When Mother Nature rears her ugly head, and your computer's hard drive has been damaged by a natural disaster, don't despair. There are quite a few methods of data recovery to consider, even after a hurricane or flood.

First of all you need to determine exactly how your computer was damaged. This will determine the method that you need to use to recover your data. For example, has your hard drive been wet?

Second, do not attempt to power up your water damaged hardware. This can finish off electrical parts of your machine that are not already destroyed by the water, and make it impossible to recover your hard drive.

If your computer has been submerged in water, do not let it dry out. You should put the hard drive in a plastic zip lock style bag as quickly as possible. You can also put a wet napkin in the bag with the drive to help maintain moisture. Water contains impurities that can corrode your drive if it's allowed to dry. Taking the proper steps to make sure your drive remains moist will help insure that the data recovery service has the greatest possible chance to recover your data.

Do not use common utility software in an attempt to recovery our data once your machine has suffered water damage. This can cause the drive to either mechanically fail or further corrupt your data, making recovery impossible. Data recovery software packages are a good solution if you machine hasn't suffered any physical damage, but can finish it off if the drive is bad.

Finally, if you decide to ship your complete machine for recovery services, remember to place wet parts in a waterproof container. If not, the shipping box could become damp, causing it to fail, and letting your machine be further damaged. This could impair any further attempt at data recovery, as well as maybe causing your machine to be held at the shipper.

So to sum it up, when a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina strikes and you think your data is lost, this is not always the case. There are many data recovery service providers that will attempt to recovery your data. Very often some of these providers offer major disaster discounts, and have excellent guarantees.