Saving Yourself From Corrupt Data

For the millions of Americans who use computers each and everyday, coping with corrupt data is inevitable. It's going to happen at some point. Though annoying and potentially damaging to your system, corrupt data is not necessarily a major cause for alarm. Knowing how to diagnose and fix corrupt data can save you many agonizing hours trying to get your data back.

Data is what your hard disk drive stores on a day to day basis. This includes all user-created files in addition to application codes and operating system files. Files can become corrupted if a power surge occurs. It can also occur if the system was not shut down correctly or if a external device was not removed before system shutdown. Files that have not been saved correctly, hardware failures and programming issues can all lead to corruption of stored information. Software updates that are not effectively performed may damage operating system files.

The files stored on the hard disk of any PC is in potential danger under any of the circumstances listed above. The files appear to be missing but they still are actually where they were. In a typical example the available space on the disk and the total file system size will not match up correctly.

The user can plan ahead to protect the information on any system.

Schedule Consistent Backups

Running a back up to an external drive is very cost effective, easy to perform and effective. For as little as one hundred dollars, electronic retailers offer external hard disks that have storage capacities upwards of 2.5 terabytes. Plan out a good backup schedule and stay consistent. Most vendors recommend a weekly backup for a good degree of safety. Ensure you do not power down the system before ejecting all external drives, including IPods. Missing this step may result in corruption.

Ready Yourself To Recover Now

Fixing your computer after a file system failure will be much easier if you have recovery disks handy. Check the help section for details on backup and restore on any Windows system to create recovery disks. If the file system ever fails and the files are corrupted, the recovery files can be used to restore the missing files.

Got Anti-Virus?

Use well known anti-virus software to regularly perform file scans, which can catch file and drive system flaws before they have a chance to cause major issues. Try to set a monthly time to perform a high-level scan, also known as a "deep scan" or "full scan" to ensure your system is protected from the universe of rogue software and viruses.

Power surges can be a source of serious file system issues. This is easy to prevent by plugging the system into a shielded power strip. It's actually quite difficult to buy these devices for much more than $30 and they can be plugged into any ordinary household outlet.

Following these guidelines will help shore up your PC against any corrupt data that can cause real system issues.

Maureen Davies is an experienced data recovery engineer and editor of http://www.harddriverecovery.org. Find out more about professional raid data recovery services here.