Monday, February 23, 2004		Book Review

Lost your data! Don’t worry, read the book
Review by Jasjot Singh Narula
Do-It-Yourself — Data Recovery in easy steps by Saurabh Gupta; Ranee Publication; Price Rs 395; Pages 368

IN today’s IT-savvy world, the pieces of information stored on a computer are like jewels. One cannot even think of losing the data. Losing data is not an unusual thing is the computer world and seasoned professional know how it feels. The only option left is an SOS call to the computer guy, who may ask for a hefty compensation to bail him out. The book in question has provided almost all relevant answers related to data recovery. In spite of the book being a bit techie it is helpful to those who acquire a little knowledge of hardware and software compatibility. In fact, data recovery is a good start for young entrepreneurs in the computer field.

The combinations of chapters are skillfully designed for better understanding. Chapter 1 depicts how data can be lost. Although, layman or new user may think due to the failure of hard disk perhaps there are number of ways stored data may get corrupted or removed. For example attack by malicious virus, physical damage to the hard disk, Partition failure, FAT corruption etc to a name few.

The book provides detailed information about the various drive formats including hard drive, floppy drive, RAID, Compact Disk etc. Hard drive being the essential component for storing data is perhaps the easiest target for virus. Therefore Chapter 3, 4 and 5 of the book are dedicated to hard drives. Here author describes different levels of formatting with full anatomy of hard drive. The best part is the content, which has been described with good illustration, though little distorted, solves the purpose. The book also provides the maximum usage of hard drive by understanding disk compression command.

The author has provided a CD bundled with some full and trial version software on data recovery, which is perhaps quite helpful for the users. In subsequent chapters, the author provides different techniques and software through which data can be recovered. The chapter on hard disk cloning gives readers a better view on how to clone their hard drive when it is crashed. Well, what is the best is that the author has given a detailed information about the recovery of data from Linux and novel Netware.

CDs or DVDs that get scratch due to mishandling may cause loss of data. Chapter 16 is about data recovery from scratched CDs. The author has demonstrated a live video in which he recovered data from the physically damaged hard drive and a whole chapter is about it.