How do I evaluate and choose the right data recovery software? That's an excellent question that should be addressed as soon as possible. Your hard drive is a very intricate piece of equipment, and as such, can fail. Maybe you are doing backups frequently, so if the media completely dies, you're covered. But what about that single directory that you deleted, or got corrupted by a virus? It's far easier to use a repair utility to fix your existing data than it is to restore from the backup.

Usually, by the time you find the need for data recovery software, it means that you really need it. Your data is gone, kaput, and you have to have it recovered right that second. So honestly, that's not the time to be looking for your recovery software package. This report will tell you how to find, evaluate, and ultimately choose the right recovery software for your company.

• Start by jumping on a search engine and putting in data recovery software. You will get a ton of hits back. Start narrowing them down, and looking for sites with support forums. As always, finding the right software is a trust issue, and reading support forums will clue you in very quickly on the problems and successes current real users are having. That minimizes the chance that you will find a fake testimonial. There are a lot of recovery companies out there with less than stellar software that are trying to find a niche in the market, even without being able to do the job correctly.
• Make sure you talk to a representative of the company on the phone, and try to ignore the sales pitch and marketing hoopla. Concentrate on what the software actually does, and not the number of successes they state they have had. Talk about cost, likelihood of recovery, and time frame of delivery. Make sure that you understand that hard drive recovery software will NOT fix a physically or electronically failed drive.
• Also, remember that if you have to install the software on your hard drive it's not going to do a whole lot of good if that drive fails. Installing anything on a drive after a deletion or corruption is also bad, as you can overwrite the data you're trying to recover. If this happens, there will be no way to recover the data, unless you ship the unit to a recovery service, and even then, it may be impossible.

The most important thing to remember is to evaluate and diagnose the problem properly before you even think about attempting recovery. A physically malfunctioning hard drive will not respond well to recovery software, and if you try it, you run the risk of rendering your data unusable. When in doubt, be safe and send it out.