Search
  • For Individuals
      « Back
    • Windows Data Recovery

      Recovers lost or deleted Office documents, emails, presentations & multimedia files.

      Free Standard Professional Premium

    • Mac Data Recovery

      Recovers deleted files, photos, videos etc. on Mac.

      Free Standard Professional Premium

    • Photo Recovery

      Recover photos, videos, & audio files from all cameras and storage on Windows or Mac.

      Free Standard Professional Premium

    • Video Repair
    • Photo Repair
    • iPhone Data Recovery
  • For Business
      « Back
    • Email Repair & Converter

      Repair for Exchange Converter for EDB Converter for OST Converter for NSF Converter for OST MBOX Repair for Outlook

    • Database & File Repair

      Repair for MS SQL Repair for Access Repair for QuickBooks Software Repair for Excel Extractor for Windows Backup Repair for MySQL

    • Data Recovery & Erasure

      Data Recovery Professional Data Recovery Technician Mac Recovery for Technician Virtual Machine Recovery File Erasure Software Mobile Erasure Drive Erasure File Eraser Software File Eraser Software for Mac

    • Toolkit

      Exchange Toolkit Outlook Toolkit File Repair Toolkit MS SQL Toolkit Data Recovery Toolkit

    • Forensic

      Email Forensic Exchange Auditor Log Analyzer for MySQL Log Analyzer for MS SQL

  • Store
  • Partners
  • Services
  • Offers
  • Support

 

  • For Individuals
    DIY software for anyone who works with data.

    Windows Data Recovery Recovers lost or deleted Office documents, emails, presentations & multimedia files

    Free Standard Professional Premium

    Mac Data Recovery Especially for Mac users to recover deleted documents and multimedia files from macOS

    Free Standard Professional Premium

    Video Repair Windows Mac Repair multiple corrupt videos in one go. Supports MP4, MOV & other formats.

    StandardPremium

    Photo Recovery Windows Mac Recover photos, videos, & audio files from all cameras and storage on Windows or Mac.

    Standard Professional Premium

    iPhone Data Recovery Windows Mac Recover deleted photos, videos, contacts, messages etc. directly from iPhone & iPad

    Recover Erase Toolkit

    Photo Repair Windows Mac Repair multiple corrupt photos in one go. Supports JPEG & other formats.

    Standard Professional Premium


  • For Business
    • Email Repair
    • Email Converter
    • File Repair
    • Data Recovery & Erasure
    • Toolkit
    • Forensic

    Exchange Repair Repair corrupt EDB file & export mailboxes to Live Exchange or Office 365

    Outlook PST Repair Repair corrupt PST & recover all mailbox items including deleted emails & contacts

    OLM Repair Repair Outlook for Mac (OLM) 2011 & 2016 backup files & recover all mailbox items

    Exchange Toolkit Repair EDB & Exchange backup file to restore mailboxes, convert OST to PST, & convert EDB to PST

    Active Directory Repair Repair corrupt Active Directory database (Ntds.dit file) & extract all objects in original form

    EDB to PST Convert online & offline EDB file & extract all mailbox items including Public Folders in PST

    OST to PST Convert inaccessible OST file & extract all mailbox items including deleted emails in PST

    NSF to PST Convert IBM Notes NSF file & export all mailbox items including emails & attachments to PST

    MBOX to PST Convert MBOX file of Thunderbird, Entourage & other clients, & export mailbox data to PST

    OLM to PST Convert Outlook for Mac Data File (OLM) & export all mailbox data to PST in original form

    GroupWise to PST Convert GroupWise mail & export all mailbox items - emails, attachments, etc. - to PST

    EML to PST Convert Windows Live Mail (EML) file & export mailbox data - emails, attachments, etc. - to PST

    Office 365 to PST Connect to Office 365 account & export mailbox data to PST and various other formats

    DBX to PST Convert Outlook Express (DBX) file & export all mailbox data - emails, attachments, etc. - to PST

    SQL Repair Repair corrupt .mdf & .ndf files and recover all database components in original form

    Access Repair Repair corrupt .ACCDB and .MDB files & recover all records & objects in a new database

    QuickBooks Repair Repair corrupt QuickBooks® data file & recover all file components in original form

    MySQL Repair Repair MyISAM & InnoDB tables and recover all objects - keys, views, tables, triggers, etc.

