Yes, You CAN Unerase Data
Ever wonder how computer forensics experts gather evidence and convict people of crimes by searching their computers? Surely, the criminals are smart enough to delete their compromising files, or better yet, reformat their hard drives.
Fortunately, computer forensics experts have tools that can dig past deletions and formatted drives, unerase data, and uncover lost files. This technology has been used to unerase files for years and it is now available to the general public. While you may not be a detective on the hunt for clues, this technology can help you get your valuable data back in case you've accidentally deleted it, reformatted your drive, or had a hard drive failure.
If you're curious about how to unerase data, you should understand that data isn't actually erased when you hit the delete button or answer yes to the question, "Are you sure you want to format the disk?" Instead, references to the data are removed and the space where the data resides becomes available as free space. The data remains in this free space untouched until new data replaces it.
During this window between deletion or formatting and replacement with new data, sophisticated data recovery tools can go in and unerase files. You can use data recovery utilities to unerase data from all kinds of storage devices, not just your hard drive. For example, special utilities exist that let you recover data from iPods, iPhones, MP3 players, flash drives, USB storage, digital cameras, Smart Cards, Memory Sticks, Flash Media, ZIP drives, CDs, DVDs, and other forms of media.
In addition you can unerase files, folders, and partitions from different file systems including all versions of FAT and NTSF. Mac data recovery has special considerations and requires different techniques to unerase data but that's not a problem because there are data recovery tools designed specifically to recover data from Macintosh computers.
While it's possible to unerase files under most circumstances and on most devices, it's not a 100% guarantee that you'll get your data back. Remember how the data remains in free space until new data replaces it? If you're not careful, new data could overwrite the data that you want back and if this occurs, you will not be able to unerase files no matter what software you have.
Make sure that you avoid adding new data to the drive until you get a chance to recover your files. You'll want a tool that doesn't write to the disk that has the data you want to recover on it. Otherwise, the tool could do more harm than good. If your hard drive is the affected drive, use a self-booting data recovery utility rather than one you must install on your hard drive.
Data recovery was once only available to computer experts and law enforcement. Today, anyone can buy data recovery software and unerase data. It's easier than you think because the software does the hard work for you. All you need to do is point and click and follow the prompts.
