Don’t Panic! You’ve been busy working on that deadline project for weeks and you suddenly find that you have accidently deleted a major document that is essential and full of days or weeks of research results, what do you do? Some people will try data recovery software to start with but this can harm your data surprisingly enough.

There are some important rules to ensure you follow or are aware of when using data recovery tools for recovering lost files:

When using data recovery software it is important that the software is installed on a different computer to the one that you are trying to recover. Installing further data to the same storage device that you have lost your files on may cause the lost data to be overwritten, making it irretrievable.

Secondly, has your drive been making any strange sounds recently, if the answer is yes your hard drive may be failing so a recovery company would be better suited to recover your data to be on the safe side.

Next, try to use trial software, all good data recovery applications offer a free trial version that allows you to determine if your files are recoverable before you make a purchase. You may not be able to see the content of the files but the presence of the file name should indicate whether it is recoverable or not.

Assuming your drive is exhibiting no signs of failure and having used the software you have managed to find the file (intact) and it is recoverable you’ll now need to save the data somewhere. Under no circumstances save it back to the same drive as you may end up saving the data on back to the same area that the data is being recovered from resulting in a corrupted file.

Often data recovery software will allocate the space on the hard drive before recovering the file, once the space has been allocated the data may already be partially over-written.

If your data is simply too valuable to trust in the hands of software, particularly if you are not familiar with the data recovery software and the manner in which it works, it is sensible to contact a data recovery professional.

The cost of data recovery is nowhere near (or shouldn’t be ) the cost it used to be due to advances in technology and often you will find that once you deduct the cost of any software purchase and deduct the time to learn what you are trying to do the extra cost of having your data recovered by a professional is not too bad at all.

And lastly, if you choose to use a data recovery company, it is always worth ascertaining what will happen if the drive fails during a recovery process, will they be able to fix it themselves in a proper clean room environment or will they need to send it away to another data recovery company?

If they do not have the facilities for hard drive recovery in a clean room environment or there is any sign of mechanical failure then a main data recovery company will be your best option.