A Different Kind of Data Extraction

Data extraction can have different meanings. For some people data extraction means searching the web with an automated program to find the type of information they are interested in. Other people think of extracting data from a damaged or corrupted hard drive when they think of data extraction. Both types of data extraction help users find data, but the latter type, gathering data from a local source such as a hard drive is usually called data recovery.

Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media such as hard disk drives, storage tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID, and other electronics. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system.

The most common "data recovery" issue involves an operating system (OS) failure (typically on a single-disk, single-partition, single-OS system), where the goal is to simply copy all wanted files to another disk. This can be easily accomplished with a Live CD, most of which provide a means to 1) mount the system drive, 2) mount and backup disk or media drives, and 3) move the files from the system to the backup with a file manager or optical disc authoring software.