Having read this article you will search out a great deal of data about data recovery and some actions performed to save data. No one is immune against the data loss. Even great companies which spend huge amounts of money on modern systems often ask for help of experts.
Professionals mention that HDD is not actually the best way to store some important info as there is a probability that it would be lost soon. You have to understand that HDD is a mechanism and any mechanism has some operation life and that is not actually big. Except mechanical breakdowns there are lots of various ways to lose the information stored on your HDD.
The operators who attempted to resolve any HDD troubles with Windows 98 or earlier systems resorted to use of fdisk utility and some other simple systems. Today it is used just in rare cases and just by true professionals because amateur can make harm to data with it.
File systems
The method of saving and spreading the information on the HDD is usually defined by a file system. Every HDD is divided on some sections. These sectors are named partitions. The most widespread file systems which are utilized by Windows are NTFS (NT File System) and FAT (File Allocation Table). Windows OS of the previous generation and DOS utilized FAT-16. Newer Windows operates with FAT-32. The basic dissimilarity between these systems is the capability of the system. FAT-16 may work with disks sizes not more than 2 GB. Operating systems Windows 2000 and Windows XP are compatible with FAT system meanwhile FAT is not the main system.
The basic reason why new versions of Windows work with NTFS as a primary system is that it has nicer level of safety. The other considerable benefit is that operator may set personal access rights for every file. All these systems utilize disk partition table and boot record that are stored in the initial sector of every disk and determine which one is boot disk. System won't work appropriately and OS won't boot in case there are some problems with this data.
Data recovery
When you understood that you have erased some necessary info you need to stop performing any operations with any information to execute ntfs partition recovery. Of course there are some system operations which are performed by the OS but it won't impact the restore result. The same operations should be taken if you accidentally erased any important data from the recycle bin. Erased files are just hidden but they are still stored on the disk. They will be completely deleted.
The most uncomfortable variant is when your disk has only one partition. You need to find the other computer and connect your HDD to it then. The usage of other computer brings the opportunity to perform any actions significantly faster.
Data recovery utilities
If you don't have an opportunity to replace the disk do not be tempted and do not reinstall the operating system. To execute any operations you need to boot special operating system that is commonly used exactly in these cases.
We live in the epoch of commerce so that is possible to find the restore utilities free of charge but it would operate not really efficiently and probability of complete ntfs undelete will be lower. The market is full of nice propositions and such kind of solutions is considered to be inexpensive.