Losing the files on your computer to a crash is a horrible thing. But it happens. You need to ask yourself some questions beforehand. Trust me, it will save you a lot of time and stress later on if it actually happens to you. Being prepared for a ahead of time for a disaster will speed you through the recovery.

Your first job post crash should be to find out WHY your data was lost. There are two major reasons why your data could be gone; hard drive failure and data corruption. You must determine which you're suffering from before you can take the proper action.

Physical damage is actually a combination of damage types causing the physical media to stop working. Maybe the drive's mechanical or electronic components have failed. Perhaps you had a fire and you suspect smoke damage. Or a hurricane caused your machine to become wet. All of these things are physical damage. If the computer tries to boot with a drive not found error, it's probably a physical problem. If you do have a physical failure, your only option is to send the drive to a repair and recovery service. A good recovery company can have your data restored to a new hard drive in less than a week.

The other cause of a crash might not be a crash at all. Maybe you accidentally deleted some files on the drive. Perhaps your operating system was having problems and now it won't boot. If the problem is indeed data corruption, a repair utility will be what you need to fix your problem, or if you're unsure of your abilities, you may still send it off for recovery. Remember, however, not to use the drive after you notice a problem with your data. Anything new on the drive can overwrite your existing data and make it unrecoverable.

When your computer crashes and you know you are going to need data recovery, it's important that you already have a plan in place. This takes care of the uncertainty factor, and will help to take some of the stress out of the situation, as well as assisting you in taking the right course of action to insure that your data recovery will be as painless as possible. If you are ever in doubt about what to do next, consult with a professional data recovery specialist. Better safe than sorry.