files are Deleted from your Directory……..
It is a common scenario for documents to be deleted, lost or damaged on a computer. To recover data on hard drive partitions involves using 3 approaches – manually, via software or by experts. Here, we’ll detail the options and when they should be used.
Manual Approach
The simplest situation is when files are deleted from your directory. The files should still be visible in the Recycle Bin so you can select them, hit the restore option and they will be moved back to their last directory location.
Data Recovery Software
There are many free and commercial data recovery software options that may be used in the following situations:
- Deleted file bypassed the Recycle Bin.
- The Bin and all its contents were emptied.
- The hard drive was formatted.
Documents are stored to the hard drive as data clusters and indexed in the File Allocation Table (FAT – associates your single document with multiple data clusters on the drive). A deleted/formatted file will have its directory location attribute reset/cleared in the FAT but the data clusters will still exist.
To recover data on hard drive sectors that are invisible in your file/directory structure requires using data recovery software that reads the FAT and analyzes the data clusters to identify discernible documents. These documents can then be displayed back to you and copied to another location. The success rate of using this software depends greatly upon how much PC use occurred after deletion (as ongoing usage eventually begins overwriting the data clusters).
Data Recovery Specialists
Finally, data recovery specialists will have high-end software that can recover greater quantities of data from even formatted drives. In addition, they can complete the costly task of recovering hard drive data from damaged computers; this requires extracting the damaged disk and using specialist reading devices to extract data clusters. The success rate depends upon how badly damaged the disk partitions and sectors were. Costs will fluctuate depending on the amount of PC repairs and mechanical reconstruction that is required.
