Otherwise, don’t lose your sanity, money and your precious data. Leave the data recovery to the professionals!

Did you know that the single predominant reason for data loss, worldwide, is due to hardware failure or malfunction (44% to 78%)? Human error came in as the next single contributing factor for your data going missing (minimum of 26%). Software errors, acts of nature and the extremely dangerous malware camp contributed the least (each of them accounted for single digit percentages). From these statistics given out by software giants like Microsoft, data recovery specialists – Ontrack and a host of other information tech companies, it is obvious that either your machine caused the problem or you had a hand in inadvertently messing up your data.

Why not take on the data recovery job yourself? After all, you know your data better than anyone else and what’s more, the data recovery specialists use data recovery software!

If your machine caused the problem, you cannot even think of holding the manufacturer responsible because your machine has passed with flying colours, the several prescribed quality control checks, before it left the factory premises. Anything could have gone wrong after that (an unintended heavy knock, a problematic power outlet or the neighbourhood Dennis the Menace treating your CD Drive to a rare treat of diet coke). On the other hand, if you somehow deleted that important .dll file and you don’t know which one, the effect is the same. It’s like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. The critical knowledge to analyse and solve the problem is the specialty of trained full-time specialists.

In today’s high-tech world, progress is being achieved in all walks of life with high levels of automation and equipment usage. We are increasingly using machines to execute the work and to supervise. Naturally, somebody in turn has got to supervise those machines. At the end of the line, human supervision (though restricted to the barest minimum) is absolutely required. So, even if you were to buy off-the-shelf data recovery software and try recovering the data yourself, you will physically have to supervise the operation of the software.

To supervise, you will need to have a fairly good understanding of how the software works and the conditions under which it can work. This is because readymade software cannot comprehensively make provisions to recover any type of data or to recover data lost due to various types of circumstances. Some data recovery software vendors claim that their software can recover data which was lost due to physical damage while others claim that they can recover data which have even been securely deleted. On buying the software, you discover that they do not recover data perfectly.

Imagine if your doctor prescribed medication or suggested surgery without even wanting to know your symptoms or deciding on your ailment! It makes sense to get an assessment of the damage and its success rate before venturing into the vast unknown world of lost data. Almost all data recovery professionals give a free and fair assessment of what could be the problem area and the success rate. You would surely agree that it’s a lot better going into surgery, knowing that your chances of a cure are above 75%, instead of not knowing anything at all.

Since the cost of recovering the data and the time required to do it are also indicated beforehand by these data recovery specialists, it helps you decide whether it is worth rescuing the data. All this is done for free, in the shortest possible time, unlike the trial and error methodology employed by readymade data recovery software. Most specialists also give a guarantee of recovering your data to the maximum possible or your money back.

The data recovery specialists make it their business to recover your missing data. They therefore employ various specialized tools of their trade (both hardware and software) to do an efficient job. They know how most data is stored and where it is stored. They are also required to keep up with the mind boggling trends in exploding data storage mediums and methods (terabytes and miniscule drives). Since no single piece of data recovery software can perform a 100% data recovery all the time, even the specialists use a pool of software and hardware to achieve remarkable degrees of success.

The data recovery expert encounters a variety of data loss situations in the everyday routine. Every situation is a source of practical knowledge and experience gained (though at your expense) to serve the next customer better. Many of them don’t pay much attention to your detailed ramblings (of how you were working on your favourite PC and then suddenly everything stopped). But one look at your hard disk and that’s sufficient to give you a prognosis.