We are sometimes spoiled these days when it comes to data and software on our personal computers. We can store so much of it on one disk drive and we can retrieve it very quickly. And these personal computers just hum along for week after week with no problems whatsoever. We are even prudent in backing up our "My Documents" folder to a re-writeable CD once in awhile.
Until one day, you computer does not boot up. You take it to a computer repair shop and they replace the disk drive, reload Windows, and deliver it back to you. You then reload your Microsoft Office, copy back your "My Documents Folder" from your CD-RW disc and you should be back in business. Except a short time later you find out that you are missing that spreadsheet that took days to build. What happened? Then you remember that you had stored the spreadsheet on the C:spreadsheets folder and not "My Documents." The spreadsheet and all the work that went into it is gone—forever.
The above scenario happens way too often in today's world that is so dependent on computer information. The point you should see here is that even though the user was doing a backup, the backup did not include everything required in order to one day do a successful recovery. While our example is simple, imagine a computer where there are data files stored all over the disk in many different folders other than "My Documents." And in most cases a couple of CD-RW disks are too small to backup everything. You need to acquire and implement a backup system and strategy that gives you the space required to store all your critical files plus one that allows you to backup and recover quickly.
Backups are typically done using tape or external hard disk drives. The latter is becoming more and more popular because of the speed of the backup media. An external hard drive can basically be a mirror of your internal hard drive. However, you don't have the redundancy (multiple copies) of disk files that you could get with tape unless you purchase several disk drives (which could be expensive). But, with an external drive, you can just copy folders from your system drive to your external drive and you have a quick data backup that is very easy to recover.
The other long-time popular method for doing backups is tape. Tape backups have been around for a long time and for good reason. You can store an incredible amount of data on one tape and you get the benefit of being able to take that tape and store it at some alternate location so that you can recover in the event of some physical disaster such as fire, theft, or flood. If you stored external disk drives offsite, you would lose the benefit of being able to use that drive. There are a couple of drawbacks to tape. One is that tape breaks much easier than an external drive. The other is that tape drives come with proprietary software in order to compress and transfer data to the vendor's model of drive. In other words, they are not native to the operating system like Microsoft Windows. But it usually is only a matter of installing the software on the computer system you are recovering the data to.
There are many variations to tape and external disk drive backups but the important thing to remember is that you cannot recover if you do not properly back up. You should periodically test your recovery plan so that you know it is ready when you need it.
Copyright (c) 2008 Thomas Husnik
You have just returned from the vacation of a life time and downloaded your pictures to your computer, typed up the diary you kept while vacationing and drafted many emails to your friends about the trip, now it is all gone, thanks to some incomprehensible computer glitch. Understandably, losing documents that meant time and significance is quite frustrating. However, occasionally not all is lost.
Start at the Recycle Bin of your computer. If your file is there, the recovery will be easy. If not, try a tool that will undelete a file. Although this may find your file, it may not find every part of the file. In this case the file will be corrupt and not likely much use to you. If your file is large, the chance of corruption is higher than that of a small file, simply because more information groups have the chance to get lost. For example, photos are often larger files than text documents, thus lost photos can be difficult to find.
Losing a photo can be slightly more traumatizing because often a photo is more valuable than words, and secondly, photos can be more difficult to recover. Once the deleted photo file is used more than once, a recovery program often does not know what it is supposed to be looking for. Since the program will not help you right away, you need to know what it is you want to find. Do you know what kind of file it was? JPG, TIFF, GIF? The more you know about the deleted image, the higher your chances are of finding the image. Even if you find the image, it is likely to be corrupt. At this point it is difficult to put together your image.
E-mails function in a way not like photos or text files. The chances of getting back a deleted e mail depends on the type of e mail program you have. Most programs have a Trash or Deleted folder. Typically you set how frequently the e mail service deletes everything in these folders. If you have a habit of deleting e mails accidentally, set this option for the greatest length of time possible. It is very simple to recover a deleted e mail from the Deleted folder; a click of the mouse will usually suffice. However, if the Deleted folder has been emptied by your e mail service, it is unlikely you will be able to find and recover the deleted e mail.
Beyond these options are special programs and offered services to assist you with recovering files. Recovery programs exist especially for photos, Microsoft Word and Excel files, e mails and other file types. You also have the option of hiring a human specialist to find your files. You often get what you pay for with all these services. A human specialist can be costly and recommended only for use with extremely valuable files.
After you have spent much time, and possibly money on this project, be sure to save your file and save again. Save on disks, USBs, hard drives and servers if these options are available to you. If this file is changed often, remember to resave the file in all the original locations to ensure you can always access a recent version of your work.
Both Thomas Husnik & Gregg Hall are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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