When Computer Hardware Breaks Look for Lost Data

By Pat Boardman

Computers don´t last forever but it´s a chore to replace them every three years whether they need it or not; that would take discipline and the willingness to devote the resources to following such a routine just to be on the safe side. The alternative isn´t pleasant though - you will learn about data loss on the day it happens at the computer´s leisure by waiting for it to wear out on its own. Apple users can perform back up easily on their iPads and iPhones as they go but other systems take more conscious effort in Windows and Linux environments.

Computers are machines after all so many things can go wrong besides the errors of the human operator. A combination of failures can happen around spinning parts where factors of heat, motion, and worn materials around the read-write disks cause the system to fail, possibly after an electrical surge. Your personal and business computer files could become inaccessible and it may be unsure at first how much got backed up. Hopefully you had some redundancy and a regular backup schedule, but Murphy´s Law seems to crop up without fail when computers suddenly become toasted and a recent backup may not have been performed that month.

There may have been accidental overwrites where limited amounts of data were lost due to an honest mistake or there may have been a disgruntled employee who erased data maliciously. We live in an age with an increasing number of natural disasters; floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, solar flares - a growing number of incidents where Mother Nature gets a crack at costing your business money by sending lighting bolts at your mainframes. When you have to send repair teams to your computers the data must be accounted for.

You can only find something once you know it´s missing so the way to get organized at a computer crash is to have the person most familiar with the data entry get the logs organized and prepare a report on the situation. The state of the hardware must be determined; the identity of every possible hacker, virus, malware, etc. should be planted in the conscious of those in the IT department. Hardware failure may mean that the drive will need a trip to the cleanroom lab for hard disk recovery and data retrieval.

The best rule of thumb is to bring your case to the experts for data file recovery: at least you won´t have yourself to blame if something goes wrong. Failed computer motors and head crashes are an SEP - you can tell which category your case is by first looking at the flashing light on the computer to see if it´s on or not. If the light isn´t blinking then the problem is one for a technician. The logical structures of the file systems in that case would be damaged, making it impossible to re-build the files using the data recovery software alone.

If the light is blinking and it was perhaps a Trojan Horse that needed to be removed, then the operator can normally get the operating system reinstalled and the computer will boot up and all the files can be recovered.

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About The Author
Pat Boardman is an SEO consultant writing in respect to CBL UK data recovery services computer file recovery with labs in Newcastle upon Tyne serving the British Isles and Ireland providing RAID data recovery uk with high-tech forensic file recovery for hard drives, laptops, RAID arrays, disks, tapes, and servers.