2. Basics of Data Recovery and Common Scenarios

Data recovery overview:

By definition, data recovery is a process of retrieving inaccessible, lost, or formatted data from a storage media, when the data stored in it cannot be accessed in a usual way. The storage media can be an internal or external hard disk drive (HDD), solid-state drive (SSD), USB flash drive, CD, DVD, RAID subsystem, and any other electronic device. In most cases, where the disk or device is not physically damaged, data can be restored using Stellar Data Recovery. The most common scenarios, where data recovery is possible using Stellar Data Recovery, are listed below:

Common data recovery scenarios:

The most common data recovery scenario involves an operating system failure, malfunction of a storage device, logical failure of storage devices, accidental damage or deletion, etc. (typically, on a single-drive, single-partition, single-OS system). In such case, you can copy all important files from the damaged media to another new drive using Stellar Data Recovery.

Another scenario involves a drive-level failure, such as a compromised file system or drive partition, or a hard disk drive failure. In any of these cases, the data is not easily read from the media devices. Depending on the situation, Stellar Data Recovery can retrieve the drive partition and recover complete data.
 
In a third scenario, files have been accidentally "deleted" from a storage media. Typically, the contents of deleted files are not removed immediately from the physical drive; instead, references to them in the directory structure are removed. Although deleted files are not discoverable through a standard file manager, the deleted data still technically exists on the physical drive and may be recoverable by Stellar Data Recovery if not overwritten by other data files.

Some other common scenarios of a data loss, where Stellar Data Recovery can help to recover your data, are given as follows:

• You got out an external hard drive or USB thumb drive not using a "safely remove hardware" option first. Usually, it leads to damage of the original file system which turns to RAW. If you connect such a storage device to the computer again you may receive the message "You need to format the disk in drive before you can use it". Never format the storage device until you have recovered data from it. Typically, it is easy enough to recover data from RAW file system device regardless of the original file system type.

• Another common scenario is that you have formatted a disk accidentally or deleted a wrong partition. The success of the recovery depends on:

  • Formatting type you used - such as Quick format or Complete format.

  • Original file system type - NTFS, FAT, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, HFS, HFS+, and APFS file systems are supported by Stellar Data Recovery.

• You have accidentally deleted a single file. Quality of recovery depends on how fast you stopped using the disk after you have deleted the file.

• You have reinstalled Windows and then realized that valuable data was on the drive. Data recovery success is determined by factors such as the time period you have been working with the new installation. The more you use the disk the less chance for you to recover data.

First Actions:

How to plan your Data recovery-

When you discover that you have lost some valuable data, the first action you take to correct the problem mustn't aggravate the situation instead.

1. First of all, ensure that no further changes are made to the affected data. Do not save files to the volume from you want to recover the data. If it is your system (boot) volume, from which the Operating System loads, then it is best to shut down the computer. It is not enough to just stop using the computer.

2. Once the drive or system is secured, you then need to identify what is lost and where it was. We suggest that you write this information down on a sheet of paper.

3. Once you know the data that you want to recover, install Stellar Data Recovery. 

4. Check if everything looks good, and perform the recovery of data. To know how to recover data using Stellar Data Recovery, refer to Working with the Software section of this manual. For recovering data from system (boot) volume, you can create a bootable recovery drive on a different computer using Stellar Data Recovery. The bootable recovery drive can be used to boot the system with a USB drive and recover your lost data.

5. When done with the recovery, make sure you verify that the recovered data is readable before taking any further action.

Tip: Avoid reusing disks that are involved in the data loss, unless the cause of the problem is positively identified. Otherwise, they might fail once again.