What I Have Learned In Salvaging Data Process A.K.A Data Recovery

Data recovery is a complex process, but thank goodness, there are lots of softwares you can purchase to make the task no brainer. It's been 20 days since I last posted a blog post, I've been very busy with my work and my life, I wanna tell everything on this blog but I just can't, but I got drafts here to share in the future though. Time check: 1:50AM. This will be a quick and short post.

Just a quick definition of Data Recovery from the Wikipedia:

In computing, data recovery is a process of salvaging inaccessible data from corrupted or damaged secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data they store cannot be accessed in a normal way. 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. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).

So I have a cousin who's a non-techie of course, who got a virus-infected windows PC. Long story short, her two external hard disk drives (HDD) have gone into disaster. Most of the files went into the abyss.

The first thing I did was I put those external HDDs into my macbook pro, and see what this machine can do to salvage her data. Result: failed. No folders were hidden nor locked. There must be a bigger step to do next. It seems the files were deleted. I then downloaded two softwares, both full version to activate their all features.

1. Disk Drill
2. Cisdem Data Recovery

Both of these softwares did an awesome job. They successfully scanned both of the external HDDs and I was able to export the recovered data into my machine. Sadly, all of the data, well, I believe MOST of the 'recovered' data were corrupted! After trying out the full scan, I then tried the quick scan, guess what? The quick scan were able to recover some of the data and they're all readable, and yes, I was not satisfied, because it was a quick scan, not all the data were salvaged.

Most of the files are photos. Precious photos. All in jpeg format. I thought a jpeg recovery software might save those recovered yet corrupted photos. So I downloaded this:

1. Stellar Phoenix Jpeg Repair

That software is full version as well. Unfortunately, the last hope wasn't able to help me.

Lastly, I found out, from Stackoverflow, that there's no more I can do about the data. Well, there's one more thing I haven't tried out: and that is seeking out help from Data Recovery Companies.