Since every hard drive will eventually stop working, it’s logical that most computer users will have a data loss experience at some point. If they were paying attention to advice spouted by nearly every computer expert over the past few years, they would have backups of all of their important data readily available - but as we all know, most people don’t perform backups, even though they know they should. According to a recent survey sponsored by drive company Maxtor, nearly one third of those polled who have digital content stored on their computer consider their digital content to be “priceless,” but nearly half of them never make backup copies of their data to external devices or media.

Given this state of data storage, is there anything people can do to increase their chances for successful recovery if they DO experience a data disaster?

Believe it or not, the way you organize the data on your computer can have a significant effect on the success or failure of data recovery. According to experts Ontrack Data Recovery, a few simple steps can make it easier for data recovery engineers to find your precious data once it has gone missing:

• Make multiple copies of critical files and put them in different directories. This will increase the likelihood of data recovery experts being able to recover one of those copies even if the drive is partially crashed or reinstalled.

• Put all of your most valuable data in the same folder. This might seem like a no-brainer, but many people save different types of important documents in several different places, making it difficult to remember where everything is located. Most documents are automatically saved within the same main folder (”My Documents” in Windows or “user/desktop” on Macs) but it is best to be as detailed as possible. Put all of your most important documents in the same subfolder so they are easier to find.
• Take advantage of the disk defragmenter function on your computer. Defragging is a process that eliminates fragmentation in file systems by physically reorganizing the contents of the disk in order to store the pieces of each file close together and in order (contiguously). Having a majority of the file located in the same place on the disk helps recovery engineers locate files faster.
• If you can’t be bothered to organize the data on your computer and don’t have the time to make regular backups on CDs, DVDs or external hard drives, copy your critical files to thumb drives. Copying to a thumb drive is fast and easy, and more importantly, very simple to store in an alternate location.
• If you are really serious about improving chances for data recovery, consider adding an additional internal or external hard drive to your system. By using a computer with multiple hard drives, you can store your personal documents to a different drive and volume than your program files. This way, if you experience a problem with the operating system and have to reinstall, the personal data won’t be affected.

If you’d like to speak with a representative from Ontrack or have any questions please feel free to email or call me at 718-522-9873.

[Mike Hayes]

Tags: maxtor, backup, back up, data recovery, ontrack, hard drive fail, additional hard drive