We use them every day, we load them up with our precious data both at home and in our business and we just expect them to keep on working no matter what we throw at them. We just simply load them up with our most valuable data and information with out sparing a moment thought to effective back up.

Hard Drives and raid storage is getting more reliable with the passage of time so we end up getting rather complacent about our data , and come that inevitable disk failure or raid array error we suddenly go into panic mode.

Losing data is bad news for a home user but even worst still for a business as most of this data is mission critical and losing it is one thing , but if your server has gone down then you are wasting hours (times by the number of employees you have).

If you have a hard drive or raid array failure then I can guarantee your priority will be to find a data recovery expert as soon as is physically possible.

Choosing the right one however can be a bit tricky if your not sure what questions to ask, and you will be at your most vulnerable so may just pick the first one you come across.

Just because they have a few company brands on their website for example Seagate, Maxtor or Hitachi to name a few, does not necessarily mean that they have the ability to rebuild drives or do anything more than try a software recovery, which is first level at best. The problem is a failed software recovery can actually damage the data even further.

Hard drive recovery is a skilled practice and if not performed correctly a simple recovery procedure for a skilled operator can result in an unhappy ending especially if there is no protocol in place to at recover complete data before attempting a full recovery.

Once you have chosen a data recovery provider, if they haven’t got proper clean room facilities find out what the next stage will be, and where the drive is likely to be sent.

If the drive needs to be sent abroad for further investigation this is going to seriously slow down the time it takes to get your business back up and running.

Downtime for a business is a costly affair but for a home user this may not be so much of a problem.

IT companies have become reliant on the data recovery specialists because in reality there are very few skilled practitioners in the art of raid data recovery and quite often bodged attempts at repair results in a totally dead drive(s)

When it comes to raid data recovery this is altogether even more complex and should only be attempted by a professional. Too often company data is completely lost due to an abortive attempt to reconfigure failed arrays.

To sum up, data recovery is a very serious business and at no time should you be exposing your data to more risk than is necessary.

Find a professional data recovery company with at the very least in country or state facilities. And if your unsure ask your IT support team.