The R Us Group

Have you ever lost data? I am assuming you probably haven’t, because most users that have lost data, never let it happen again.

Sadly, data backup is generallyl neglected until its too late. Too many users put off the task and then suddenly when their disk crashes, they start to panic. Well data management does not have to be a time consuming chore, it can be fast and easy with modern software and hardware.

Here are some tips to help you manage your data effectively and we hope you will avoid any problems in the future with data loss or hard drive crashes.

1) Make sure you backup

This sounds like pretty obvious advice, but way too many users do not backup their data. I have been called out to many situations where priceless data crashed and vanished forever. If you value what is on your hard drive, then you need to be aware that this can disappear any second. What would you do if all your data was erased right now? Do you have a data recovery plan?

Luckily, data backups are not difficult. You just need another hard drive or even a usb drive. A basic but still effective technique for backing up is to simply copy all of your vital data onto the secondary drive. Just do a copy and paste of your important files/videos/images. While this might not be the best technique, who cares, you will have a backup. Later you can move onto more effective backup strategies.

In Windows 7 there is a really cool backup tool. You will find this in Control Panel -> Backup and Restore. Here it is easy to create a backup of your entire system. Then you can schedule the backup to run at certain intervals. This tool is simple and it works, so use it. It will only take a few minutes to get started, then once you have a complete backup, you can rest easy. Windows XP and Vista also have excellent backup tools.

2) Recovering lost data

OK, if you have lost data, the first step is don’t panic. If you try anything crazy, you might risk completely losing the data. Luckily, most data can be restored or recovered. You will however need some top data recovery software.

Once you have installed the data recovery app, it will scan your system and identify missing or deleted files. Now you can choose which data you want to recover. Most programs will allow you to scan particular drives or to recover certain file types such as video or images. The data recovery will recover data from internal drives, external drives, flash drives, cameras and more. Just make sure you use a top product, as some of them can harm your PC.

To find some great information on data recovery software and resources, check out  Windows data recovery.