Aside from my father, everybody I know uses a computer on a fairly regular basis. Whether for entertainment, social networking, looking up information, business, gaming, etc., many people rely on technology to assist them in their daily lives.
Computers offer us the ability to do things that were once thought impossible, but what happens when you experience hardware failure? It's a reality that computers experience problems from time to time. When my hard drive crashed, I regretted not having backed up my data on a regular basis. This is a quick story of data loss, data recovery, and learning not to take my computer for granted.
A few weeks ago I got the dreaded blue screen on my Windows-based computer. After running some basic diagnostic software, I concluded that my hard drive had been corrupted and needed to be replaced.
I had the ability to install a new hard drive and reload my operating system; however, recovering my data proved to be far more difficult than I expected.The first thing I did was get my computer back in working order so I could research how to recover my data. The most important data for me was my email history from my Outlook program. I had saved my older emails in an Outlook archive (called a .pst file). This file was saved locally on my hard drive and was inaccessible from any other machine, even if I were to log into Outlook on another computer. I came across some research about a data recovery company known as Data Numen, which offered an inbox repair tool that is able to scan the corrupt Outlook personal folders (.pst) files and data in the event of file corruption.
I was happy to know that my Outlook files could be restored, but I was also hoping to save a few pictures of which I did not have a backup.
Before relying on Data Numen to help me recover my .pst files I thought I'd try a little trick I picked up while working in the computer industry as a teenager. I put my hard drive in the freezer (in a sealed container to avoid liquid damage, of course). After a few hours I hooked it up as an external drive and was able to copy over my photos before the drive cooled off. The way the freezing method works is by hampering the drive's ability to let the needle inside the drive flex enough to cause skipping. It is when the needle skips that the drive experiences issues. I don't recommend this method; freezing a drive can cause irreversible damage to it. It happened to work for me, but this is not the norm.In the end, I was able to get my photos recovered. I left the drive hooked up to my computer and it's still functioning to this day. It seems that whatever caused the corruption in the first place has ceased, allowing the drive to function as normal. I was able to transfer my .pst files and all other important data to the new internal drive.
Even though I lucked out in the end, this whole process made me think about my data backup procedures (or lack thereof). My advice to you is to make constant backups of your data. Your hard drive can crash at any time. If it does, and you require data to be recovered, please seek help from a company that specializes in data recovery. Doing things the correct way, even if it costs more money, typically has the best end result.
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