There are several reasons to employ the techniques of computer forensics:
•    In legal cases, computer forensic techniques are frequently used to analyze computer systems belonging to defendants (in criminal cases) or litigants (in civil cases).
•    To recover data in the event of a hardware or software failure.
•    To analyze a computer system after a break-in, for example, to determine how the attacker gained access and what the attacker did.
•    To gather evidence against an employee that an organization wishes to terminate.
•    To gain information about how computer systems work for the purpose of debugging, performance optimization, or reverse-engineering.

Most people think about computer forensics as being used by large corporations to search and recover data or to sleuth and find malicious intent.  However, the use of computer forensics is much broader and can be used in cases such as divorce, child custody, harassment and many others.  The need to recover lost data or that of rebuilding information can be done by quality, trained computer forensic practitioners.  It’s advised that you do your homework, study a little about what’s involved and the process.  That way when you seek out qualified individuals you will have a better understanding of their knowledge base.  Something to consider when choosing a computer forensic specialist is their ability to be credible on the witness stand.

How you handle signs of data loss can dramatically increase or decrease your chances of success. So once you have experience signs of potential failure its best to act quickly. In the case of a head crash, you will more than likely damage the platters and destroy critical data if you continue to power up the drive.

It’s not what you want to hear, however some drives are just beyond repair, and whether that be a physical issue or a logical issue, some drives are just simply unrecoverable. It’s been stated in other articles, but needs repeating, make sure you take good practices early on to back up and save information. It doesn’t solve the problem of disk failure, but it sure lessens the pain of needing to recover lost data.

Even if your drive seems to be functioning properly, but has suffered a logical failure, avoid running applications that may risk writing data to the drive. Some off the shelf data recovery programs do exactly that. So while you may end up with some data you need, other data may be gone forever unless you submit the drive to a qualified services company. Our suggestion is to seek professional help to recover lost data and not to try and do it yourself.

Even if your drive seems to be functioning properly, but has suffered a logical failure, avoid running applications that may risk writing data to the drive. Some off the shelf data recovery programs do exactly that. So while you may end up with some data you need, other data may be gone forever unless you submit the drive to a qualified services company. Our suggestion is to seek professional help to recover lost data and not to try and do it yourself.

Always back up your data; make it a regular practice to do so.  There are multiple ways to back up data   via a separate removable drive, CDs, DVDs and even a second internal or external hard drive for your computer. Be aware that there is always the possibility that data may not be stored properly; take the time to occasionally monitor it.  Some operating systems have backup software available for your use, check your help guide for more information.

Something else to consider, which often is overlooked as a simple way to back up critical information and makes accessing it easy from any computer with an Internet access is to have a gmail account and email documents to yourself.  Currently you have free storage access to over 7 GB of space at your disposal.  With that much space you could easily have multiple accounts and store your music and movies!

There are also free sites like Mozy where you can have 2 GB of free storage monthly or for unlimited storage you only pay $4.95 a month.  Online backup is especially convenient and useful in areas where physical property damage or remote access is needed and data is not readily available.

Whether your needs are personal or business don’t take the need for back up lightly.  The investment in time and money is well worth the peace of mind you will gain and in the event you need to recover lost data the process will run much more smoothly.  Just like you have taught yourself to think about saving documents and spreadsheet teach yourself to think about data backup.  Better yet, sign up for a service like Mozy and let them do the automated backup for you.

Unfortunately, most physical damage cannot be repaired by users and needs to taken to a professional. Users normally do not have the hardware or expertise needed to make these repairs. Often data recovery companies are employed to save important data and the cost can be high. These companies will use sterile facilities to assure the media is protected during repairs.

The need to recover lost data from hardware suffering physically damaged can involve many techniques.  Damages can be repaired by replacing parts in the hard disk. This may make the disk usable; however there could still be logical damage.

If the media has suffered a major electric failure it will require the need to recover lost data in order to salvage its contents.

Consider checking your warranty, many procedures can and will void your warranty, resulting in a failure to recover lost data from a hard disk drive.

Extracted images may be used to rebuild data after any logical damage has been repaired. After this has been completed files can be in usable form although recovery is often incomplete.

There are open source tools such as HDClone and DCFLdd that can recover data from all but the physically damaged sectors. A 2007 Defense Cyber Crime Institute study shows that the DCFLdd v1.3.4-1 installed on a Linux 2.4 Kernel system produces extra “bad sectors”, resulting in the loss of information that is actually available. The study states that when installed on a FreeBSD Kernel system, only the bad sectors are lost.

Hard Disk Drive data recovery has the following abilities:

• Bypassing the BIOS and operating system which are very limited in their abilities to deal with drives that have “bad sectors” or take a long time to read
• Reading data from “bad sectors” rather than skipping them (by using various read commands and ECC to recreate damaged data)
• Handling issues caused by unstable drives, such as resetting/repowering the drive when it stops responding or skipping sectors that take too long to read (read instability can be caused by minute mechanical wear and other issues).
• Pre-configuring drives by disabling certain features, such a SMART and G-List re-mapping, to minimize imaging time and the possibility of further drive degradation.

Choosing the correct technician or data recovery company will increase your chance of success, most are trained specifically on how to retrieve and restore lost data.   You should be able to locate within your local area companies that are familiar with failed hard disks, servers, USB drives, tapes, CDs and more.

Although the need to recover lost data may be great it can add up.  Make sure the information you are looking to retrieve really is valuable.  Affordable data recovery is possible, however recovery efforts can add up quickly.  Make sure you receive a solid and binding quote prior to starting and engagement with a data recovery technician.

Be prepared to answer questions, so go into the discussion as knowledgeable as possible.  Much like a physician they will need to diagnose the problem in order to provide you with an accurate proposal.  They may want to know how long the problem has been going on, what they symptoms were and what you tried to do to resolve the issue on your own.

After all this they may still request time to look at what you have so they can assess the damage and the potential amount of data they can recover.  To recover lost data it can take anywhere from a day to several weeks, make sure you clearly understand the time line.  If the data recovery is time sensitive many places will place a rush on recovery for an additional fee.  The key throughout is clear communication with the technician so he and you understand what the needs are.

There are specialists that can recover lost data in most metropolitan cities.  You also have the option of looking for less expensive options online both domestically and internationally to restore your data.  Just like anything sensitive, buyers beware, not all specialists are created equal.

You can also do a search online for hints on how best to do USB data recovery, USB drives are quickly becoming the choice of data storage for many.