Posted on 16th January, 2010 | No Comment
We get more and more cases of either data recovery or forensics where our work is hampered or simply made outright impossible as a direct result of someone else trying to recover the data before it gets to us.
Can you search the web and find software solutions to recover your data? Sure you can. Dozens of them. Some are actually very good tools. You may even stumble across some of the tools we use to do the same thing. So why shouldn’t you try and recover your own data?
The simple answer is that you will probably destroy the valuable data you seek to recover in the process. When a file is deleted, accidentally or intentionally, the space it occupied is now available for use. Therefore, the very next program that is installed or file that is created has a high likelihood of writing over the recently deleted file you need to recover. This renders that file UNrecoverable by any means. Therefore, if you install ANY software on your computer to try and recover your data, the odds are, you have just permanently destroyed the file you wanted to recover.
We have had forensics cases where there was nothing we could do as a result of an IT technician snooping around the computer to examine the data and changing all the file dates in the process, then installing data recovery software and overwriting the remaining data we needed to recover. This resulted in a very expensive complete waste of time.
Our recommendation: If the data is important to you, just bring it to us as soon as you find you have a missing file. The outcome will be better – and probably less expensive. Fewer things are more frustrating than paying to recover something that cannot be retrieved due to a misguided recovery attempt in the wrong hands.
And if, for any reason, your drive is unreadable or un-bootable – TURN IT OFF IMMEDIATELY and do not turn it on again. The more you run a failing drive, the worse your odds become for recovering your data. A failing hard drive is not going to get better with time. It will definitely get worse – and this may happen very quickly. Every second it spins reduces it’s lifespan and your odds of a successful recovery of your priceless data.