Hint: Please rely on the following guide if you need to recover deleted files.įile system formatting can be started by mistake, for example, as a result of specifying a wrong disk partition or on account of mishandling a storage (e.g. For performance reasons storage space is not wiped immediately which makes the actual file content remain on the disk until this storage space is reused for saving a new file. The main purpose of file deletion is to release storage space used by the file for storing a new file. Hint: To learn more about file systems and their types, please, refer to the basics of file systems. For instance, in Windows the FAT file system marks file directory entries as "unused" and destroys the information about the allocation of the file (except for the beginning of the file), in NTFS only the file entry is marked as "unused", the record is deleted from the directory and the disk space is also marked as "unused" most Linux/Unix file systems destroy the file descriptor (information about the file location, file type, file size, etc.) and mark the disk space as "free". The most common causes of data loss include:Įach file system acts differently when deleting a file. In contrast, the wrong actions can lead to the irreversible destruction of the information.
That is why it is highly important to understand the nature of the particular loss instance and know what can be done in each specific scenario. The most typical cases of data lossīy and large, the overall success of a data rescue procedure depends heavily on the choice of the right method for retrieval and its timely application. Physical repairs are conducted by specialists in the most severe instances, for example, when some mechanical or electrical parts of the drive no longer work properly – in this case, all the measures are directed towards a one-time extraction of the critical content, without the possibility of continued usage of the affected device. A software-based approach is employed in the majority of cases and involves the use of specialized utilities able to interpret the logical structure of the problem storage, read out the required data and deliver it to the user in a usable form for further copying. In general, data recovery techniques are divided into two types: software-based and ones involving the repair or replacement of the damaged hardware components in a laboratory setting. Also, none of the existing restore methods can cope with the cases of permanent erasure which occurs when some other information occupies its storage space – under such circumstances, the lost files can only be retrieved from an external backup. For instance, data recovery doesn't cover the situations when a file has never been written to a persistent storage, like documents that were created but could not be eventually saved to the hard disk drive due to a power failure. Different approaches are used to regain the missing files, yet, only on the condition that their content is present somewhere within the storage. Data recovery can be defined as a process of obtaining the information located on a storage device that cannot be accessed by the standard means due to its previous deletion or certain damage to the digital medium.