Retrieving Your Files

The key point when you're dealing with data loss seems odd at first, but is actually very critical. Do nothing at all. Understand that no matter how the situation came about in which you require data recovery, your most immediate danger is to your files. By doing nothing, you lessen the risks that your operating system writes over your deleted files. Also, if you're partition has been accidentally deleted and requires recovery, resist the temptation to create a new one, as it may damage the ability to recover the old one.

Undeleting Files

If your data recovery situation is one in which you have accidentally deleted files from your recycling bin, try your best not to save any new files to your hard drive. Because the NTFS and FAT file systems never actually remove files from your hard disk, is very likely that the files are still there and accessible.

So whether you're missing a couple of files or an entire operating system, it is important to note that they are not actually gone, but merely marked by your file system as deleted. So by doing nothing in this case, you eliminate the risk that your operating system will save fresh files to your hard drive and write over either you're missing operating system or files.

So in essence, whether you're dealing with deleted files or missing partitions, understand that although your operating system cannot read this information, it is still there. Meanwhile, professional hard drive repair shops such as Hard Drive Recovery Group offer data recovery software which can easily retrieve these files and make them readable again.

Retrieving lost partitions

As we have mentioned on several occasions in this article already, it is critical that when you lose data you do not attempt to save anything new to the hard disk. If you have lost a simple file or even a few files, this may not be difficult. In most cases, and you will be able to boot up your computer and recover files within Windows.

On the other hand, if you have lost an entire partition, whether it includes your operating system or not, you should not attempt to boot to that drive. If, unlike our customer example, the partition containing your operating system is the damage partition, your best bet is to simply copy the drive over using another PC. Today's incredibly large hard disk drives make this scenario far more possible than it is ever been.

And additional positive to this scenario is that copying your hard drive to a new hard drive ensures that there is no possible way that your data will be written over. Hard Drive Recovery Group uses very similar techniques when performing hard drive repair services, as backing up data first virtually ensures that no problems occurred during the data recovery process. What's more, copying your entire hard drive over to a new hard drive may enable you to view your files using Windows Explorer.

What happens in many of our customer cases is that the hard drive is actually okay. In fact, sometimes even the file system and partition table including master file table are all working perfectly. In cases like these often it is missing Windows OS files which are the culprit. In cases like this, you may be able to copy over the critical operating system files from a different windows enabled computer.

(Continued with Copying Your Hard Drive)

Tutorial Contents
Recovery Tutorial - The introduction
XP Partition Recovery - A case study
File Systems - How important they are to your OS
NTFS Partition Recovery - Some key advantages
Retrieving Files - Moving forward with your recovery.
Copying Your Hard Drive - Safety first, always.
Partition Recovered - A case study concluded.