| #ffffff;" /> | | | | among users. Data loss can have devastating |
| Digital devices are built around a silicon | | | | consequences for banks, insurance firms, R&D |
| micro-processor that contains millions of microscopic | | | | companies, etc. which are heavy users of information |
| transistors. These enable the chip to carry out an | | | | technology. For individuals, it may lead to a lot of |
| unbelievable amount of calculations per second, which | | | | inconvenience as they lose their presentations, |
| is thousands of time faster than the human brain. | | | | manuscripts, emails and treasured family photos. |
| Because of this, computers are formidable force | | | | Data that has got lost due to mild software errors |
| multipliers. They can do any task much quicker than it | | | | can be easily recovered by using “do it |
| would have been done by us humans. It is any | | | | yourself” (DIY) recovery software. There are |
| wonder then that there is hardly any home or office | | | | many companies with a presence online which sell |
| today in the world where digital devices do not have | | | | DIY software through their websites. You can make |
| pride of place. | | | | a purchase through you credit and download the |
| Digital devices can only process information only if it | | | | software to your hard disk. After this, you can follow |
| is in a digital form, that is, it is represented as a string | | | | the instructions and proceed to recover the missing |
| of ones and zeros. This digital data that is fed to the | | | | file. |
| processor needs to be copied and stored | | | | DIY software is not of much help in severe cases of |
| somewhere safe and sound till it is needed for | | | | data loss such as corruption of data structure or any |
| further processing by the operating system. For this | | | | case of hardware error in the storage media. When |
| purpose, there are many storage devices that have | | | | faced with such a situation, there is no alternative |
| been introduced in the market. Hard disks are the | | | | but to take the media to a professional |
| primary storage devices inside computers. Nothing | | | | data-recovery company. |
| can come close to them in terms of the combination | | | | Professional recovery companies have a technical |
| of random access and storage capacity that they | | | | team that is equipped with special machines and |
| provide. There are many removable storage media | | | | customised software to recover data from damaged |
| available too, such as optical disks (both CDs and | | | | storage media. The technicians diagnose the problem |
| DVDs), USB drives, tape drives and floppy drives. | | | | and then use special procedures to extract the files. |
| Their capacities range from a puny 1.4 MB of a | | | | Professional recovery of files comes out to be quite |
| floppy to about 100 GB for a tape cartridge. | | | | expensive compared to DIY recovery but is |
| Digital data has many advantages. Hundreds of copies | | | | well-worth the price if the data that has got lost is |
| can be made of it instantly. It can easily be sent | | | | crucial to the survival of a company. |
| across wires from one continent to another. It is | | | | One of the most important part of the infrastructure |
| easy to process, create and delete. For all its benefits | | | | of the professional recovery companies is what is |
| though, digital data has one fatal flaw that almost | | | | called a clean room. This is a sealed room with |
| threatens to overshadow all its advantages. It is | | | | restricted access in which the air is constantly |
| volatile and can easily be lost or become inaccessible | | | | cleaned by special filters to purge it of all air-borne |
| due to a variety of hardware or software reasons. A | | | | contaminants. Technicians working in the clean room |
| hard drive may crash. An optical disk may develop | | | | have to wear moon suits so as to avoid |
| scratches over its surface. A USB drive may get | | | | contaminating the air with their hair, sweat, odour or |
| crushed underfoot. Then there are user-inflicted | | | | skin flakes. In a clean room, hard disks can safely be |
| errors. A data file may be deleted by mistake and | | | | opened and exposed for carrying out repairs. |
| the recycle bin emptied. The entire storage media | | | | There are two types of cases where the data just |
| may accidentally be reformatted by the user before | | | | cannot be recovered, either by DIY software or |
| it is realised that some important file was residing on | | | | professional recovery. The first is when a hard disk |
| it. | | | | crashes and its read / write head furrows the |
| Once data gets lost, it leads to a lot of consternation | | | | data-recording surface. The other is over-writing. |