But what happens when one morning, when trying to open your computer, it simply doesn't boot? It doesn't seem to be able to recognize your hard disk drive. Desperate and full of hope, you take the hard disk and insert it into your friend's computer. Unfortunately, it's the same story. And you had all your work on that hard drive. Work which you forgot to burn on a cd or dvd. Now what?



It's easy. You call a data recovery company. On your friend's computer (you can't use yours, remember?) search the internet for available data recovery companies in your area. You will probably find a phone number at which you will be able to call. You will be asked a few questions, so before you call, you need to know some technical details.

The first one is the model of your hard disk. You need to take a look at it and see the company which produced it, as well as the model. If you knew how to get it out of the computer, you will surely know that. If your friend did it though, just take a look at it or check the documentations which came with the computer.

Then, you will have to tell the data recovery assistant what operating system you were using. Now, because I don't want to advertise, your operating system's name is what appears when your computer starts, and it often has the name of a component of your house. You know what I'm talking about.

Finally, you will need to provide the names and types of the files that you really want recovered. You see, each file has a name and an extension. For example, text files created with notepad have the .txt extension. If you are working with the almighty program created by the company responsible for the operating system, those files have .doc extension.

When you provide the company with your hard drive, an evaluation is made which will tell you the amount of damage your hard drive has sustained. Taking that into consideration, a priced is set for the recovery of your losses.

Without getting into more technical details, it must be said that having your data recovered can be a life saver. It can be your work for a period of time which is at stake. Although, it must be said, when all your work is centered around one computer, you really need to create a back-up option.

Imagine the first scenario (the one in which you lose all your data) and a scenario in which you simply take a cd from your drawer. The miraculous cd has all your work, because you are very careful and you save your work from time to time on it. Now, tell me, isn't that the best data recovery method?