Data Recovery: How To Get Your Stuff Back
In a world where most people work and store sensitive information on electronic devices, data loss can be devastating. When a computer or another digital device is damaged, it’s the idea of lost photos or files that sends people over the edge.
While you can easily buy a new device to replace the old one, the same doesn’t apply to your data.
In this guide, we’ll explain more about data recovery, how data recovery services work and what you can do to protect yourself from being in this situation to begin with.
Data Loss: Phones, Tablets, Computers
96% of Americans own a cellphone, with 81% owning a smartphone. And when you look at computer ownership stats, the numbers are comparable. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults own a laptop or desktop computer.
Unless you’re one of the 4% of Americans who don’t own a cellphone—you probably wouldn’t be reading this—data loss is something that could easily happen to you at some point. It’s just a matter of time. Let’s break it down.
How Does Data Loss Happen?
There are three ways data loss could happen.
1. The first way is physical damage. If your phone, laptop, tablet, or whatever device you have the data on takes significant physical damage, this might destroy the data stored on that device.
2. The second way is through unauthorized access to your data, aka data breaches. We’ll cover data breaches—and how to prevent them—in a second. For now, let’s just say that this type of data loss happens when someone has illegal access to your data.
3. The third way you can lose data is by accidentally deleting it. We’ve all either done it or almost done it. You click and drag to select all the files on your desktop to delete them, accidentally tap too many times, etc. Sometimes this is hard to reverse.
Data Breaches: How They Happen and What To Do About It
Preventing data loss through physical damage and accidental deletion is relatively simple. Don’t let a truck run over your phone and pay more attention when deleting files. That makes sense.
Data breaches are not that simple though, because they are not something that’s entirely under your control. For a data breach to happen, the perpetrator should either have physical access to your device or hack it remotely.
While data hacking is too complex to cover here in detail, here are some tips that will decrease the likelihood of something like this happening to you:
Use a strong password: while it sounds like a no-brainer, using lackluster passwords is one of the main causes of data breaches. If you’re one of the 23 million people who still use “123456” as their password, please change it!
A great way for having strong passwords without worrying about memorizing them is by using a password manager. If you are a Mac user, the iCloud Keychain is a solid choice. If not, any of these password managers will do.
Don’t open suspicious emails: if you get emails from strangers—or Nigerian princes— offering you money or congratulating you on winning something, don’t open them! Those are the obvious ones, but you should know that cyberattackers are way more savvy than that. Double check before following suggested links in emails. Double-check the email address it’s coming from. When in doubt: don’t go there.
Backup your data: data loss isn’t that disastrous when you have a backup. Unless someone else has gained access to your sensitive data, you should be fine. At this point in our lives, we should all be in the cloud. If you aren’t: get there.
Recovering Data: When Do You Need It?
The value of data is subjective. While a client database is invaluable information for any business, the value of photos from a holiday is pretty much only important to you.
So, whether you try to recover lost data depends on the importance of this data to you and how hard it will be to recover. If there is no substantial damage done to the device, there are some tools you can use to recover it yourself:
Stellar data recovery: this tool is designed specifically for Windows devices. For simple data recovery scenarios, like deleting files by accident, this tool works just fine.
EaseUS data recovery: another great tool for data recovery. Aside from being super-easy to use, EaseUS allows you to recover up to 2GB of lost data for free.
OnTrack Easy Recovery: for some reason, most data recovery tools are designed for Windows machines. If you’re a Mac user who wants to recover data, this tool has a Mac version.
While these are our top picks for data recovery, they are hardly the only data recovery tools out there. For more great data recovery tools, check out this blog post.
Gadget Genie Data Recovery
Serious problems require expert solutions. If your data loss problem is something more intense than deleting a few files by accident, no need to type “data recovery iphone” in Google and start panicking. The data recovery experts at Gadget Genie are ready to help.
Even if the situation seems hopeless and you’ve been turned down by big data recovery firms, we can still help you recover your sensitive data.
That’s exactly what our Master Tech, Joe, did for HHJ Trial Attorneys, who needed to recover key video evidence from a phone that was destroyed by the suspect. Check out that case study to see just how clever we can be, and contact us for your own data recovery needs.
