When we think of data disasters, we tend to think of them on a macro level – server crashes, infrastructural shutdowns and major network security issues. But we often overlook everyday data failures. Like, what do you do when a laptop hard drive crashes? Or, what happens when you lose hundreds of emails from your email server? How do you recover lost data without spending hundreds more on data recovery applications or hardware repair? As with any pending disaster, an ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure. Fortunately, when disaster strikes and prevention is miles behind you, you can clean up major data issues without breaking the bank in the process.
Hard Drive Recovery
Contrary to what we’d love to believe, hard drives are not indestructible. The hard drive device is fragile. If just a speck of dust enters the casing, it can cause it to crash. If the device falls or is mishandled, it can also cause a hard drive failure. Even if a hard drive does manage to make it to its golden years, a hard drive’s lifespan is relatively short. In general, hard drives last for about five years at most.
While damaged hard disk components are, for the most part unfixable – you’ll need to buy a new drive, or pay an arm and a leg to hard drive repair technician – there are a few helpful tools to aid in data recovery from your hard disk.
Unbootable Hard Drive Recovery
All Windows-formatted hard drives run on this file system. So, when essential NTFS files are not being recognized, they will need to be recovered to ensure your hard drive is up and running again. The New Technology File System (NTFS) is the proprietary file system developed by Microsoft in the early 90s. One helpful tool is FindNTFS, a DOS-based hard drive recovery application. If the drive in question is the bootable hard drive, you may need to download the FindNTFS application to a USB or external drive in order to access the problematic drive’s contents.
Email Recovery
When an email server goes down, the fallout can seem like the end of the world. For many who rely on email correspondence to pay the bills, it probably is. But instead of hunkering down in a bomb shelter in a state of panic, it’s better to be more proactive about it. Whether you use a desktop email client, or a web-based application there are some practical solutions to this very practical problem. One way to reduce email anxiety, especially if Microsoft if your email client provider, is by using the Outlook repair tool. The tool scans your inbox, checks for errors and repairs them accordingly, so you can recover lost emails. If you’re on an Apple or Linux machine, there are plenty of other third-party solutions that will get the job done.
Backup Everything All the Time
The truth is, just about any data disaster can be avoided with a few very basic precautionary measures. Many of these precautions have to do with backing up your data. It’s not enough that your data is backed up, but it must be backed up to an external data storage device. While the previously mentioned solutions may help, none of them guarantee your data will be fully recovered. So, backup everything – email, music, operating system files, etc. – as often as you possibly can.
