Monday, January 19, 2009

Hard Drive Crash Repair

If you are like most people, you've probably got most of your personal data stored in your PC. But what do you do if your Hard Drive Crashes? Can the data be recovered?

Before we talk about data recovery, let's talk about data backup first, it's a great tool in data loss prevention. I know what you're thinking, 'how boring, I don't want to talk about my crashed hard drive, and I don't care about prevention because I'm a careless and lazy person'. I hear ya, and the fraternity of careless and lazy people is alive and well, I can assure you. But seriously, If your data is precious to you, you need to back it up. The best way is by copying the data onto DVDs, and storing your data in a safe place, preferably a fireproof safe. If all this sounds like a lot of work, then the question you need to ask yourself is 'Is the data that I lost, the family photos and all my work important to me?' If you answer yes, then you know what you've got to do.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about recovery of your data after your hard drive crash. Data recovery can be a very simple matter, or very complicated, and it all depends on what has gone wrong. If you're simply fixing a Windows Melt-Down where your OS doesn't boot any more, then a great piece of free software that works well in data recovery called File Recovery by PC Inspector will save you a lot of grief. This nifty piece of software recovery will recover files and partitions for you, it's free and it does a very good job and getting your precious files back.

If on the other hand, your hard drive crash is a direct consequence of your hard drive itself being pooched, and a physical problem is responsible for loss of your data, then you need to stop and take that hard-drive to a data recovery lab immediately. But data recovery services labs aren't cheap and you can expect to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Let's face it, a family photo album with all your precious history is worth the money and you'll probably end up paying for the data recovery.

This leads us back to my first point. If you had backed up your data to begin with, you wouldn't be paying forking out all your hard earned money to recover your Crashed Hard Drive.

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