What is the Difference between Data Recovery and Data Restoration?

Data recovery and data restoration are two different tasks that an organization might face. Both of these tasks require an individual or group to recover data from a destroyed or inaccessible storage medium. But there are key differences between the two that may affect the outcome of the task.

Data recovery takes place after physical hardware failures or natural disasters. It typically involves extracting data from inaccessible storage media. However, data restoration is a proactive task that an organization might perform as part of its disaster recovery planning.

What is the Difference between Data Recovery and Data Restoration?

The two terms are often used interchangeably, which is unfortunate because there are significant differences between the two.

Data recovery

Data recovery is a more technical activity that focuses on recovering specific types of information that might have been deleted or modified during a hardware or software failure.

An amazing recovery software like iTop Data Recovery involves recovering data that might have been deleted, altered, or otherwise removed from storage.

Data restoration

Data restoration, on the other hand, is a more emotional activity that revolves around getting data back from storage and contacting individuals and organizations whose data has been stored or deleted.

What happens when you perform Data Recovery?

Once a data storage device has been determined to be unusable, data recovery begins by identifying all accessible data files and folders within the device. If the device contains multiple disks, each with its own folder structure, data recovery software will be unable to identify all the data files and folders on all disks. If the device does not have a conventional disk drive, data recovery software can usually identify the Still, data recovery is not targeted at recovering data that has been modified after it was stored.

What happens when you perform Data Restoration?

Once a data storage device has been determined to be unusable, data restoration begins by identifying all accessible data files and folders within the device. If the device contains multiple disks, each with its own folder structure, Top Data Protector Software will be able to identify all the data files and folders on all disks. If the device does not have a conventional disk drive, data restore software can usually extract data from the hard drive using special software like iTop.

When is Data Recovery better than Data Restoration?

Due to the fact that data recovery is a proactive task that an organization might perform as part of its disaster recovery planning, it is often a more favorable outcome than data restoration. Data recovery often begins after a disaster that has destroyed or significantly impacted the conventional data storage medium. In these cases, data recovery can be expected to yield more information because the medium that was destroyed or inaccessible may not be able to be replaced.

The Dos and Don’ts of Data Recovery

There are many situations where data recovery is a must-have task. This is true for any business that stores significant amounts of data.

However, there are also situations where data recovery is unnecessary. Where data recovery is not needed you can try to recover the data on your own.

Wrapping Up

In a disaster, it is critical for organizations to have recovery plans in place that account for all possible scenarios. Data recovery is just one of those possible scenarios. However, unlike data restoration, data recovery is a proactive task that an organization might perform as part of its disaster recovery planning.