Who Should Do Your Data Recovery?
Do you know what happens to recovered data on your computers. Here is the scenario…
You are getting the blue screen of death when you boot your computer.
This is the point when you go into a bit of a panic because all of your important data for your business is stored on the computer.
You have you everything from your business tax files to your kid’s 1st birthday pictures.
You heart is in your stomach.
So you call you computer consultant let and him/her know about the computer problem….
Now they are on the way to help and recover the data.
Here is a question you must ask yourself?
Do you trust your computer consultant and even if you do what happens with the data they are going to recover from your computer?
Once the technician arrives, he/she determines that the operating system has failed and can’t be recovered so your data must be recovered from the hard drive and transfered back once the Windows operating system is re-installed.
You must understand that when data is recovered from a hard drive it will be copied to the computer technicians computer or their portable hard drive.
You must quiz your computer technician before they start to do the repair about how he/she plans to recover the data and what will happed to the data once the data is restored to your computer.
A reputable computer repair company will have a privacy policy and written assurances that they will not retain any recovered data.
So make sure you get the data recovery policy in writing from the tech before any work begins.
If you are a bit paranoid, like me, you may want to consider learning how to back up and restore your critical data yourself.
For time sake you may want the computer service company to re-install the operating system and then you can restore the data after they are done.
You will probably want to use one of the online data backup services such as Mozy or Carbonite.
You can also use the built in back-up utility for Windows XP or Vista and backup your data regularly to a USB external hard drive or another computer.
This way you can leave the re-installation of the operating system to the computer service company and keep you private data private.