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When Data Recovery Becomes
Impossible
We’ve all been using computers for a while now and I bet none of us
have been spared from at least one data loss related problem in our
technical “career”. Data is so easily losable that you’re
practically forced to make backups for everything you have, for
obvious safety reasons. Data loss can occur due to several reasons,
including:
- Physical damage – when your data storage unit gets
physically damaged, data recovery is often difficult. Physical
damage can translate into a badly scratched CD or DVD containing
essential data, a failing hard disk head or motor and so forth.
Physical damage can be avoided, but you can never really protect
yourself from it 100%. A hard disk for example, can break down due
to aging, constant workload and so forth. CDs and DVDs aren’t fully
protected even if you keep them in the cleanest, scratch-free
conditions possible.
- Logical damage – logical data damage takes place at file
structure level as opposed to physical level. Logical damage is more
common, as it can be caused by numerous additional factors such as
power outages, system crashes, driver problems, RAID controller
issues and so forth.
- Human error – human error factors include everything from
“oops, I accidentally pressed delete” to overwriting files, moving
them around, formatting over essential files and so forth.
Basically, of the three types of data loss causes, human error ones
are the easiest to avoid and yet they are the most common, because
of the users’ low computer skills, impatience or forgetfulness.
Sure, if you’re a simple user that lost some important data, you
won’t really be interested in knowing WHY you lost it, but rather if
you can get it back. Still, data recovery may often depend on the
“WHY you lost it” factor. And unfortunately, in some rare cases,
data recovery becomes impossible and the most common of data loss
categories is the physical damage one.
If your hard disk blows up on you, there’s absolutely nothing to be
done about it and no specialized data recovery program or data
recovery professional will be able to help you out. But not all
hardware (physical) problems fall into this category. For example, a
hard disk with a failing motor still holds a chance for data
recovery, whereas if the section that holds the logical data gets
burnt out or magnetized, you most likely have no chance of getting
anything back. Some physical problems may be partially fixed,
with only a part of the data being recovered. Although this is never
a reason to cheer for, you can at least scavenge up some of your
lost data.
The easiest type of data loss to recover is, fortunately, the one
falling under the human error category (fortunately – because this
is also the most common). When you delete a file from your operating
system, it won’t show up in the file structure anymore, but that
doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. What the operating system does, is
store away that file on a specific sector of your hard disk, where
it is held for sake keeping. The only way you can truly delete these
files is by overwriting that sector with new data, over and over
again. That’s why time is an important factor when it comes
to data recovery. If you deleted a file yesterday for example,
chances are that your system didn’t overwrite it with anything else
in that “safe closet” on your hard disk. However, if you deleted it
last year and subsequently deleted, overwritten and moved files
around your hard disk since then, chances are data recovery becomes
impossible.
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