    Excel Repair Repair corrupt Excel (.XLS & .XLSX) files and recover tables, charts, chart sheet, etc.

    BKF Repair Repair corrupt backup (BKF, ZIP, VHDX and .FD) files and restore complete data

    Database Converter Interconvert MS SQL, MySQL, SQLite, and SQL Anywhere database files

    PowerPoint Repair Repair corrupt PPT files and restore tables, header, footer, & charts, etc. like new

    File Repair Toolkit Repair corrupt Excel, PowerPoint, Word & PDF files & restore data to original form

    Data Recovery Windows Mac Recover lost or deleted data from HDD, SSD, external USB drive, RAID & more.

    Technician Toolkit

    Tape Data Recovery Retrives data from all types and capacities of tape drives including LTO 1, LTO 2, LTO 3, & others.

    Virtual Machine Recovery Recover documents, multimedia files, and database files from any virtual machine

    File Erasure Permanently wipe files and folders, and erase traces of apps and Internet activity.

    Standard Corporate

    Mobile Erasure Certified and permanent data erasure software for iPhones, iPads, & Android devices

    Drive Erasure Certified and permanent data erasure software for HDD, SSD, & other storage media Windows Mac

    Exchange Toolkit 5-in-1 software toolkit to recover Exchange database, convert EDB to PST, convert OST to PST, restore Exchange backup, and reset Windows Server password.

    Outlook Toolkit Comprehensive software suite to repair PST files, merge PST files, eliminate duplicate emails, compact PST files, and recover lost or forgotten Outlook passwords.

    File Repair Toolkit Powerful file repair utility to fix corrupt Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents created in Microsoft Office. It also repairs corrupt PDF files and recovers all objects.

    MS SQL Toolkit 5-in-1 software toolkit to repair corrupt SQL database, restore database from corrupt backup, reset database password, analyze SQL logs, & interconvert databases.

    Data Recovery Toolkit Software helps to recovers deleted data from Windows, Mac and Linux storage devices. Also supports recovery from RAIDs & Virtual Drives.

    Email Forensic Advanced email forensic solution for cyber experts to audit, analyze, or investigate emails & gather evidences.

    Exchange Auditor Exchange Server monitoring solution to automate audits, scans and generate reports ìn real-time.

    Log Analyzer for MySQL Analyze forensic details of MySQL server database log files such as Redo, General Query, and Binary Log.

    Log Analyzer for MS SQL Track & analyze MS SQL Server database transactions log files.

    STELLAR EMAIL FORENSIC

    Advanced email forensic tool to analyze and collect the mailbox data of email clients

    Learn More arrow


    All Products

    All Products

    All Products

    All Products

  • Our Partners
  • Lab Services
  • Trending Searches

    Data Recovery

    Photo Recovery

    Video Repair

    iPhone Data Recovery

    File Erasure Software

    Exchange Repair

    OST to PST

    PST Repair

    Raid Recovery

    MS SQL Repair

  • English Deutsch Français Nederlands Italiano Español 日本語 简体中文
  • Support
Data Recovery Software 3 minute read

What is Data Recovery and How it Works?

Updated on February 8th, 2021
Oliver Powell
Written By
Oliver Powell
Rohit Arora
Approved By
Rohit Arora

Summary: Have you ever lost data from your digital device and wondered how you could recover it immediately? This blog describes the process of data recovery in detail and gives you smart suggestions on safeguarding your valuable data. If you happen to lose your data, then don't worry, a data recovery software such as Stellar Free Data Recovery can trace your lost data and recover it. Download the software from the button below and recover up to 1GB of your data for free.

What is Data Recovery and How it Works?

Contents

  • How does data recovery work?
  • Understanding Data Loss

How does data recovery work?

Loss of data in storage devices remains a cause of concern for users and businesses alike. Data is a most critical asset in today’s digital world and any loss of important data can lead to financial, legal, and emotional trouble.

Fortunately, any information stored on a storage media is almost always recoverable. The process of recovery of inaccessible data, due to the device’s logical or physical failure is known as “Data Recovery.”

