Stop! What Not to Do if You Need to Recover Data

You were having a great day at work and then all of a sudden it happened. You lost access to your company’s data. Data that you’re responsible for. Whether you mistakenly executed a command that wiped data clean off your system, whether a scheduled upgrade made everything vanish, or whether a hard drive suffered a really badly timed failure, you need to fix the problem–fast.

But please don’t hit the internet for advice. Unless you want that advice to make things worse.

The internet can be a great resource, but for every golden nugget of advice zipping through cyberspace you’ll find a hundred lumps of coal.

Don’t Open the Hard Drive

There is nothing that you can do inside the hard drive. A hard drive should only be opened in a clean room by an expert. And no, giving your office a once-over with a can of Lysol won’t work. Clean rooms are controlled environments where airborne particles, temperature, and humidity are strictly controlled.

Don’t Download Recovery Tools

It’s really tempting to download recovery tools for a quick fix, and some of the most popular computer advice sites around give glowing recommendations for several recovery tool options. But if you download one of these tools, you could overwrite your disk and make it impossible to recover the data you need.

Save the DIY approach for your home computer and its archive of cat memes. Seriously, though, don’t even think about rolling up your sleeves and getting to work on your company’s data.

And this should go without saying but let’s say it anyway. Don’t download any pirated software that promises to restore your data. Best case scenario – it won’t work; worst case scenario – it will give you a virus or other security breach to deal with.

So, What Should You Do?

The only responsible option for recovering data is to bring in the professionals. A data recovery service will usually be able to restore your data and allow you to breathe easy again.

They see problems of this nature all the time and they have the clean rooms and expertise to put things right.

Step 1 – Google “data recovery” followed by your city, so if you’re in LA, search for data recovery Los Angeles, and so on. Some companies offer a mail in service but you should only use a service that will come to your site to pick up the hard drives or allow you to go to their office and drop them off. If you use the mail or a courier service, you run the risk of the drives going missing.

Step 2 – Do exactly what the person on the other end of the phone tells you to do.

Step 3 – Let your boss know that everything is under control.

Step 4 – Have a cup of coffee while you wait for your specialist to arrive.

Step 5 – Rest assured that everything will be back to normal in a few days.

Once your recovery specialist arrives, they will examine the problem, give you a quote for the work, and let you know how much of the data they expect to recover.

Data is notoriously difficult to lose for good, it’s why the police and other security agencies can recover the data that criminals thought they had erased forever!

Once your data has been restored and your systems are running smoothly again, it would be a good idea to consider finding a robust backup solution that automatically saves your data, just in case there’s a next time.

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