Computer users are ideally expected to backup all their data periodically, in order to prevent massive data loss in the event of system failure or a crashed hard disk. In many cases, though, a backup of data is not performed, leading to a great deal of frustration and anxiety when important data goes down with a system crash. If this has happened to you, then the following steps to backup your data after your computer crashes will help you to a great extent.
Keep in mind, though, that these steps will work only if your hard drive itself has not damaged.
How To Recover Data
Start off by getting in place the things that you will need.
Things You Need To Back Up Your Data
- The un-damaged hard drive of the computer that has crashed.
- An external case in which to put this hard drive.
- A computer or laptop that is working well and which has USB connectivity. Also ensure that there is sufficient memory available on this computer, so as to accommodate the data from the system that has crashed.
Once you have the above pre-requisites in place, follow the below steps to recover your data.
Steps To Recover Data
- Remove the hard drive from the computer that has crashed. Do this after turning off the power to the machine. If you are unsure of how to remove the hard drive, check on this first before going ahead. If you damage the hard drive due to improper handling, all your data will be lost.
- Place the hard drive into the external case. Seal the case and plug it into the working computer, via USB. Ensure that you are using a proper USB cable, as damaged or loose cables can lead to problems while you are transferring a huge bulk of data.
- Turn on the external hard drive. The computer to which it is attached should automatically detect it and install any drivers, if required. At this point, you will usually get a “wizard” appearing on your computer screen, with details of progress as to driver or software installation for the detected hard drive.
- Wait until you get a message on your task bar stating: “Your new hardware is installed and ready to use.” This implies that you can now start accessing the hard disk and transfer your data across.
- Open up Explorer on your computer and navigate to the list of drives, usually present in the “My Computer” folder. The new drive will be present in the list.
- Copy all the files that you need, on to the working computer. In some cases, you might have hidden files and folders. If this is the case, you will need to unhide all files and folders first, or you might end up missing any important data.
Once you have recovered the data that is needed, you can remove the hard drive from the external casing and re-install it in the computer that has crashed. After you fix the machine that has crashed, ensure that you backup all data periodically, in the future. Backing up your data will save you a great deal of time, effort as well as frustration, in recovering that that has been lost.