Let us look at the logical and physical device failures and see the different ways data loss can happen.

Logical failures: Data loss due to accidental data deletion, drive formatting, volume deletion, drive corruption, boot failure, reinstallation of an operating system, etc. comes under logical failure.

Physical failures:Data loss due to bad areas in the physical storage space, connectivity issue, component damage, electronic equipment malfunction, etc. are a few examples of physical failures.

A Data Recovery process scans for lost files in the storage devices and retrieves them successfully. This is how data recovery software works.It recovers data from various storage devices, such as internal storage drive of laptop or desktop, external hard disk drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, an optical storage medium (CD/DVD/BD), and memory card (SD, SDHC, SDXC).

Understanding Data Loss

When you delete files from its stored location, you don’t lose them irreversibly. You can find these files in Recycle Bin (Windows) and Trash (Mac) folders. From here, you can easily restore the deleted files to their original locations.

Even if you delete files from Recycle Bin/Trash, the files aren’t lost permanently. These files are still present in your storage medium and can be recovered bydata recovery software. The same applies to other logical and physical data loss situations.

What makes Data Recovery possible?

During the deletion or formatting process, all operating systems are designed to maximize the speed of computing. This means that the OS would remove the references of the deleted files on the existing file system(or recreate a new file system) instead of permanently erasing the files by overwriting them. Overwriting takes more computing resources and time,which is why an OS would do deletion instead of erasure.

So when data in a drive is deleted or formatted, it is not removed from the storage drive. Instead, the data remains intact in the storage medium in an inaccessible state ready to be overwritten by new data. This marooned data can be retrieved by using a data recovery software that uses file signatures to scan the entire storage drive bit by bit.

Why Data Recovery?

Data recovery helps you to preserve your personal and official data. Imagine losing your treasured digital memories like photos, videos, voice recordings, etc. A data recovery tool can help you avoid emotional distress. Or consider losing critical business documents, project files, software, etc. Permanent loss of such information can be devastating to your career. A data recovery tool becomes your ally in such a situation.

Scope and limitations of Data Recovery

It’s not easy to recover data from certain new hardware introduced in the market. E.g. data recovery is not possible in a Solid State Drive, which has TRIM command enabled. The deleted data in such drives is erased permanently. For SSD’s where TRIM is disabled, data recovery is possible. The same applies to external SSDs.

Data recovery can be difficult or impossible when,

1) Data has been overwritten

2) Data is corrupt (it is possible to recover corrupt data in some cases but it is difficult)

3) Data is present in a bad sector of the drive.

How to prevent loss of data?

Prevention is always better than cure, and backing up your data prevents you from permanent data loss.

Creating a backup in an external USB device and regularly updating it is a great data hygiene practice. Another option is to create a backup in the Cloud. You can use Windows OneDrive, iCloud or third-party services such as Dropbox, Zoho, etc. The biggest advantage of having a cloud backup is the flexibility you get to access your data anytime and on any device. Plus, the security of your data becomes the responsibility of the cloud vendor. Cloud backup services are usually paid services, so please compare the prices and features before opting for a plan.

Loss of data can also occur due to virus attacks. Having a good anti-virus software can shield your computer from the virus and help you preserve your valuable data.

To avoid data loss due to power surges, it is advisable to have a UPS..

Finally

You can lose your valuable information stored on your storage device at any point in time. There are various scenarios such as accidental deletion, virus attacks, software crashes, physical damage, etc. which can lead to loss of data and lead to emotional distress. To avoid such consequences, you should take regular backup of your data. 

In the absence of data back-up,you can opt for an efficient Data recovery solution like Stellar Windows Data Recovery. It is a professional tool that uses advanced techniques to recover data from any loss scenario. The free version of the software can recover up to 1 GB of your data. If you wish to recover more data, then you can opt for the paid versions.

About The Author

Oliver Powell

Oliver Powell is a Data Recovery Expert at Stellar®. He is a passionate technology blogger & content creator, He explores new applications and has deep understanding of data recovery. He has experience in Windows & Mac data recovery domain.

Best Selling Products

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows

Stellar Data Recovery has the right Windows Recovery tool for all your data recovery

Read More

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac program performs safe..

