The very best advice in that article is in the penultimate paragraph. With so many excellent backup and recovery solutions currently available, most of which are fully capable of backup task automation and overnight scheduling, it’s difficult to understand anyone’s needing to retrieve data from a factory reset storage device. Even in the unlikely event of partial success, the effort and inconvenience involved far exceeds that required to prevent any such necessity. I wouldn’t even consider an update, let alone a complete reset, without at least one full backup image — preferably several — and rescue media that has tested and proven recovery capability on the machine in question.

Too often the latter gets overlooked until disaster strikes even by those who are conscientious about backing up their systems. The wise user always keeps in mind that the whole purpose is recovery, not just the backups themselves. So always back up comprehensively so that you can recover selectively as may be needed.

Good reference article should it be needed. As @arvy pointed out

Would this be a good time to mention how having good backups lets you avoid problems like this?

To add to Fred’s quote, consider the options of adding a secondary HDD/SSD (HDD caddy in the DVD bay [if CD/DVD is rarely used convert to an external DVD]) or a large volume small sized USB flash for laptops.
For desktops an additional HDD/SSD or USB flash drive for storing all important user files within certainly helps as well as external backups.

2 users thanked author for this post.

abbodi86,

GoneToPlaid

BUT, by the way, keep in mind : this is not how to destroy data. For very valuable data one will be surprised how much can (or how little cannot) be rescued.

Microfix wrote:

…To add to Fred’s quote, consider the options of adding a secondary HDD/SSD (HDD caddy in the DVD bay [if CD/DVD is rarely used convert to an external DVD]) or a large volume small sized USB flash for laptops…

A replacement HDD caddy which installs in a laptop’s CD/DVD bay actually is a rather good idea for laptops. The beauty of this is that the connection for the HDD caddy which replaces the original CD/DVD is pure SATA, versus USB for any external backup drive for the laptop. I should have done this a few years ago for my travel laptop since I have never used the laptop’s DVD drive.

Microfix wrote:

Good reference article should it be needed. As @arvy pointed out

Would this be a good time to mention how having good backups lets you avoid problems like this?

To add to Fred’s quote, consider the options of adding a secondary HDD/SSD (HDD caddy in the DVD bay [if CD/DVD is rarely used convert to an external DVD]) or a large volume small sized USB flash for laptops. For desktops an additional HDD/SSD or USB flash drive for storing all important user files within certainly helps as well as external backups.

As an addendum to this, make certain that when you use an external USB drive that you aren’t artificially limiting your access to your data through some mess involving built-in backup routines, or hardware specific to the drive itself.

I have several old Maxtor external drives that are only good for paperweights at the moment, because the never-ending march of OS progress has rendered the little USB interface component in those drives inoperable.  They just don’t work on anything past WinXP, and Maxtor isn’t around anymore to update their driver files.  Fortunately, those old drives tended to just be an external casing for a standard SATA drive, so I probably have a good chance of getting the data off of them by removing the casing, and mounting the drive normally.

As a rule, when I buy a new backup drive, I empty it of any included utilities or backup schedulers, and simply drag and drop copy/paste the files I need to backup.  If something is really important to me, I back it up as a data cd/dvd.

Crossing my fingers now that those formats don’t become completely obsolete any time soon.

Hmmm, I guess it’s something to consider if you’re selling an old computer and don’t want old data recovered as well.

anonymous wrote:

Just wondering: How do you “test and prove” the recovery capability of the recovery media “on the machine in question”, without risking that test itself bricking the machine. HMcF

The easiest way is a 2 step process.

1. Test the backup: open the backup program and “mount” the backup image. Browse to a file that you don’t care about. Restore it and confirm the file is correct.
2. Test booting to recovery media: create recovery media via your backup program. Boot the media.

If you can do both of those things then your restore will work on that machine.

cheers, Paul

The problem with the term Factory Reset is that it is totally vague and obscure as to what kind of data deletion has taken place.

People assume that a Factory Reset is a total wipe of all user data and a restoration of the manufacturer data as to how it was when you first turned on the device. This is almost never the case!

User data is the most valuable data there is to any company around and few are willing to part with it even if that data resides on the users device and not in their own cloud. So often after a factory reset you can still find traces of user data or even the full data list still somewhere on the device.

Even if a truly invasive form of deletion was done. Like a full format or partition deletion then the medium that was holding the data might still be able to let you retrieve some or all user data. A Hard Disk can be inspected with unformat or undelete tools. Tools that read the raw data of sectors are also available. Only with a Trim enabled SSD can you get into a situation where the recovery of user data is impossible.