Data recovery

The IT Services Help Desk is frequently called upon to recover corrupted files. The Help Desk has data recovery tools to deal with:

• Microsoft Word documents which refuse to open or appear to be damaged (covering Windows versions 6 to 2003 and Macintosh Word)
• Damaged files on portable media, e.g. floppy disk, CD, memory stick or card.

Note that no guarantee can be offered that recovery efforts will be successful - it will depend on the nature and extent of the damage.

To take advantage of either of these services, contact IT Services Help Desk staff in the first instance to discuss the best way forward. Word documents may be e-mailed or placed on a network drive for processing but data on portable media will need to be brought in person to Help Desk.

These recovery services normally operate Monday - Friday, 10.00-16.00.

However, prevention is better than cure. Users should always:

• take reasonable care of their disks or other portable media, and
• keep back-ups of all important data

Where users accidentally delete files stored in their personal disk space, the files can in principle be restored from the previous day's backups made by IT Services. However, a charge will be made for this service, and the time scale will depend on the other commitments of the relevant staff - users should not expect immediate file recovery on demand. Note that some network file areas are not backed up.

Users should always keep their own backups of important files