What does the term "Data Recovery" mean

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OldGeek

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#123501 9-Jul-2013 21:23

I recently bought some software described as a "Data Recovery" tool. My assumption here is that the term 'data recovery' is synonymous with the term ' data restoration' meaning that the recovery process recreates the data from backup.

The context here is protecting data on a SIM card. This software runs on Windows and can read data from a SIM card using appropriate hardware then write it to disk. It turns out that it cannot read the data on disk and write it back to the SIM card. Surely this renders the software useless - the point of backing data up is solely to be able to restore it. The ability to restore data was purely an assumption on my part. Was my assumption reasonable?

gehenna

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#851993 9-Jul-2013 21:26

Data recovery is usually the process of recovering deleted data from a storage medium by scanning the device for data that hasn't been overwritten or moved around so much that it is no longer recoverable. It doesn't use a backup or restore from a backup. It just looks at the raw 0's and 1's (So to speak) on the drive to see what it can see.

E.G. if you use a data recovery tool to scan a hard drive, the idea is that you get a list of files that have been deleted in the past and the opportunity to recover them back to usable form.

freitasm

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#852002 9-Jul-2013 21:33

Data Recovery, as explained above, is the process of getting back data you accidentally deleted - and should have backup but don't.

Example "Oh, crap, just deleted this batch of music from my HDD and don't have a copy anywhere else. Will use a Data Recovery program to see if I can get these back".

This works because data is not really "deleted", only the file name is removed from the directory. These software will look in the directory and try to determine what files were there - it helps if you don't write anything new on the HDD to avoid reusing the space (not usual as most OS will use other available spaces first).

You seem to be confusing it with "data backup" and "data restore" which is the process of creating copy(ies) of your files for safekeeping and easy of retrieval from these copies if needed.

Example "Oh, crap, just deleted this batch of music from my HDD. Lucky I used a Backup program to make copies ot my external HDD so now I can use the Restore program to bring them back without a problem".

Lias

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#852008 9-Jul-2013 21:39

Pretty much the same as the others.

I consider "Data Recovery" to be the act of recovering data that can no longer be read as designed/desired. It ranges from simple such as undeleting accidently deleted files, through to complex such as recovering the data from a HDD that has been through a house fire.

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OldGeek

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#853557 10-Jul-2013 20:19

Thanks folks - I stand corrected. I should have been more careful in evaluating the software capabilities.