The first and most reliable way to avoid accidental deletion or other forms of data loss is to make regular backups of your important files

User error isn’t the only way you can loose important data, photos, schoolwork or projects. You can experience a sudden power outage or power surge or even a dead hard drive. In case of hard drive failure, don’t keep your backups on the same drive you are backing up. Use another drive or burn them to a CD.

There are also free and paid online storage sites. A few offer up to 5GB of free space and include sharing. With any free storage site read the fine print. Some sites allow larger amounts of space but they limit uploads per month (1GB or less). In other words you can’t get large files uploaded all at once

• The more important the data that is stored on the computer, the greater the need is for backing up that data.
• A backup is only as useful as its associated restoration strategy.
• Storing the copy near the original is unwise, since many disasters such as fire, flood and electrical surges are likely to cause damage to the backup at the same time.
• Automated backup and scheduling should be considered, as manual backups can be affected by human error.
• Backups will fail for a wide variety of reasons. A verification or monitoring strategy is an important part of a successful backup plan.
• It is good to store backed up archives in open formats. This helps with recovery process in the future when the software used to make the backup is obsolete. It also allows different software to be used.

In order to make it easier for data to be recovered in the event of a loss it is best to backup and store documents or data in Open Format. Whenever possible, avoid using formatted text such as a word .doc: using plain text (either ascii or .txt format) guarantees complete access for everyone, regardless of their software, their operating system or the computer they are using. In your emails, if what is important to you is the content and not the formatting, send the text directly in the body of your message instead of sending it as an attachment.

HTML format is the standard language for the web, and it was defined by a standardising international organisation. HTML is a flexible universal format, rich and compact. Native HTML (with no javascript) can carry no virus and can be read on any platform. Note: The HTML code produced by Word is semi-proprietary, and it is liable to include information that cannot be displayed on all platforms.

The different ways of recovering data employed when we attempt to recover your lost data always depend on what the actual damage is and what has caused it. If the hard drive is still working it could be a relatively simple recovery method that we employ, but if, on the other hand, we have to open up your hard drive for some reason, that will mean making use of our clean room to avoid any contamination. In either of these circumstances the first thing that you must do is to get us to carry out a diagnosis of the problem. Only then will Intratec be able to give you an estimate of what recovery will cost you and how long it may take.

· The more important the data that is stored on the computer, the greater the need is for backing up that data.
· A backup is only as useful as its associated restoration strategy.
· Storing the copy near the original is unwise, since many disasters such as fire, flood and electrical surges are likely to cause damage to the backup at the same time.
· Automated backup and scheduling should be considered, as manual backups can be affected by human error.
· Backups will fail for a wide variety of reasons. A verification or monitoring strategy is an important part of a successful backup plan.
· It is good to store backed up archives in open formats. This helps with recovery process in the future when the software used to make the backup is obsolete. It also allows different software to be used.

There are a number of different storage media that can be used for backups. These include:
· Magnetic tape – Magnetic tape has long been the most commonly used medium for bulk data storage, backup, archiving, and interchange.
· Hard disk – The capacity to price ratio of hard drives has been rapidly improving for many years. This is making it more competitive with magnetic tape as a bulk storage medium. The main advantages of hard disk storage are low access times, availability, capacity and ease of use.
· Optical disc – A recordable CD can be used as a backup device. One advantage of CDs is that they can be restored on any machine with a CD-ROM drive. In addition, recordable CD’s are relatively cheap.
· Floppy disk – During the 1980s and early 1990s, many personal computer users associated backup mostly with copying floppy disks. The low data capacity of a floppy disk makes it an unpopular and obsolete choice today.
· Solid state storage – Also known as flash memory, thumb drives, USB flash drives, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Secure Digital cards, etc., these devices are relatively costly for their low capacity, but offer excellent portability and ease-of-use.
· Remote backup service – As broadband Internet access becomes more widespread, remote backup services are gaining in popularity. Backing up via the Internet to a remote location can protect against some worst-case scenarios such as fires, floods, or earthquakes that would destroy any backups in the immediate vicinity along with everything else.

The most convenient backup system would have duplicate copies of every file and program that were immediately accessible whenever a Data Loss Event was noticed. However, in most situations, there is an inverse association between the value of a unit of data and the length of time it takes to notice the loss of that data. Taking this into consideration, many backup strategies decrease the granularity of restorability as the time increases since the potential Data Loss Event. By this logic, recovery from recent Data Loss Events is much easier and more complete than recovery from Data Loss Events that happened further in the past. Recovery is also related to the type of Data Loss Event. Recovering a single lost file is going to be substantially different and easier than recovering a whole system that was destroyed in a flood.

There are three types of backups, data backups, registry backups and system backups. Data backups are the ones most users know about but omit doing, but are sometimes the most important to the user. These are your documents, html files, spreadsheets, jpgs and so on.  The second category is registry backups. The registry holds important system information and is prone to virus attacks that can cause your PC to be unstable or even crash it. You should backup the registry from time to time. The third kind of backup is the system backup. The disk operating system (eg Windows 2000, Unix, Windows XP) is stored on your C drive, and without it the computer will not operate. Always keep the original copy of your operating system so that you can replace it if it becomes corrupted. It is essential that you carry out regular backups of your data and your registry.

Intratec recovery services specialise in all types of data recovery. They can recover files and data from all of the more common operating systems including Linux, Unix and Mac. Many things can corrupt or damage files and data. Even something like a lightning strike 10 kms away can send a surge of power down the mains and, unless you have lightning protection, do an amazing amount of damage. Intratec recovery services are used to that. They can even recover data from a hard drive that has accidentally been formatted. Having said all that, there is one very important thing to remember, and that is that there is no substitute for a backup. Backing up your data on a regular basis is a fundamental and absolutely essential job for anyone who uses a computer. You should backup any data files you have on your computer on a regular basis – either daily or at least weekly, and keep your backup discs somewhere safe away from your office.

It is difficult to describe just how devastating it can be to lose data from your pc. Some people have been reduced to tears when they’ve found that something they have been working on for days or weeks has suddenly just disappeared from their computer. There’s an easy way to avoid this happening – do backups. It’s impossible to tell just how important it is to do backups. If you backup your data on a regular basis then it is easy to restore pc data. It doesn’t take all that much time to backup your files – not after the first backup session, anyway. The first is always the longest and the most important. On this backup operation you need to meticulously go through all your data files and copy them across to a CD or to another computer, file server, or even onto the Internet – there are so many data storage sites that this is simple to do. To restore pc data if you’ve done regular backups is relatively easy.

Once you have a master CD with all your backed up files on it, thereafter you only need to backup new data files or those that you alter. If you have a program file crash on you, it is comparatively easy to re-install the program – you should have the original disk with your software on it, and in most cases it’s just a case of re-installing the software over the top of the previous installation. If you need to restore pc data for a program you’ve downloaded from the web, you’ll probably find the installation file in your downloads folder. If not, it’s just a question of downloading it again – an easy job. To restore pc data if you’ve kept regular backups is easy, so save yourself a problem, and do regular backups.