System crashed, no backup – here’s what to do

It can cause so much pain when your computer crashes and you lose all your valuable data and if you haven’t backed up, it may seem close to impossible to recover it. Most of us forget to back up, we add to our computers only to find out later when our computer crashes that a massive chunk of new data hasn't been backed up.

There is a simple technique you can use to recover your precious data and you don’t have to be a data recovery expert to be able to use this method, but first let’s see what may cause a system crash:

- Hardware conflict
- Bad ram
- Hard disk drives overload
- Viruses attack
- Software conflict
- Power supply problems

Here are a few steps that will help you recover your data:

Find a new hard disk that will be your primary drive – The very first step toward data recovery is finding a new hard disk that will be your new primary hard disk. The next step is to connect your old hard disk as the secondary hard disk, once you have connected the new and the old one you can turn your computer on.

Install an operating system on the new primary hard disk – Now you are going to have to install a fresh copy of the operating system on your new hard disk. The process of reinstalling a whole new operating system will delete all the data that was on your hard drive, that’s why you shouldn't reinstall the operating system to the disk that has the data you want to recover! When you install a fresh copy of the operating system on a new disk you ensure that you will not delete the valuable data you need to recover.

Access the old hard disk – Once the OS has been installed, you will be able to access your second hard disk then go straight to the location where the data you want to recover is, if you can’t find the data just use “search”. You can now copy the data to the new hard drive or back it up.

There is another method you can use – If you have access to another PC, place the hard drive with your data into the USB. You can then connect via USB to the other PC and from the second PC you should be able to get to the file on the hard drive.

These simple techniques will allow you to access your data when your computer crashes unexpectedly; it could happen to anyone so it’s always best to be prepared!

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Written By: Christine Romans
CopyWriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town