Lost data? Your next steps are crucial!

To avoid permanent data loss, you should follow these 4 simple rules:

1. Stop using your PC or any other device you want to recover information from (learn why below). If your data is critical to you or your business, even one second of extra use could render your data unrecoverable.

2. The first recovery attempt is always the best recovery attempt.

3. If your drive is making clicking or grinding sounds, shut down your computer immediately. These sounds could be the read/write heads hitting or scraping the platters. Severe or complete data loss could result.

4. Unplug the power to the computer before removing the hard drive and handle the drive carefully. Hard drives are extremely sensitive to static electricity and physical jolts.

Data Recovery Explained: What really happens when you delete an email, a file or a photo?

When you've clicked on "Delete", what you have actually done is not deleted the files themselves but instead the hard drive's directory entries for the files that were on your camera or PC/Mac.

The space that the files used to occupy is now free space and available for use. The information that comprised your files, emails, pictures (i.e. data) is still there and recoverable.

However, this "free space" will be overwritten eventually and when that happens depends really on a lot of things, such as how this free space is distributed over the hard drive etc...Sometimes also if the file you deleted is very small, it might not be overwritten for a while until another equally small-size file is written to the drive.

Sometimes that available space on your device will be overwritten immediately with new data, other times this may take days, weeks or months...it all depends. The crucial thing is this:

Your greatest chance of recovering deleted files or photos intact is to stop using the device you want to retrieve your data from immediately.

How to Prevent Data Loss

Everyone should take preventive measures to make sure their critical information is protected from corruption and loss. Here are some ideas on how to protect your information:

1. Offsite backup solutions such as Mozy and Mozy Pro for business.

2. Periodically test the backups to make sure your data is being backed up properly

3. Make sure you use up-to-date hardware and software utilities for data security, such as firewalls and virus protection

4. Connect systems to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to protect against power surges

5. Avoid static discharge when touching or handling the media, especially in excessively dry environments

Mac Data Recovery

As with the Windows operating system, the same rules apply: Your best chance of recovering your deleted files if you scan your Mac immediately after realizing that you have deleted important files.

Although recovering deleted files can be a hit or miss game on some operating systems, the HFS+ file system used by the Mac OS X does make some sort of effort to keep accidentally deleted files recoverable. It is possible to retrieve deleted files as long as OS X has not re-used the directory and cataloged the information yet.