Whether you find yourself faced with an unfortunate system failure, hard drive crash, or simply a few clicks of the wrong button, there are likely times when you have wanted to know how to recover permanently deleted files. Depending on the precautions you’ve taken to protect your business from data loss, you may have more difficulty than others in recovering your files.
Luckily, when it comes to all things digital, nothing is ever lost forever — in most cases. Use the tips below to recover your permanently deleted files and determine your business’s plan of action for data loss prevention moving forward.
The Importance of Data Recovery Planning (and Protecting Yourself From Loss)
Data recovery planning is a serious focus for nearly all businesses today because so much information is now stored electronically, whether it’s your customer’s contact profile, confidential trade secrets, financial data, or other information – sensitive and otherwise. Many companies are fortunate enough to find themselves merely worrying about attempting to recover deleted files and data, while other companies can be faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of (hopefully) retrieving years of digitized information — an endeavor that costs companies thousands of dollars each year and doesn’t always deliver the desired results.
How to Recover Permanently Deleted Files
Current computer operating systems often include methods for recovering deleted files, and there are applications and software programs that can be installed to do so, as well. Before you start running System Restore or installing recovery software, you should – despite the obviousness of the statement – perform a thorough check of your existing data, including items in the Recycle Bin, just to make sure the files or data you’re missing haven’t inadvertently been overlooked.
Some of the methods, applications, and programs for data recovery include:
- As soon as you realize the data is missing or deleted, stop using the device until you can implement a recovery program. Any activity on the computer (or other device) may write files to the ‘space’ where the deleted data existed, thus overwriting it and nullifying your ability to recover it.
- Install a file recovery program and have it scan your hard drive for deleted files. Once you have located the deleted data, instruct the program to restore it to its original (pre-deletion) location. Nearly all of these programs provide instructions on how to recover permanently deleted files, which makes them typically very easy to use. File recovery programs include Norton Utilities, PC Data Rescue, SanDisk RescuePRO, Recuva, and many others.
- Technology specialists and IT experts may also be able to show you how to recover permanently deleted files and help you recover information you thought you’d lost forever. Alternatively, a data recovery specialist, like Kroll OnTrack, can perform the recovery for you (often at a relatively high cost with little guarantee as to the success of their efforts).
Foolproof Data Protection (and Peace of Mind) Does Exist
To better prepare your business for the possibility of future data loss, you should take proactive steps to protect and safeguard your company’s digital information, rather than relying on physical device storage which leaves data highly vulnerable.
One of the best ways to protect your data from loss is to have it regularly and automatically backed up to an online cloud backup provider’s secure databases. This method provides you with a foolproof way to guarantee the safety, security, and recoverability of your backed up data if you are ever faced with the inconvenience of data loss on your physical or local systems, servers, and equipment again.
Whether you want to prevent the possibility of data loss due to natural disasters, equipment failure or damage, or other potential threats, the best way to do so is by exploring the options available to you with safe and secure cloud backup with a reliable cloud backup solutions partner, like Nordic Backup.
Nordic Backup automatically and continuously backs up all elected data on the devices you select and provides unlimited previous file version histories, allowing you to revert to previous file versions and recover the data you need from any point in time — whether you’ve just noticed a human-made error in your data, or you’ve recently detected a virus and need to revert to a readable file version.
For a small business cloud backup solution with the unlimited versioning history you need to recover and restore any file version, try a small business cloud backup plan with Nordic Backup. For server virtualization options to reinstate your entire system without downtime, a server cloud backup solution will provide you with all the recovery options you need.
