With increased use of Internet and advancement in technology, there has been a growing threat of virus software programs that disrupt the normal functioning of the system. The major threat from these virus programs to the data or information stored in the system. These viruses may affect user’s data or annoy them to steal and misuse their data or information from the storage device for wrong intentions. Sometimes it happens when bad bugs make the storage device in completely inaccessible and which may directly lead data loss. To secure your electronic devices from such viruses,’ it is always recommended having professional anti-virus software. However, if the bugs already affect the system, then a data recovery method is the best option to get your lost data back. Before starting the recovery process to get back the lost data from an bug affected Windows hard drives let’s know the main reasons for virus attack on electronic devices:
Not Using Anti-Virus: - Not using anti-virus software to protect the system online and offline becomes a serious mistake in the case of a virus attack. The user should always use trustworthy anti-virus Software. It is always suggested to go for the paid antivirus software rather than a free one.
Aware While Accessing Spam Mails: - Opening spam emails and attachments are most common mistakes a computer usually makes which leads to malicious software being released into the system. It is strictly advised to take precautions while accessing spam mails or download such attachments at all. Turn on the scanning feature in the anti-virus software that scans any program before it runs on the system.
Virus Attack from Unsecured Websites: - Surfing unsecured website that exploits the vulnerabilities of the browser to download automatically and install an unwanted program. It may decoy the website surfer to install such software on a pretext of being a useful application. These malicious programs then cause havoc on the system and may steal the data as well before destroying it. However, most modern browsers warn users before loading such a website.
Lost data recovery using CHKDSK or TESTDSK utilities
CHKDSK utility is provided as a built-in feature of the Windows operating system. It can be used to check for bad sectors on the disk, repair the disk and recover lost data, which was not overwritten.
How to use?
- Open the command prompt on the system.
- Enter chkdsk [/drive] [/r]
Here, the drive is the disk on which data recovery needs to be done, and r instructs the system to check for the bad sectors and recover any readable information available from them.
TESTDSK offers a graphical user interface to select quickly the corrupt drive and attempt data recovery. It provides an undelete option to recover the deleted or lost data from a different file system such as NTFS, FAT formatted drives.
How to use?
- Downloading the Test Disk tool, install it.
- Open the software as an administrator.
- Select Advanced option.
- Select the drive that needs data recovery and choose Undelete. This starts the recovery process and lists all the available files that can be recovered.
- Select the files and press “c” to copy. Recover the data in another partition or external media if possible.
- Once recovery is complete, quit the application.
Note: Use of above utilities requires basic technical knowledge about the command line tools.
Try Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery
Use of command line utilities may not recover the data completely and requires a good understanding of working with command line tools. In addition, if a wrong command is executed or a right command is executed wrongly, it may cause unexpected damage to the system. If you don’t want to take any risks or you are not so technical to execute these commands then I will recommend you to use Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery – Home. It is very handy tool. Anyone can use it without any technical expertise.
