

Businesses thrive on data and personal lives are enriched by photos, music, documents, and more. Losing your information can be devastating, but there is hope.



Data recovery professionals can help you recover information from desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and other devices. Here are a few damage situations to keep in mind before you contact a data recovery professional.

Wear And Tear

Anything made can be broken. While a lot of products aren’t as sturdy as they used to be, storage drives have always been a bit unreliable.



No matter the brand, and regardless of your hard drive or solid state drive (SSD) choice, your drive will eventually wear out. From the constant spinning of platters to the shock and charge changes in an SSD, the physical damage can leave some of your data inaccessible.



Thankfully, gradual wear and tear of storage devices is a known and easily-resolved problem. Most drives fail slowly enough that operating systems (OS) can detect failure. If your drive comes with a health-checking software suite, you can even get a warning before Windows, Mac, Linux, or your OS of choice notices.



Symptoms of a failing drive include taking longer to open a file, a spinning while or circle when you try to do any tasks, or louder hard drive noises whenever you access files.



While these are also symptoms of a virus, an uninfected computer with these symptoms usually has a failing drive.



A data recovery professional can help you by transferring your files to a new, safer, better drive before the worst scenario comes to pass. If your hard drive is already so far gone that you can’t access any files, recovery specialists can perform deep recovery to lift your files from bad, worn out sectors of the drive – for more information see CyberCall’s hard drive data recovery services in Bristol.

Accidental Data Corruption

Modern computing has advanced to the point where it’s hard to overwrite critical data. Information that could break your entire system if saved incorrectly is often handled by the OS, and both Windows and Mac systems are designed to recover if corruption occurs.



What if your OS can’t recover? People who lived through the 1990’s and early 2000’s are well aware of what an unresponsive and unrecoverable (bricked) computer looks like, but what if it happens today?



Data recovery specialists can get into drives that are locked beyond normal recognition. Your files are still there and likely not physically damaged.

Malware Corruption

What if the damage was intentional? Many viruses exist to steal information, but a few exist to cause harm. Sometimes it’s because hackers think it’s funny, but often it’s a dry run to test a much bigger attack on bigger enemies.



If you’re the victim of a viral file corruption, there is still a chance to recover your data. Information often includes details about previous versions, and digital forensics can peel back information that has been saved over.



It may be difficult and it may take time, recovery professionals are up to the task.

Ransomware

The newest form of digital danger is ransomware. Rather than randomly corrupting computers or secretly stealing bank and credit card information, hackers extort the information from businesses and individuals.



Your information is often locked behind a digital key. The information is scrambled, and the key is actually a formula that unscrambles the information into something you can use.



Many forms of ransomware are difficult–or even currently impossible–to uncrack. Thankfully, there are many amateur ransomware methods that can be removed and cleaned by recover experts.

Physical Damage

Did you drop your laptop? Was your computer damaged in a storm, ruined by flood waters, or otherwise physically harmed?



Violent physical damage is often worse than normal wear and tear because wear and tear can be caught before the damage is too severe. Using a damage drive can harm the intact files even worse, so you need a professional immediately.



Especially with water-damaged devices, do not turn on the device. Don’t get curious, don’t bet on your luck, and don’t sneak a peak. If there’s water introduced to the system, it could be perfectly intact until the second you introduce electricity and rapid movement to the equation.



Allow a data recovery team to inspect and carefully salvage the information for you. Treat any water-compromised device as damaged and potentially hazardous and simply choose a new drive for your old files.



Contact a data recovery services professional to discuss your situation and to find a recovery service that works for you.



