Let's see if harddisk recovery can solve your data loss situation.

Harddisk recovery have saved many computer users from disastrous data loss, which is fairly commonplace in todays hi-tech computerized world. If you are the unfortunate victim of missing or corrupted files from your hard drive; or if you cannot access your files because your computer refuses to boot up to the desktop, then harddisk recovery just may be able to help you out.

What Are Your Options?

Harddisk recovery come in software and services, but before you get started downloading anything, or calling with questions about procedures and costs, let's make sure you have done the obvious.

Free Harddisk Recovery

The first thing that you should do is to ensure that you have not inadvertently deleted the file yourself. Check the recycle bin and then do a thorough file search of your entire hard drive to see if the file in question simply has not been misplaced.

If your files are nowhere to be found, then you should try a free harddisk recovery software. Needless to say, you often get what you pay for, which means most of these hard disk recovery utilities will generate a less than satisfactory performance.

Because this is a common error, I need to mention that you should not even think about using the restore disk that is included with your computer for data recovery. For example, if you own an Hewlett Packard laptop, a HP recovery disk is included to let you restore your computer back to it's original settings. However, it, or any other restore disk cannot revive your lost data; the only thing that will happen is, your data will be deleted - permanently!

Your Next Inexpensive Option

If the free stuff fails, or if you just do not want to go through the trial and error that it requires, then pursuing more powerful harddisk recovery tools is what you need to do. Of course, these will cost you, but all harddisk recovery programs allow a free trial period. This allows you to at least use the full-version in real-time without paying anything, and then confirming if your files can be recovered before paying up.

What If Software Doesn't Work?

After you have exhausted all the disk data recovery software possibilities, you can still send your hard drive to a company that specializes in data recovery services, although costs do increase. Since this is the only alternative available to you at this point, you have to decide if the cost of harddisk recovery is worth the value of the lost data.

Determining the cost of harddisk recovery may seem simple, but a few questions and insights just might help you make a more informed decision. Can the data be replaced? If so, at what time cost, financial cost? When you derive a figure, double it. This is because the time spent recreating the data means lost time creating something new ? the opportunity cost of doing something else. This should help you know if harddisk recovery is worth it?

The Short Story

Lost data can be a source of much frustration and grief. Often undelete freeware is not of any help at all, but that does not mean you should give it a go. The more reliable solutions cost, but are usually cheap enough to justify the cost. You can also rely on services when the data justifies the cost increase. You can begin by reviewing several realiable harddisk recovery and related services on this site.