What is Data Recovery and How it Works?

Written By Oliver Powell
Approved By Rohit Arora
Updated on 20 Mar, 2023
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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.

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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.

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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.

117 comments

Paul Wilson says:

September 11, 2015 at 2:43 pm

Recently, one of our NSF files got corrupt because of hardware failure and the user was not able to access his mails. To repair NSF file, we tried nfixup but it did not work for us. So, upon someone’s recommendation, we immediately bought Stellar Lotus Notes Recovery. The software worked brilliantly, repaired the corrupt file and that user was able to access his mailbox items again

Reply
Emmanual says:

September 8, 2015 at 3:48 am

I have Stellar Mac data recover V6.0 on my iMac. I am trying to scan my Time Machine drive which got initialized. The scan is over but files are listed in some unrecognizable format. I recovered them but none of them are useful. How can I get my Time Machine backup copy?

Regards
Emmanual

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  September 8, 2015 at 6:40 am
  
  Hello Emmanuel.
  We recommend you upgrade to Stellar Mac data recovery V7.0 since this version fully supports data recovery from a formatted, lost or deleted Time Machine hard disk drive. Your files will get scan, preview & recover in recognisable formate. Do upgrade it.
  
  Reply
Nicol says:

September 3, 2015 at 2:40 pm

After clicking photographs from my Canon Digicam, I was moving them to my MacBook but, due to accidental shut down my 16GB SD card got corrupt. When I again started transferring the images, more than half of the photographs were broken and rest of them were missing. Through some forum sites, I got to know about Stellar Photo Recovery and decided to give it a shot. I tried the software and luckily got my photographs back

Reply
Brooke says:

August 13, 2015 at 1:49 pm

I have an external hard drive with every single digital picture I have ever taken on it. I believe it has the cryptoware virus and all my files are encrypted. Is it possible to get these files back? And if so what software do you recommend I download? Thank you so much!

Reply
Barbie Foster says:

August 6, 2015 at 6:35 am

My system was continuously troubling while boot time. Many times it brings me to a blank black screen where force restart were the only remedy. I ran chkdsk but it found no errors with a message saying you don’t need to run CHKDSK. I have tried the sfc command tools too but it didn’t help either.

I am afraid of losing data. What can I do to prevent existing files from fading away?

Reply
1. Abhay says:
  
  August 6, 2015 at 11:11 am
  
  Check your system for failing equipment like Hard drive, RAM, Motherboard etc. I’ve strong indications of that this could be due to failing hard drive which ultimately causes you data loss. Start taking backup of your important files and perform a clean install.
  
  Hopefully, your system will start behaving as it should.
  
  Good luck though!!
  
  Reply
Kate Mara says:

August 6, 2015 at 6:26 am

I have just installed windows 7 on my drive the last week. The system has now slowed down and the error message “Windows detected a hard disk problem” keeps popping every time I start the system. How to suppress this error, any suggestions?

Reply
1. Abhay says:
  
  August 6, 2015 at 11:08 am
  
  Hi,
  
  Best way is to copy all your valuable files and see for replacement (if the drive is under warranty). This error simply indicates problem with the drive itself (not the OS part) and the drive fail soon.
  
  Note: You can try running CHKDSK operation and see if that helps you temporarily.
  
  Good luck!!
  
  Reply
Nick jackson says:

August 6, 2015 at 4:54 am

Bought a new external hard drive last month and have around 500 GB data on it. Yesterday, all of a sudden my external hard drive stopped working and I’m not able to access the files.

Please give some advice how I can get back all of my files.

Reply
1. Abhay says:
  
  August 6, 2015 at 11:05 am
  
  Hi Nick,
  
  Navigate to disk management and see if the drive is visible (recovery is possible only on recoverable drives). Start Stellar Windows Data Recovery Pro Software and begin scanning the drive.
  
  Hopefully, you may able to see the lost files of your external hard drive. I’d also advise you to ask for replacement after recovering your files. Manufacturer will provide you a fresh drive that’s free from any errors.
  
  Reply
  1. Nick jackson says:
    
    August 24, 2015 at 6:35 am
    
    Hi Abhay,
    
    Thanks for your suggestion.
    I will try the software and will let you know the results.
Osman Noyal says:

July 29, 2015 at 8:42 am

You made my Day. I accidentally deleted all my photos from my Nikon camera. Your Software worked fabulously. Once again, thanks a lot!!

Reply
Lara Shaw says:

July 28, 2015 at 5:51 am

My SQL database has been corrupted and it is password protected. I forget the password so, how can I repair it? Please help!!

Reply
1. jyoti says:
  
  July 29, 2015 at 6:54 am
  
  Hi Lara,
  Do not worry about the password protection of the database! We have a SQL Database Toolkit which provides password recovery option. It will recover password and repair corrupt SQL database. Please check this page: Read More
  
  Reply
Buick says:

July 24, 2015 at 4:36 am

I have a pretty large external hard drive size 8TB. I am running Stellar Mac data recovery V7.0 on this but it seems the software will take ages to scan this drive. Please let me know how to get it scanned quickly?

Reply
1. Vishal says:
  
  July 27, 2015 at 3:27 am
  
  Hi Buick
  
  For the drive that size, software will take many days to complete the scan. I recommend you first create image of the hard disk drive using ‘Create Image’ feature. You can divide your 8TB drive into 2 or 3 parts through Imaging. Use these DMGs to scan and recover files. This way you will definitely save good amount of time.
  
  Reply