Wiki File Recovery Tags

Whenever a person needs to recover hard drive files, the cause behind that need is usually a crashed hard drive.  And if our hard drive is crashed it always follows that our computer will not load Windows and start.  The need to recover hard drive files comes about as the first step in repair of any Windows based computer.  If we were to merely reload our operating system, that is, our version of Windows without first rescuing from our crashed hard drive all of our important stored files, the process of reloading Windows will reformat our computer hard drive and essentially erase all of our files.  While data recovery programs can recover files after reformatting, the process is much more difficult than the effort required to retrieve files from a basically crashed hard drive.  To recover hard drive files lost due to a crash simply load into your computer’s disk drive the special file recovery disk.  This disk loads a data recovery program directly onto your computer’s RAM and runs your computer from the short term memory.  Better crashed hard drive recovery programs are built on to a miniature Windows operating system that will allow you to start your computer and access all stored files regardless of any previous operating system files that have been corrupted and are now missing.

Picture recovery information is one of the most sought after searches on the entire Internet. Picture recovery is primarily divided into two areas.  These are recovery of digital photographs from your camera or the memory card inserted into it and recovery of digital image files that have been stored on your computer or other digital Storage Media.  Usually by the time a digital photograph has been downloaded and stored on your computer, the Twain Software used for the download has converted that picture into a familiar format and file types such as a JPEG or GIF.  Almost any general purpose data recovery tool is able to recognize all of the popular digital photo image file formats and recover them from your computer’s hard drive or a solid state digital media device that has been connected to your computer, such as a compact flash drive.  When recovering photo files that have been accidentally deleted or damaged during the process of transfer from camera to computer, we are usually searching for special file types known as RAW files.  These are the file structures that your camera manufacturer has created for the storage of the original digital image information that your camera has created from the picture taking process.

In answering the question how to recover files, we must begin by examining what type of files are lost and what can best be described as the location the files were last seen in.  For example if your digital photographs were last seen while you are downloading 100 pictures from your digital camera into your computer, you know that those picture files were originally stored on your digital camera’s internal memory or its camera memory card.  If the download head was successful and you had been able to preview or open the picture files directly from your computer’s hard drive, then your search will begin in your computer’s internal hard drive.  Once you have made an educated guess as to where your files were last seen intact, you can proceed to the next step in learning how to recover files.  That is to install a powerful third party data recovery tool.  The best of these will allow you to search through either your computer’s internal hard drive or any digital storage device connected to your computer.  Further, the very best of the best data recovery tools will load and operate directly from your computer’s CD/DVD disk drive allowing you to look over your files without any risk of ever overwriting other files stored on your hard drive.

The need for floppy disk recovery has obviously decreased as more powerful portable digital Storage Media has been developed.  And of course those new media devices such as USB flash drives and SD memory cards hold an almost infinitely larger amount of data.  Still many people have important records stored on 3.5 inch floppy discs, and these disks are just as apt to have data lost on them as any other type of media.  With that in mind begin the process of floppy disk recovery with a physical examination of the disk itself. The magnetic platter inside of the plastic container should be able to spin easily when the point of a pen is placed into the small rectangle on the bottom side of the disk.  In fact it is always a good idea to rotate the inner platter a few times before attempting to find files on a floppy disk that has been sitting around for a bit of time.  Next insert the floppy disk into the internal or external drive that you use to run it from.  Now, direct your data recovery tool to scan through the drive the floppy disk has been inserted into.  Because a floppy disk holds only 1.44 MB of data, the actual time spent for scanning is incredibly small but this is countered by the time we must spend waiting for the disk itself to spin around and be read by our floppy disk drive’s magnetic head.  Attempts at recovery of deleted files from floppy disks should be repeated as the very nature of floppy disk construction lends itself to false reads.

Most data recovery software attempts to assist you in retrieving lost files by a very general process.  These programs use what is known as a wizard style interface to presumably guide you through the process of recovering accidentally deleted files.  However these easy to follow steps generally leave huge gaps in the process of file recovery.  For example, when you are attempting to recover files that were lost by the process of deleting your Windows recycle bin, these less defined data recovery solutions will usually miss over half of the files you are seeking.  More advanced file recovery programs allow you to recover every lost file type from your hard drive and then specifically target either folders such as the Windows recycler folder for recycle bin files that have been lost or any other file type.  This includes popular digital photo file extensions such as JPEGs and JPGs.  Another thought to ponder is that many data recovery utilities are only capable of recovering a certain type of file overall such as popular photo recovery programs that can find your digital photos but are unable to locate lost Microsoft word documents.  Any data recovery program worth buying should be able to find and recover hundreds of different file types.

Most data recovery software shares one common and fatal flaw.  The flaw in most file recovery software is that it must be downloaded and installed to a separate working PC if you are to safely open a crashed hard drive and from it copy out stored files.  Obviously, if your computer is still working and by that we mean loading Windows and starting up, you should have access to hard drive files.  But when you have recently deleted files or emptied your Windows recycle bin resulting in files being lost, downloading directly onto your hard drive a data recovery tool can be a big mistake.  The reason for this is that the very download of the file recovery software may land on the space that had been allocated to your deleted files.  Once you do this you overwrite the original file information and basically render it impossible to recover.  An even worse scenario is faced when dealing with a crashed hard drive.  If your computer will not load its operating system, it will not allow you to download a program on to it.  Conventional data recovery software requires you to install the program to a second computer and then connect your crashed hard drive to that computer by using serial cables.  In order to do this you will need to dismantle both computers.  Newer more effective data recovery software solves both of these problems by installing the file recovery utility only to your computer’s short term memory and never to its hard drive.  In fact these programs will allow you to start up a crashed Windows based PC directly from your computer’s disk drive and RAM.

Beware of fake data recovery reviews. All across the Internet you will find reviews for every imaginable product or service. Some of these reviews such as those offered on large scale to sales websites like Amazon are legitimate. Indeed they usually reflect the viewpoint of someone who has purchased that product and has something to say about it. Genuine and honest reviews of products on legitimate web sites have nothing to do with the majority of data recovery reviews. Fully 99% of these web sites are fraudulent and have been created specifically to direct potential customers to more expensive less effective products. For example if you should see a file recovery review for Stellar Info’s Windows file recovery program mixed in among half a dozen other file recovery company products you will no doubt see the Stellar software being promoted as absolutely superior in all aspects to any other. But how can this be, when the Stellar software costs 50% more than the other programs and in reality scans for files at a much slower speed. The answer is very simple, Stellar Info owns that review website along with 100 others all designed to lead you in the wrong direction. Before you buy any data recovery product, make sure it specifically will rescue the type of files you have lost and has instructions that will carry you through the process of crashed hard drive recovery.