Data Recovery
When I first starting working at Carbonite Australia, I read through many of the articles written by Carbonite Inc in the US about clients losing their data, I also read as much research as I could about the statistical probability of your hard drive failing. Almost 12 months on and with our client base growing here in Australia, it amazes just how many calls we get from customers who have just had a PC failure and want to know how they use their Carbonite subscription to recover their lost files.
We get several calls a day and they make for great stories when you are on the phone with a customers wanting to know more about Carbonite and how it works.
Today’s post has more to do with an article in The Age yesterday on Data Recovery. It was written by Dave Thompson (Digital Life section). The point of the article was that hard drives fail all of the time, even new ones, in new PCs. When this does happen, most people rush to their nearest PC store (or where they purchased the hardware from) to get advice on how they can recover their data. As Data Recovery is a specialist field, most PC stores will tell you that the data is no longer recoverable and you should forget about it and start again.
The price for data recovery of a failed hard drive can run into the thousands, all depending on who you go to and how desperate you are to get the data back.
Dave goes on to explain (in much detail) about the physical make-up of the hard drive as well as how it works and what happens when it gets damaged. He also leaves us with the message that if we really want to recover our data, it is worth while that we seek specialists in the field of Data Recovery rather than a general PC store. And it is certainly not something you would want to try on yourself.
The issue is that many computer “repair” people aren’t up with data recovery and file this sort of thing in the “too hard” basket.
They either arbitrarily replace the drive or wipe the contents and start again, claiming recovery is impossible.
My advice, if you are very attached to the “lost” data, is do nothing with the drive and seek a second opinion, preferably from someone who advertises “data recovery” services.
Ask about methods used and go for those who sound like they know what they are doing.
Avoid running the drive as this can make things worse, and resist the temptation to “have a go” yourself; data recovery is a specialist field and the best option is to let them work their mojo. You’ll find many operate a no data/no charge policy and really, by that stage what have you got to lose?
Online backup services such as Carbonite are getting more and more attention from PC media each day. This is because they have become a real option for the consumer and small business. Two or three years ago, offsite back up was only for the mid to large sized businesses, today we can all access the same service and pay less than $6 per month for it. How is that for technology making our life easier.
Data recovery with a service like Carbonite is relatively simple. Once you have your PC back up and running, you simply log into your Carbonite account, reinstall Carbonite and then begin the restore process by selecting which files you want to download. If you want access to your files before your PC is ready, then use the Remote File Access service to download the files off the internet.
I have had a my hard drive crash a few times and had most of the data recovered. It cost about $50, but I did lose quite a bit of data. Thankfully I now use Carbonite so I have my important files backed up offsite automatically for me.
