TIPS FOR UNDELETING FILES

Breathe in, breathe out. Now that you’re breathing again it’s time to face the facts, your hard disk has failed and you never got around to backing up your important documents. Every piece of important information you possess is on that hard disk and now you are frantically trying to retrieve your missing files. Breathe…now read further.

1. DISCONTINUE DISK USE Ah, the ol’ internal disk to external disk conversion via USB enclosure. I’ve tried this myself, and I’ve run into the same problems. My first mistake (and probably yours) was buying a cheap USB enclosure and expecting it to perform reliably. For infrequent usage, such as one-time offloading or periodic backups, a USB enclosure is perfectly fine. But if you are booting into your old Windows installation and using it for hours on end, it can cause problems (heat being the biggest one). A USB enclosure just isn’t as reliable or efficient as a straight SATA connection and things can go awry.

2. RECOVER DATA WITH A DIFFERENT COMPUTER Every time you start and shut down your computer you are decreasing your chances of retrieving your data. Both actions require your computer to access and create new data (see Tip #1 for why this is bad). If you’re computer savvy you can remove the hard drive and replace it with a USB hard drive enclosure. The enclosure will allow you to attach an internal hard drive to an additional computer and act as an external hard drive. If you’d rather not take on complex computer surgery, you can simply…

3. CREATE AN EXACT DUPLICATE OF YOUR DISK Creating an image of a disk allows reading and writing directly from the image without further data loss – this is especially useful for damaged disks, and reformatted or unbootable drives. Find a program that does a sector-by-sector image of the disk. A good data recovery utility will have this feature built-in. The disk image is written to a USB drive and you can perform your file recovery using the image rather than the actual drive.

4. SEARCH FOR SPECIFIC KNOWN FILE TYPES Recovering your missing files is made easier when you’re able to search for a specific type of file. A reliable file recovery tool can detect the file types of the missing files automatically, but conducting a raw file search will increase your chances of finding and recovering the files. If you know that the missing files are .docx, you can search specifically for .docx files and forgo searching through sectors of files that have nothing to do with documents.

5. SAVE AND BACKUP DATA REGULARLY If you have the time to click on a link, you have the time to save and back up your data on a separate disk. Do this regularly. Consider using cloud storage or an online data backup tool such as Carbonite, which is available for a small monthly fee. The bottom line is that you can prevent the need for file recovery by backing up your information, but if file recovery becomes necessary you can rest assured that you will survive the disaster and recover your files by following a few simple tips.

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