26/04/2021
Lost data - not really!
I was recently called to a customer, who’s laptop had crashed resulting in a complete failure of the hard drive. The issue was, not that it was a virus which had caused the crash, but the photos which could not be accessed whereby over 10 years of images had been potentially lost forever. I say this as I was the last person in a list of others who had been asked to retrieve the data as those before me had failed.
There are three lessons to be learned, one is backup all your important data to a separate disc, the second is ask someone who knows what they are doing to retrieve the lost data. The third is to follow;
My customers disc is beyond future use as there are several damaged sectors but fortunately, I could format the disc and wipe off all the surface data on the disc, leaving a seemingly blank disc. But with some ingenuity and very good software I could begin a deep scan of the disc and to the delight of the customer I was able to recover 20,000 plus images, plus all the documents and other historical data for the past 8 years, which most computer users would not be aware was there, or accessible!
I explained, everything you see on your computer screen from the moment you acquire it, and some you don’t see, but has been downloaded onto the disc, is imprinted on the disc and even after it has been deleted and the disc formatted, an image of the data remains and is retrievable.
Large storage discs, which are rarely used to capacity, are ideal as the data is hardly ever over written and remains clean, without corruption and easy to retrieve. Perfect for data retrieval when your data is seemingly lost forever. Equally, prefect for the thief who may access your disc after you have disposed of your computer and learn your inner most secrets, passwords and bank details.
Sadly, with today’s multi-media life style, data harvesting has become a very profitable business. Therefore, the third lesson must be to ensure the data on your system is fully irradicated correctly before innocently giving it to a 3rd party or sending it to a recycling centre to be disposed of.
For help and FREE telephone advice contact
Brian Meadows, Nofix-Nofee Computer Repair Services
Tel: 01288 381061 or email: [email protected]
