The different hard disk data recovery possibilties explained in plain English.

Hard disk data recovery may be somewhat of a foreign concept to you; but soon enough, you will know the various solutions that can solve your data loss problems, and what to do with them.

Before explaining your hard disk data recovery options, you need to have some idea of the difference between physical and logical damage to your drive. From this, you can choose the most appropriate category of solutions, and then narrow that search into a few good hard disk data recovery choices to consider.

Breaking Down the Technical Jargon

Logical damage simply means there are no mechanical problems with your media. In this case, hard disk data recovery software are helpful in reclaiming your data.

Physical damage is best described as your drive is making noises that don't sound right. If you have that gut feeling that something is wrong, shut it off immediately and don't even consider using any utility on it to recover the data. For safety purposes, call a qualified hard disk data recovery specialist for more information - more on that subject in a moment.

Hard Disk Data Recovery Software

Cheap, quick, and convenient are the first three benefits that come to mind for using a utilty to recover data yourself. The trick is understanding which one to download and try, because the money-machine marketers have broken down traditional full-scale hard disk data recovery utilties into sold-separate versions, to upsale and cross-sell you, confusing you, me and anybody that isn't a hard disk data recovery technician.

Here is the quick litmus test to understand which hard disk data recovery programs are which: If the price is under about $75 U.S. you are looking at an undelete utility. Over this benchmark up to about $ 125 U.S., you are looking at a full-version harddrive recovery software. You might also find a solution that costs several hundred bucks. This is for the extreme cases, and is mainly utilized by technicians, although individuals use them, too.

Differentiating the Services

If hard disk data recovery applications are not suitable for the task, finding a data recovery specialist or computer repair generalist is your next objective. Let's talk about the ups and downs of using each one, and then you can decide which one to use.

The tech shop in your area may know what disk recovery is, and may have even successfully recovered data at the entry level using software. However, the primary advantage of hiring one of these guys over the hard disk data recovery expert is they are located around the corner; and their cost structure is usually less expensive than a professional harddrive recovery service.

With that in mind, harddisk recovery means that you are at the end of your rope in terms of being able to get your data recovered. So, when using one of the local shops in your area, heed the following advice with great care: When dropping off your media, ask them to make and give you a sector image of it before they go off trying to recover the data. The reason I say this is because most of these technicians will go straight to the recovery phase trying to get your data back as fast as possible, without considering the ramifications to your business if they accidentally do something harmful to your data.

My point is this: Once you have a image of your data, you are safe to let them do whatever they want with the other drive. Until then, make them protect the integrity of your data by first producing you a backup copy.

Now For the Pros

I define a professional as a person who eats and sleeps hard disk data recovery; and can also do computer forensics, which is beyond the scope of our subject. Finding one is trickier than you think, because once again, the marketeers have cross-sold disk recovery terms on every technicians website to the point of having to differentiate between millions of choices invoked for the single phrase hard disk data recovery.

My next fast test to determine how to narrow the list of hard disk data recovery services, without having to know any technical terms, is to find the software. What do I mean? If you find a firm that only produces and sells hard disk data recovery products, in addition to cleanroom data recovery services, then it takes away all the computer guys around the corner, who also do other related computer repairs. This leaves just the hard disk data recovery professionals for you to chose from.