What is data recovery?

Data recovery is the process used by IT professionals in order that they may salvage data which has either been damaged, corrupted, failed or is not accessible using the normal methods to gain access to it.  Data is often recovered from storage forms such as hard disk drives, CDs, DVDs, RAID, storage tapes or other forms of electronic equipment.  The damage can have been caused either physically or logically when then prevents the host operating system being able to mount it.  But data recovery is often used as a term to describe the process where a person can then retrieve and secure certain deleted information that was stored on a particular media format (as those described above) for the purposes that it can be looked at forensically.

Some of the recovery process can be achieved through the use of very simple types of hardware or software but in some cases it may require a data recovery specialist to complete the task.    Generally in most cases when data is needing to be recovered it is because it has been erased accidentally from the system. Normally if this is the case then the most of the data can be recovered using a number of different techniques in order to achieve this.  However data may also get lost or damaged because a virus has been able to gain access to the system or it has been incorrectly stored and damage is caused to it because say the area where it is being stored has become flooded.

Unfortunately as is often the case in order to recover data from any kind of system can not be carried out whilst it is running.  Therefore it is quite common for a person trying to recover data will use a specialized boot disk, live CD or live USB in order to do this.  These items contain not just the minimum operating system in order to run the system but a set of tools which will then help the person to recover the data that has become either lost or damaged.  Today many developers have now included within the operating system installer a set of data recovery tools as well.  This therefore makes the task for those who have lost or erased a file by mistake to recover it more easily.