Running Head: DATA RECOVERY PLAN 1

Data Recovery Plan

Institutional Affiliation

Date
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INTRODUCTION

Data recovery refers to the process to retrieve or restore data that is accidentally deleted,

corrupted or lost making the data inaccessible. The process of data recovery varies depending on

conditions which led to the loss of the data. To recover the blueprints in the reformatted hard

disk I can use some built-in tools from a windows operating system. On another hand, some

third-party tools can be helpful in recovering the blueprints (Gao, et. al., 2016). To successfully

recover data from a reformatted disk it’s important to outline data recovery plan. There are steps

that I must take to recover the data. These steps include:

1. Creating a list of possible threats to the company

It is important for the company to establish the possible threats that the company can face after

the data is lost. The list of threats helps to diminish the concealed threats which can greatly affect

the company with no plain recovery path to make then normal again.

2. Outline the business continuity and data recovery infrastructure

For the company to respond to data loss, perfect infrastructures must be put in place. Network

infrastructure and its capability to respond to disaster should be analyzed and monitored

objectively. The company network connections should basically be superfluous, various paths

should be followed and wide WAN topology should also be used to deal with threats that can

whip the company foundations.

3. Build a precise inventory of the business’ IT assets

Inventory of company business IT assets should be done precisely to establish to guard the

company processes and resources that are available in the time of disaster. This plays a very big
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role as one disaster in the resources of the company can draw away its progress that it’s has made

since it started. Vendors offer tools for enterprise management to help the company maintain as

well as building a precise inventory of the IT resources. The company can buy modules from the

vendors that can analyze infrastructure for IT and store data about the available software and

hardware using advanced software. In the enterprise configuration management database

(CMDB), the software analyzes the structure formation of the software and hardware.

4. Define a contingency policy based on a set service-level outlook

The company management should be informed by service -level outlook on how much a

specific asset can take a downtime. The information given determines the amount of money that

should be set aside to recover the data effectively. The assets, configurations and the service-

level outlook of the company should remain significant I order to make it possible to define

contingency plan for the company to link business needs to IT assets performance as well as

impact the distraction would have caused to the company welfare.

5. Develop and test the contingency plan

Developing the contingency plan it’s very crucial for the company as well as testing the plan.

There are three phases taken for the contingency plan to go through. The phases are:

1. Notification and activation- this phase takes place the time the disaster strikes

2. Restoration and recovery- this is the phase that happens after notifying and mobilizing

the emergency teams.

3. Return to normalcy- this is the last phase which establishes whether the company will

go back to use primary resources or use the system for backup in situations where to

restore the primary resources will be a prolonged process.

The contingency plan must be tested to determine its capability to undertake disasters. To

establish the changes in the completeness, effectiveness, IT infrastructure and processes of the

company the contingency plan must be retested after some time. It might not be possible for the

company to avoid disaster which can lead to loss of crucial data but the company can build a

plan that can prevent it from most of the future disasters that can make the company lose a lot of

its data.

In this case scenario, data recovery tools that can be applied include;

i. Lazesoft Data Recovery.

ii. Recuva.

Steps in The Application of Lazesoft in Data Recovery

Lazesoft Data Recovery is software used to recover deleted files, inaccessible partition,

reformatted partitions with vital data and partitions that have been accidentally deleted. lazesoft

software is basically used by business and home users to recover the lost data. The following is

the process used to recover data using the Lazesoft Data Recovery (Lazaridis, Arampatzis, &

Pouros, 2016).

No files should be added to the reformatted disk to avoid overwriting the important data that is

lost. It’s very important for bootable CD for recovery to be created and then reboot it in order to

run the Lazesoft recovery program. After launching the Lazesoft the wizard to start data recovery

provides “file recovery “or “partition recovery” options

1. Data recovery option

It provides a guide to recover;

 The deleted files, use first the <undelete> option;

 For reformatted disk, use first the <unformatted> option;

 For corrupt disk, first used the <Fast scan> option.

 Incase the <Fast scan> option fails to work, use the < Deep scan> option

i. The File recovery option

It works best when the hard disk is correctly running but the files have already deleted and

recycled bin emptied, by pressing combination of shift and delete keys, by worm or Trojan virus

or by windows recycle bin bypassing (Kleidson, Ventura, Henrique, & de Farias, 2017). To get
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the files which have been deleted or lost the “file recovery” to go ahead. If the data was lost from

the entire drive then

ii. Partition recovery option

Partition recovery option is used best when the partition has already been formatted, missing

drive letter, PC cannot access the partition, the operating system windows are reinstalled on a

partition or other issues that make drive inaccessible. When Partition, disk or data recovery

volume has selected the list of drives that the system can access appears. After pressing next two

options display, automatic partition recovery is the recommended where files which are common

are pre-selected and partition recovery using the selected file types where the selecting and

searching file types are done manually by the user.

2. Previewing and recovering lost or damaged files

While the search is in progress it is possible to preview or lost files. Lazesoft Data Recovery

results in present directions and the folders that are possible to recover.
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When a folder on the left side opens its files are displayed on the right side. To save the files

which are recovered, they must be copied from the reformatted drive and saved to another save

location with enough space. Press the save button and wait for the files to copy. Make sure all the

wanted data is restored on save destination drive.

Steps in the application of Recuva in Data Recovery

The other important tool that will be useful in this scenario is Recuva. This tool is useful because

it is specially applied in the situations where there are damaged disks or a disk that has been

reformatted as it is in our scenario case. Generally, the Recuva recovery of data is done by the

following general steps (Singh, et. al., 2015).

1. Starting Recuva. This is done after the tool has been successfully installed in a device

that will be used for the recovery of data.

2. Clicking the “Options” that are in the display to choose the favorable and desired option

for the recovery process.

3. From the display of the dialog box on Options, the tab to be clicked on is Actions tab.

4. Next, Scan should be clicked to get the files that are non-deleted from which OK should

be clicked.

5. Run a normal scan. The result will be that files that are non-deleted will be indicated by

green status icons.

The steps in the Recuva recovery can be shown by the data recovery screenshots as follows;

1. Files to be recovered; is chosen from broad areas of option presented and in this case,

data is to be recovered from “All Files” and not a specific folder.

2. The data type that has to be recovered. Here, the choice is that of “Not Sure” since data

is to be recovered from a broad area.

3. What follows is carrying out a deep scan of the whole system to get all the files that

have been reformatted.

4. After the scan is done, the recovered information appears in the display and its restored

to the folder of the choice of the one recovering the data. Most probably, data is restored

from to a new folder for easy identification and access.

REFERENCES

Gao, P., Wang, M., Ghiocel, S. G., Chow, J. H., Fardanesh, B., & Stefopoulos, G. (2016).

Missing data recovery by exploiting low-dimensionality in power system synchrophasor

measurements. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 31(2), 1006-1013.

Lazaridis, I., Arampatzis, T., & Pouros, S. (2016, May). Evaluation of digital forensics tools on

data recovery and analysis. In The Third International Conference on Computer Science,

Computer Engineering, and Social Media (CSCESM2016) (p. 67).

Kleidson, H., Ventura, J., Henrique, J., & de Farias, I. C. B. (2017). Ferramentas forenses

aplicadas na área de recuperação de dados formatados. EJITEC-Electronic Journal of

Information Technology and Communication (FACULDADE SÃO MIGUEL), 1(2).

Singh, V., Kesharwani, L., Saran, V., Gupta, A. K., Lal, E. P., & Verma, A. (2015). Efficacy of

open source tools for recovery of unconventionally deleted data for forensic

consideration.