How to Conduct Data Recovery
Data recovery is a delicate and intricate procedure, and it is one of the most essential techniques that any business will need to be aware of. It will keep you out of a sticky situation if you know how to do it right. There are two steps involved in data recovery.
The first step involves either finding or making an image of the hard drive, while the second involves getting forensic examiner to look at the image and interpret it. These are both very important techniques that should not be taken lightly. However, if you take the wrong approach and attempt to do everything on your own, then you may end up running into some unforeseen complications.
In this article, we will focus on the hard drive image. Just think about what happens when you lose the hard drive. You have not lost your data files yet, but if something happens and the computer crashes, then you might not have enough information to restore the computer to the state it was in before the crash occurred.
How it Works
Imagine you have deleted the data from the drive, but it still remains there somewhere. The image you will make is of the area that has been erased. So, your first step is to get a good digital scanner that has excellent resolution. Make sure you get a scanner that is able to scan 100% type II error, which means that it can pick up many other types of errors such as corrupt sectors.
You will also need a fast optical disk. This is going to be your backup copy of your data. Your hard drive image is going to be completely useless without it. You will also need a program to extract the data from the disk.
The forensic investigator is going to want to make an image of the hard drive. A good method for this is to first delete the operating system, all user profiles, all file extensions, and the empty folders. With this deleted, you will have no information to work with.
The forensic investigator will now start by opening the command prompt (on Windows) or Command Prompt (on Linux). Then, he or she will go to the directory where the hard drive is located. Now you can use your scanner to scan the entire drive for deleted files. If you find anything, then it is best to save it on a flash drive and bring it to the forensic examiner.
After scanning, the forensic investigator will start looking for deleted files by using your hard drive image. The process is quite straightforward and will likely take about an hour or so. If you have several drives that are accessible to the forensic investigator, then that is okay too.
Now, the forensic investigator will come back to the file structure of the hard drive and will recover the deleted files. Your hard drive image will show you how to recover files using your favorite data recovery software. One of the most popular options is to use a program called Nero.
Nero has plenty of features that will allow you to recover files even if they are corrupted. It is important to make sure you use the correct version of Nero to do the recovery process. The basic versions are okay for general data recovery, but you should use the professional edition only if you have a legitimate reason for wanting to recover the data.
Once the data is recovered, you can run a scan on the hard drive and get the files back if you want to. Depending on the kind of file, you may be able to recover it.
Data recovery is not something that you can do on your own. The process can be complicated and it will take a lot of time to complete it properly. You can outsource the recovery process to a reliable company.