Data recovery isn’t an exact
science, and it’s not always
that intuitive either. Data
recovery specialists offer
additional, if expensive,
services to help you get
critical files back should
you need them. Some data
recovery tools allow you
to make use of remote
assistance specialists to
help guide you through the
process of data recovery.
The second, most
expensive form of data
recovery is getting data
off physically damaged
drives. If your drive isn’t
being detected or making
clicking or grinding noises,
it’s likely this is down to the
heads crashing or motor
failure. Recovery from these
drives is only possible usingspecialist labs known as
cleanrooms, where the drive
can be physically opened
and the platters upon which
your data is stored can be
connected to equipment
from which your data can be
recovered.
One of the longest-
established companies is
Ontrack (www.ontrack.com),
which offers both remote
data recovery services for
non-damaged drives as well
as full recovery services for
non-working ones. In either
event, Ontrack will perform
an evaluation of the drive and
offers an optional evaluation
report that reveals what can
be recovered from your drive
before providing you with
a final quote for the cost of
retrieving that data.The thorny question of
cost now arises. Recovering
data from a damaged hard
drive isn’t cheap, running
into the hundreds or even
thousands of dollars. Proven
Data provides a rough
breakdown of what you can
expect to pay on its blog(www.provendatarecovery.
com/blog/data-recovery-
cost-rates-fees/). Unless
the data you’ve lost is both
irreplaceable and priceless,
you may be better off writing
your lost files off and finally
implementing that backup
plan you’ve been putting off.GET PROFESSIONAL HELPGET PROFESSIONAL HELPGET PROFESSIONAL HELP
Specialists can recover data from damaged drives – at a price.for files. Use wildcards for fuzzy
matches or to search by file type
(such as *.png).
The Free Edition allows you to
recover up to 4,000 files from the
current search at one time. After
you reach your limit, quit the app,
reload and repeat the search, or
alternatively, upgrade to the paid-
for edition. The Express version
costs $20 for a single year’s license
or you can pay $48 for an unlimited
license.
In the meantime, select your
files or folders by ticking them in
either pane, then choose Tools
> Recover to open the recovery
dialog. Click the Size button to get
an estimate of how much space
your recovered items will require,
then click ‘...’ to select a different
drive that has sufficient space
upon which to recover them. Make
sure ‘include deleted’ is selected if
applicable and finally click OK.RECOVER LOST PARTITIONS
If you’ve lost an entire partition or
drive, another option is to try and
restore the drive without needing
to recover anything from it. In
the same way that Windows only
deletes a file’s header as opposed
to the entire file, when a partitionis deleted or formatted, only the
partition information (type, file
system, size, and location) is wiped.
Armed with the right tools, you can
restore this just as you would any
other file.
In the past, partitioning tools
offered free partition detection
and recovery, but now, along
with many other useful features,
they’ve locked them behind paid-
for upgrades. Thankfully, thereare plenty of free options available.
Before diving in, however, take a
forensic drive image with Macrium
Reflect Free, to give yourself a
failsafe should something go
horrendously wrong with your
partition recovery attempts. To do
this, take an image of the entire
drive (not any selected partitions)
and be sure to click Advanced to
check ‘Make an exact copy of the
partition(s)’.Use Lazesoft’s
File Manager to
copy files from
drives outside
of Windows.data recovery
46 MAXIMU MPC MAR 2022
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