 

Read More

Stellar Photo Recovery

A comprehensive photo recovery software to restore photos, music & video files

 

Read More

Stellar Repair for Video

Powerful video repair tool for repairing corrupt or damaged MOV and other video files

 

Read More

111 comments

  1. James Morgan says:
    June 27, 2017 at 10:32 am

    I want to recover only multimedia files from this data recovery software. Is it possible?

    Reply
    1. Jyoti Prakash says:
      June 29, 2017 at 4:56 am

      Hello James,

      Yes, it is very much possible.
      Once you download the software. On the very first screen, you found the option to “Select What To Recover”. In this section option to recover data from multimedia files are present.

      Reply
  2. Blake Carson says:
    April 19, 2017 at 8:44 am

    Such type of content are rarely to see anywhere on internet. Thanks Stellar Data Recovery for sharing such a informative content with us. I am always passionate about hard drive and its working. General problems with hard drive and how data recovery works. I try to cover all the post on this website and every time I read, I learn a new point.

    Reply
  3. Steven says:
    March 21, 2017 at 6:34 am

    Data Recovery is such a situation which one is trying to avoid. Recovery of a Data depends upon its damaging factor: Logical damage or a Physical damage. If it is physical damage, then opting for a data recovery services is wise and if the damage is logical, it all depends upon the user pocket: whether to go for a data recovery software or a service. Thanks for sharing a blog with us.

    Reply
  4. David Moore says:
    February 20, 2017 at 9:38 am

    I was always curious to learn about data recovery and how it works. Since lots of articles, blogs, content are flooded on internet related to this. But I really liked the above content which gives me deep knowledge about this matter. Thanks for clearing all my doubts in a single post.

    Reply
  5. Nancy Baker says:
    February 14, 2017 at 9:00 am

    Why the people reached to the situation where they need to go for a data recovery stage. It’s better to go for a backup which will help them to save their money from investing in a data recovery software or a service.

    Reply
  6. Linda Scott says:
    January 10, 2017 at 3:46 am

    I too agreed with the words of Mr. David that data recovery is a painful situation. I think the persons who have faced data loss can easily understand this pain. But, I would like to advise my friends that before reaching to a stage where you can also face the data loss issue, I think we all must take multiple backups of our data so as to avoid the data loss problem.

    Thanks for sharing the post with us!

    Reply

Comments navigation

Older comments Page 1 … Page 7

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

74  −  65  =  

Table of Contents    

  1. How does data recovery work?
  2. Understanding Data Loss

Categories

Related Posts

World-Best-Windows-Data-Recovery-Software
Data Recovery Software

World’s Best Windows Data Recovery Software for Home, Professional & Technician Users

Stellar Author Isha Rikhi February 23, 2018 Read More
3-Methods-to-Recover-Data-from-Dead-PC
Data Recovery Software

How to Recover Data From a Dead PC – Top 3 Methods

Stellar Author Isha Rikhi September 22, 2017 Read More
The-Basics-of-Computer-Data-Recovery
Data Recovery Software

The Basics of Computer Data Recovery – Complete Guide

Stellar Author Isha Rikhi September 14, 2017 Read More

Stellar Official Website

Stellar Data Recovery Inc.
48 Bridge Street Metuchen,
New Jersey 08840,
United States

ALSO AVAILABLE AT

About

  • About us
  • Career
  • ISMS Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • License Policy
  • Refund Policy
  • End User License Agreement

RESOURCES

  • Blog
  • Articles
  • Product Videos
  • Knowledge Base
  • Case Studies
  • Whitepapers
  • Software Catalog

NEWS & EVENTS

  • News
  • Events

PARTNERS

  • Affiliates
  • Resellers
  • Distributors

Useful Links

  • Contact Us
  • Support
  • Special Offers
  • Student Discounts
  • Awards & Reviews
  • Downloads
  • Store
  • Sitemap
Follow Us

Stellar & Stellar Data Recovery are Registered Trademarks of Stellar Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. © Copyright 2022 Stellar Information Technology Pvt. Ltd. All Trademarks Acknowledged.

DMCA.com Protection Status
We use cookies on this website. By using this site, you agree that we may store and access cookies on your device Read More Got it!