In any of these cases, the data is not easily read from the media devices. Such cases can often be mitigated by disk partitioning and consistently storing valuable data files (or copies of them) on a different partition from the replaceable OS system files.Īnother scenario involves a drive-level failure, such as a compromised file system or drive partition, or a hard disk drive failure. Many Live CDs or DVDs provide a means to mount the system drive and backup drives or removable media, and to move the files from the system drive to the backup media with a file manager or optical disc authoring software. This can be accomplished using a Live CD, or DVD by booting directly from a ROM or an USB drive instead of the corrupted drive in question. (typically, on a single-drive, single- partition, single-OS system), in which case the ultimate goal is simply to copy all important files from the damaged media to another new drive. The most common data recovery scenarios involve an operating system failure, malfunction of a storage device, logical failure of storage devices, accidental damage or deletion, etc. 3.1 Corrupt partitions and file systems, media errors.

This is why there are specific software companies specialized in this field.

Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).ĭata recovery can be a very simple or technical challenge. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. In computing, data recovery is a process of salvaging deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way.

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