Data lost can result from failed hard drives caused by mechanical failure, bumped or dropped drives, viruses, sabotage, user error such as accidentally deleted files or formatting, power surges and disruptions, and natural disasters such as lightning strikes, fires, and floods.

Fortunately, lost data can be recovered successfully about 80 percent of the time. Basically, you can attempt a DIY data recovery with software utility, have your local IT expert do it for you or go to a professional data recovery specialist. All of these options have its advantages and disadvantages, and the key to knowing which one is right for you is to look at your budget and how much value is your data worth to you.

Most software tilities work in the same way. The first step the data recovery utility performs is to scan the drive to locate the file system components. Most utilities will display this scan with some type of progress meter. Since data recovery is a complicated process, the risk in DIY data recovery lies in your inability to complete the whole process, or further damaging your hard drive in more severe cases.

Usually when a hard disk reached the hands of a data recovery specialist, it has most probably been through failed attempt of data recovery. This will result in lower chances of ever recovering those data as the damage could be significant.

But why most people only turn to data recovery specialist as a last resort although they are the gold standard of data recovery is perfectly understandable. Data recovery firms make their money from recovering lost data alone, and they have to invest heavily on facilities such as a clean room, which is a working room with controlled number of dust particles and high tech machines as well as computers. This will then reflect in the thousands of dollars charged for a professional data recovery service.

As far as result is concerned, no one beat these guys. Otherwise, they would not be in-demand and so highly sought after. But just how many of us can really afford to go to a data recovery specialist?

Well, there has been a third alternative, and that is to go to your local IT experts. These people are not well versed with data recovery but some of them do offer the service for a few hundred bucks. Also, it is safe to go try their service because they can do one neat 'safety trick' to protect your data even if the whole data recovery attempt failed. Generally, this is the most viable way if cannot afford the pros.