Lopes-Graca

Should you start up your computer and instead of the familiar Windows welcome screen be greeted with a bright blue Windows error message screen you may safely assume that your computer’s hard disk drive has suffered a logic crash. What this means is that important files used to start up your computer and allow you to open its internal hard disk drive have gone missing. These files because they are used so often are subject to degradation as a part of normal startup and shutdown. Furthermore, even the slightest power loss during either of these procedures increases the likelihood of a hard disk drive logic crash.

There are two solutions for this problem that will allow you to recover deleted files. The first is to remove your hard disk drive and connect it to a working computer. The operating system on that drive will then allow you to read and copy your stored files. The second solution is to reload your Windows operating system. This will allow your computer to start up but the process will have removed all of your stored files. You then must use a data recovery tool to undelete and recover all of the contents of your hard disk drive.

If you hope to recover digital photos from your computer’s internal hard disk drive or any memory card connected to your camera there are several software tools you may need to assist you. Plus, you are going to need a little common sense so that you can play detective and track down your lost or damaged photos. Let us begin with the common sense aspect of how to recover photos.

If the transfer of photos from your camera or its memory card downloading to your computer was interrupted for any reason you may assume that many photos did not reach their target destination and of those that did many may be damaged and incomplete. So your search for the original file of your photos will begin at the place from which you attempted to transfer the files. This can either be an SD card, memory stick or if you are simply transferring from one location to another a USB flash drive.

If you are using Microsoft Word and suddenly are faced with a power outage you’ll be surprised upon restarting your computer to learn that in the very instant that power was cut from your PC Microsoft Word automatically saved a version of your work. Just restart your computer and open Microsoft Word. In the left hand box you be given the option of reloading your last worked on project. This is a great solution for those times when you are not saving your work on a regular enough basis and are taken by surprise with a power outage.

But this feature will not help you if you consciously close your work without saving it. In this situation as with any instance where you do not save your progress or new work when dealing with a Microsoft Office product you will need to use a Microsoft Office file recovery tool. These tools will allow you to recover deleted Word document files even if you forgot to save changes or new work.

You might ask, why would anyone ever purposely delete a partition? There are actually two reasons to delete a partition and they are somewhat intertwined. Whenever we go to reload our Windows operating system we are prompted by the text Windows installation procedure as to whether we would like to install the operating system on to a new partition or an existing one. If we choose the latter is then suggested that we delete the partition so as to make a cleaner install. At this time we seldom remember that deleting a partition also removes from that partition all files.

Another instance where we may delete a partition on purpose is in a case where our computer has suffered a hard drive crash. In order to reinstate the drive and make our Windows PC operational again we must reload the operating system. Doing so deletes all of the files stored on our hard drive and in every partition. When this happens we can use partition recovery software to locate and recover any important files on the partition. This process is known as deleted partition recovery.

In looking over potential companies to purchase an external hard drive from I noticed there are but a few worthwhile selections. These are Western Digital, Maxtor, and Transcend. To be frank, my experience with Western Digital external hard drives also known sometimes and book drives has been somewhat disappointing. The unit’s work well under perfect conditions but the moment one gives them the slightest bump the head of the disk drive seems to freeze up permanently, rendering the unit worthless.

I noticed that Transcend products are built to be a little more durable and I have opted to purchase their external hard drive. Of course Transcend drive products are no more protected from file damage and accidental deletion than any other type of drive. For this problem we must use a program to recover data from external hard drive storage. This will recover deleted files from Transcend drive units as well as those made by all the popular book drive manufacturers.

Often I am asked why Windows recovery tools will not work on Mac computers. Aside from the fact that many versions of Mac computers use processors that are completely incompatible with Windows binary code, the greater issue lies in access to hard drive storage. The Mac OS X operating system accesses files on the hard drive through a three step process. Those being disk initialization, disk verification and disk access. Windows uses one step directly allowing access to files.

Even if one built a Mac recovery tool that could connect to the Mac hard drive from the Windows platform it would still fail when met with the disk verification process. Tools for Mac recovery have the innate ability to leapfrog the disc verification step and directly open Mac files. Of course these tools are also designed to load directly onto the Mac platform and from their operate so as to also assist in file recovery on any universal application or connected external device.

Certain types of digital media storage remain popular due to their ability to handle complicated file types without access corruption. An example of this would be a memory stick or a memory stick pro. Though created some 10 years ago, these particular solid state digital media devices are still very popular with digital photo enthusiasts.

The main reason for this popularity is that a memory stick generally has a fast transfer rate of data for download and usually does not result in excess file corruption during transfer. However occasionally we do have the need to recover photos from corrupted memory stick storage. We do this using the same tool we use to recover lost data from flash drive media. This is a digital media or digital photo recovery tool. One must remember though that photo recovery tools are operating system specific. This means if you use a Windows based PC you will need a Windows based photo recovery tool. If you are a Mac user you will need a tool created for Mac photo recovery.

Crashed hard drive recovery can be solved in several different ways. These vary in complexity and the one you choose should depend upon your overall degree of computer technical expertise and skill. The need for crashed hard drive recovery usually arises when we attempt to start up our Windows PC and instead of seeing the familiar welcome screen for Windows are greeted with a bright blue screen and a Windows error message. The message informs us that our computer has suffered a fatal error. That error almost always involves missing files essential to opening of our computer’s hard disk drive.

In theory one should be able to access the hard drive and reload those specifically missing files. However upon reloading the files one will instantly discover that there are still files missing and those file types are unknown. The only way to repair a computer that has suffered a crashed hard drive due to loss of files is to reload the Windows operating system. But before you do this you must use hard disk data recovery software to copy from your computer’s hard drive all of your stored files to safe external digital media.

The best way to recover data is to simply go to our backup files and copy from them our lost information. If one has created an image clone of their entire hard drive on a regular basis, the whole disk drive can be reloaded in under an hour. Very rarely do we have the presence of mind or foresight to backup all of our information immediately prior to a computer malfunction. Further, most file loss is based upon accidental deletion and hence does not occur on a schedule. For this reason there are excellent programs available for deleted files recovery. These programs are designed to locate recently deleted files in an assortment of situations. These situations may include recovery of files from a crashed hard drive, e-mail recovery and even recovery of songs accidentally deleted from your iPod.

There are two means by which software can recover data. The first which is used by most simple data recovery programs is to scan through the underlying coded information on your digital storage and look for popular file extensions such as jpegs and docs. Better programs for data recovery will do much more than this. They will be able to recognize the structure of file and determine its type based on that recognition.