In this modern world with technology advancement, we reap the benefits of convenience and accessibility. Many of us have important data stored in our computer, whether it is precious photos on our computer or confidential files for work. With that, we can’t ignore our greatest nightmare – data corruption. What is data corruption? Simply put, it is when the data inside a file has been changed from its original state. When your data gets corrupted, you may face some issues which include loss of data, invalid / inaccessible files or computer starts to crash or lag frequently. Here we try to help in explaining the process to data recovery. We did a data recovery for our harddrives at Ever Higher Data Recovery Centre.
Table of Contents
How Does Data Get Corrupted?
Data can become corrupted during writing, editing, or transmission to another drive. When a program writes incorrect data, or when something interrupts a write process, the data can mess up, introducing unintended changes to the original data, thus causing a corrupted file. There are many factors that can trigger data corruption, it can be due to external/internal virus or hardware/software malfunctions etc.
Unplug Hard Drive Unsafely
When you abruptly unplug the hard drive without properly saving the file in it, the files in the hard drive sometimes do not get transferred properly. Another situation is improper shutdowns such as unexpected power outages. When files are being saved onto the hard disk drive and the systems shut down unexpectedly, only parts of a file may be transferred correctly, leaving the entire file corrupt.
Damaged Hard Drive
Hard drives can be damaged by external physical forces such as dropping or jarring it. Due to this, read/write heads may touch the disks and cause damage to the platter’s surface where data is stored.
Overheating could lead to sudden hard drive failure and also cause data corruption in the hard drive. This may be caused due to inadequate ventilation in and around the computer hard drive or faulty CPU fan. Some symptoms you can look out for is when the laptop/PC heats up very quickly after starting or the fan moves very slowly.
Viruses
Severe virus or malware infection may cause damage to your system hard drive. As a result, data stored on the hard drive will become inaccessible or lost.
Wear and Tear Overtime
Hardware components wear out over time. The hard-drive itself, other PC components, wiring and the dust settled in hardware components can cause hardware generated issues. This can cause issues either directly or those other hardware components to hard-drive making it lose data or crash due to compatibility issues.
How do you know if your Hard Drive is Corrupted?
When your hard drive is corrupted and failing, there may be some symptoms and indications that there is a problem. Before your hard drive completely crashes on you, these warning signs can help you to save some of your hard drive and data before it gets worse. This allows you to keep backups of your data in another storage medium before you lose those important data permanently. Hence, it is important to know these signs as it can help you to make appropriate interventions
The system frequently shut down
When the computer starts to shut down frequently and unexpectedly, this means that the situation is pretty severe and you should quickly ensure that you backup all your important data.
Unable to access data
A damaged hard drive can cause data to be corrupted, and this will result in inaccessible data or loss of data.
Computer slows down
If your hard drive is failing, you may find that your computer loads much slower and may even face frequent freezing of the screen. Starting the computer may also take longer than usual.
Scan your hard drive
Unfortunately, sometimes there may not be any visible symptoms that can warn you beforehand about your failing hard drive. Your hard drive may just crash suddenly and you lose all your data in it. However, you can scan your hard drives to seek out any bad sectors that are in your hard drives using HD Tune. It can be used to measure the drive’s performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more.
How to Prevent Data Corruption?
Anti Virus Software
One of the reasons for data corruption is when a virus is introduced to the computer / hard drive, which could result in rewriting the data stored in it. To prevent this from happening, you can keep these viruses at bay by installing anti-virus software in your computer. Whenever you download something from the computer or install new apps to your computer, the anti-virus software helps to scan these things to ensure that no unwanted viruses are being introduced as well. Here is a list of some virus protection softwares that you can install on your computer.
External Hard Drives
Knowing that data can easily be corrupted and they may just suddenly vanish permanently, it is crucial to keep backups of your files so that you don’t lose them for good. There are several ways that you can make a backup of your files:
NAS Device
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a storage device connected to a network that allows storage and retrieval of data from a central location for authorised network users. NAS is one of the best backup solutions and is gaining much popularity amongst households and companies.
NAS devices can back up data and increase its capacity if needed, so you can never run out of space, allowing you to store all your endless and large files in one place. Other than its storage space benefit, NAS devices are beneficial for those that have many users and devices as NAS centralises all your backups in one place.
External Drives
Most people are familiar with external hard drives, and many of us use it because it is relatively cheaper and readily available.
However, external hard drives have a fixed capacity and can’t expand its storage space, unlike NAS devices. In addition, external hard drives can only connect to one computer at a time, thus not suitable for those that have multiple devices or users.
USB Flash Drives
For quick and simple backups, USB flash drives are a convenient and easy to use option. They are small and portable, perfect for smaller data storage.
Good Habits
It is important to take proper care of your computer. These are some good habits to ensure your computer and the hard drive is well-maintained for a long time:
- Always shut down your PC properly by closing off all programs before shutting down.
- Avoid installing malicious and faulty softwares and apps on your PC
- Replace hard drive every 3-4 years
- Eject external storage devices before disconnecting them
Data Recovery Software
In the event that you lose your data due to hard drive failure or corrupted data or other reasons, all hope is not lost yet. There are several data recovery softwares that may be able to help recover some or all of your lost data.
Ever Higher Recovery Software
As one of Singapore’s leading data recovery centres, Ever Higher has developed a data recovery software especially designed for various types of video format tools. Regardless of how you lost your data, be it during transmission or firmware corruption, Ever Higher’s software has been proven to bring back your lost data effectively.
Pros
- Ever Higher offers a free demo of their video footage recovery softwares where you can check if you are able to recover the damage drive/files with their softwares.
- Works for various kinds of storage media such as memory cards (SD Card, Micro SD, CF Cards), thumbdrives, hard disk drives etc.
- Specialises in recovering video footages which works on an extensive range of camera brands (Nikon, Canon, GoPro, Sony, Panasonic)
Website: www.datarecoverysoftware.sg
Package: from $99.00
Recovery Data Centres
Ever Higher Data Recovery Centre
Pride itself as Singapore’s number data recovery centre, Ever High offers reliable and effective services that many companies trust in, such as Hitachi, Acer, Dell and Samsung. Ever Higher offers free consultation through phone calls and would provide you with an analysis and quotation within one business day before working on it. A homegrown data recovery Singapore company you can trust and rely on!
Services provided: Internal & External Hard Disk Data Recovery Service, SD Data Recovery Service, SSD Data Recovery Service, Laptop Data Recovery Service, Server Data Recovery Service, NAS/SAN/DAS Recovery Service, Phone Data Recovery Service, IT Services
Website: https://www.3verhigher.com/
Address: #02-02, 1100 Lower Delta Rd, Singapore 169206