|
|
|
|
A Helpful Guide To Recovering Lost Files On Your Computer
by Gregg Hall Computers are a blessing, until you get the infamous blue screen of death, or perhaps less dramatic, you accidentally erase a file. In many cases of deleted files, the file can be retrieved.
If you recently deleted the file, look through the Recycle Bin (or Trash for Macintosh users). In the Recycle Bin you can browse through a list of deleted items, or search for a specific item. Restoring the file from the Recycle Bin is simple. You can restore it directly from the Recycle Bin, move the file to the desktop for restoration, or open the file and resave it.
If the Recycle Bin or Trash does not have your file, look throughout the computer for a back up. The back up could have been manually created by you, or automatically created by your computer. If you are in a network, look through the server's files for your missing file. If you find a backup, be thankful and resave the file.
If at this point you still have not been able to find the file, you will likely need to start spending some money. Be sure to consider how much time and money the lost file is worth. If it is not much, now would be a good time to cut your losses and recreate the file. If the file was one of a kind, not redo able, find a file recovery system program or hire a human recovery specialist. These specialists understand the ways of a computer and where it puts things; but will not be inexpensive.
If you lost your entire hard drive (this may or may not have activated the blue screen of death), first take a deep breathe and let it out. Secondly, use the disk repair program included with Microsoft and Macintosh software. If the software disk does not help, move onto a disk repair program purchased from another company. Your last choice is to have a specialist come in, or bring the hard drive in to try and recover as much information as possible. This option will be costly with no guarantee of success. Once you go through this process once, there is the guarantee that you will not want to do it again.
To avoid losing every file you have made, back up every file you have made to a location other than the hard drive. Disks, USBs, CDs or servers are all good options. After each major change to your file, remember to save the file to both, or all, locations.
When installing a file recovery program, use the program from its installation device to avoid accidentally rewriting any of your files. Lastly, try to install this program before you have lost files. The likelihood of recovering lost files greatly increases if the program is installed ahead of time. Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach Florida. Find more about this as computer repair at http://www.fastcomputerrepair.com
|
|
A Look At Some Of The Data Recovery Methods Available To You
by Gregg Hall You have just returned from the vacation of a life time and downloaded your pictures to your computer, typed up the diary you kept while vacationing and drafted many emails to your friends about the trip, now it is all gone, thanks to some incomprehensible computer glitch. Understandably, losing documents that meant time and significance is quite frustrating. However, occasionally not all is lost.
Start at the Recycle Bin of your computer. If your file is there, the recovery will be easy. If not, try a tool that will undelete a file. Although this may find your file, it may not find every part of the file. In this case the file will be corrupt and not likely much use to you. If your file is large, the chance of corruption is higher than that of a small file, simply because more information groups have the chance to get lost. For example, photos are often larger files than text documents, thus lost photos can be difficult to find.
Losing a photo can be slightly more traumatizing because often a photo is more valuable than words, and secondly, photos can be more difficult to recover. Once the deleted photo file is used more than once, a recovery program often does not know what it is supposed to be looking for. Since the program will not help you right away, you need to know what it is you want to find. Do you know what kind of file it was? JPG, TIFF, GIF? The more you know about the deleted image, the higher your chances are of finding the image. Even if you find the image, it is likely to be corrupt. At this point it is difficult to put together your image.
E-mails function in a way not like photos or text files. The chances of getting back a deleted e mail depends on the type of e mail program you have. Most programs have a Trash or Deleted folder. Typically you set how frequently the e mail service deletes everything in these folders. If you have a habit of deleting e mails accidentally, set this option for the greatest length of time possible. It is very simple to recover a deleted e mail from the Deleted folder; a click of the mouse will usually suffice. However, if the Deleted folder has been emptied by your e mail service, it is unlikely you will be able to find and recover the deleted e mail.
Beyond these options are special programs and offered services to assist you with recovering files. Recovery programs exist especially for photos, Microsoft Word and Excel files, e mails and other file types. You also have the option of hiring a human specialist to find your files. You often get what you pay for with all these services. A human specialist can be costly and recommended only for use with extremely valuable files.
After you have spent much time, and possibly money on this project, be sure to save your file and save again. Save on disks, USBs, hard drives and servers if these options are available to you. If this file is changed often, remember to resave the file in all the original locations to ensure you can always access a recent version of your work. Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach Florida. Find more about this as data backup at http://www.fastcomputerrepair.com
|
|
|
|
