Tips for Effective Data Recovery

Following these tips will help improve your chances of successfully recovering data. Click each tip for additional details.

Key concept: Every time a computer updates information, deleted data is at risk of being overwritten and rendered unrecoverable.

Recover deleted data as soon as you can. When you delete a file, the space on the disk is marked as available for new data. Over time, more new data is written to the disk, and chances increase that data associated with the lost or deleted files will be overwritten.

When critical files are deleted from your system, it is a good practice to create a disk image of the drive and then recover the files from the disk image copy. This is done in case the operating system overwrites your files before recovery.

When a file or folder is deleted, the file contents are not actually erased. The space occupied by the file is marked as free for use, and over time the existing space is used by the operating system for newer files or the expansion of existing files.

With this in mind, it is a good idea to create an emergency disk image of your drive first, then recover the files from there, so that the operating system does not have a chance to overwrite your information.

It is also a good idea to keep regularly updated copies of your drive in a safe place so you always have a perfect, relatively current backup copy of all of your data.

Tip: DO save recovered files to a drive that is different from the drive it originally existed on.

Recovering deleted files to their original location carries with it a risk of compromising the integrity of your data. Recovering to the same drive can overwrite the deleted file as it is being recovered, thereby thwarting the recovery process in its tracks and corrupting your data. Recover to another drive whenever possible.

For best results, DO NOT do the following:

Tip: DO NOT restart your PC after data loss.

Restarting your PC is a disk-intensive process that causes the system to read and write data to the hard drives.

Tip: DO NOT save any documents or files.

Saving documents and files writes information to the computer's disk drives.

Tip: DO NOT start or use any programs other than Search and Recover.

Starting programs can cause the system to commit data that is cached in memory to the hard drive.

Tip: DO NOT (for email recovery) compact or compress your mailbox.

Most email programs provide tools to either save old messages to an archive or compact folders to conserve disk space. However, there is a greater chance of email recovery when email messages are not compacted or compressed. These tools interfere with the ability of Search and Recover to find deleted email messages.

Do not compact or compress mailbox files unless you are running low on storage space.
Do not compact or compress if you suspect that there are lost or deleted files in your mailbox that you want to retrieve.
Disable automatic compression or compaction of mailbox files. You can do this on the E-mail Recovery tab of the Search and Recover Options window.