How to restore a hard drive

If you have had a system crash or you are constantly resetting your computer due to system crashes or freezes, then the best course of action is to restore your hard drive. This article will take you through the computer backup and recovery steps that you need to take in order for your computer to operate in the same way it operated on the day you bought it.

Data recovery

The most important thing in your computer is your data, everything else can be replaced. If you are not already, get into the habit of using backup utilities to make a copy of your data at regular periods. Should the worst happen, it will just be a case of uploading your most recent copy back to your hard drive. If you are an Apple user, then the Time Machine makes the process of making a backup to disk very easy. If you haven't got a recent backup, you need to boot your computer into safe mode and copy your files manually to an external hard drive. If for some reason, you cannot boot your computer at all, you will need to mount the drive to another computer and try to recover files directly from the file structure. The worst case scenario is that you have had a hard disk crash where the disk is physically damaged. In this scenario, there is nothing that you can do and only a specialist third party data recovery agency will be able to retrieve your data.

Restoring the system

Once you have completed your hard disk drive recovery, you need to perform a data restore to reset your computer back to factory condition. Most modern PCs have recovery software bundled as a system disk. If this is the case, then you can just insert the disk, reset your computer and follow on-screen instructions. If you have built your computer yourself, then you will need to manually reinstall the Operating System and applications. Start by accessing the BIOS screen (this is usually done by restarting the computer and holding the DEL key). From this point, you need to change the boot order so that your computer boots from your optical drive. Save the settings, insert your Operating System disk and restart the computer. As with the manufacturer's recovery disk, all that you need to do is to follow on-screen instructions, update your drivers and upload any data from backup. Expect the whole process to take between one to three hours.