A computer works by shifting about millions of tiny bits of electronic information, and storing them either magnetically on the hard drive or in memory chips. If you have never had a computer crash on you, you may be lucky. Any number of external effects can harm a computer – it is rare that a PC crashes through a system failure, though, of course, it can happen. The sorts of things that can cause a system to crash are voltage peaks, dips or outages, read/write head failure, virus infections and so on.

You can help by doing your best to prevent such occurrences happening. If, for example, you know that Eskom is going to switch off your power three times a week at 10am, make sure that you exit all programs and switch off your machine a good five minutes beforehand. Backing up your data regularly will make it all the more easier to recover computer files that have been lost or corrupted.

Intratec is comprised of a team of professionals who are experts in data recovery, and we have the equipment and software to back us up. But you can help us do our job better by being vigilant for any symptoms leading up to a hard drive crash. In order to recover computer files we need to have as much information at our fingertips as possible. Keep a look out for any disk error messages, for a disk not showing during startup, or for the computer making any funny unusual clicking or whirring sounds. The more information we have when we come to recover your computer files, the better.