When files have been mistakenly deleted and need to be recovered, data recovery is necessary. This is the act of retrieving deleted or erased files using one of several methods. One example is third-party software, which can be purchased and used to recover files. There are many software utilities that can perform data recovery successfully, ranging from £20 to £200, depending on how well the data is recovered.

There are also companies that will perform data recovery for a range of fees. Data recovery companies specialize in difficult cases of data recovery and when a software utility was not successful. These companies use more complex processes to retrieve deleted or erased data, processes that may not be used by third-party software. For example, a hard drive that has been in a fire may have to have its interface board or other parts replaced before data could be accessed.

Soure: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/d/datareco.htm

Data recovery is the process of restoring data that has been lost, accidentally deleted, corrupted or made inaccessible for any reason.

In enterprise information technology (IT), data recovery typically refers to the restoration of data to a desktop, laptop, server, or external storage system from a backup.

The data recovery process may vary, depending on the circumstances of the data loss, the data recovery software used to create the backup, and the backup target media. For example, many desktop and laptop backup software platforms allow end users to restore lost files themselves, while restoration of a corrupted database from a tape backup is a more complicated process that requires IT intervention. Data recovery can also be provided as service. Such services are typically used to retrieve important files that were not backed up and accidentally deleted from a computer’s file system but still remain on disk in fragments.

An organization’s disaster recovery plan should make known who in the organization is responsible for recovering data, provide a strategy for how data will be recovered and document acceptable recovery point and recovery time objectives.

Source: http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/definition/data-recovery

A hard drive is nothing more than a magnetised storage area. Your Operating System is stored on your hard drive, as well as all your software programmes, like Microsoft Word. The hard drive is actually a few circular disks stacked one on top of the other. A little arm moves over the disks and writes things to these circular platters, and reads them. When you save a file or create a new folder, think of these circular platters being written to and you’ll have a basic idea of just what your hard drive is.

A hard drive is given a letter of the alphabet for convenience sake, and in most computers this will be the letter C. That’s why the hard drive is popularly know as the C Drive. There are other drives on your computer. These are the usual drives on modern

Source: http://www.homeandlearn.co.uk/bc/bcs1p4.html

RAID (redundant array of independent disks, originally redundant array of inexpensive disks) is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit. Data is distributed across the drives in one of several ways called “RAID levels”, depending on the level of redundancy and performance required.

The term “RAID” was first defined by David Patterson, Garth A. Gibson, and Randy Katz at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987. Marketers representing industry RAID manufacturers later attempted to reinvent the term to describe a redundant array of independent disks as a means of disassociating a low-cost expectation from RAID technology.

RAID is now used as an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple physical drives: RAID is an example of storage virtualization and the array can be accessed by the operating system as one single drive. The different schemes or architectures are named by the word RAID followed by a number (e.g. RAID 0, RAID 1). Each scheme provides a different balance between the key goals: reliability and availability, performance and capacity. RAID levels greater than RAID 0 provide protection against unrecoverable (sector) read errors, as well as whole disk failure.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Abingdon-on-Thames, commonly known simply as Abingdon, is a market town and civil parish in England. Historically the county town of Berkshire, since 1974 it has been the seat of the Vale of White Horse district of Oxfordshire. Abingdon is one of several places that claim to be Britain’s oldest continuously occupied town,[2] with people having lived there for at least 6,000 years.

Abingdon is 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of Oxford and 5 miles (8 km) north of Didcot in the flat valley of the Thames on its west (right) bank, where the small river Ock flows in from the Vale of White Horse. It is on the A415 between Witney and Dorchester, adjacent to the A34 trunk road, linking it with the M4 and M40 motorways. The B4017 and A4183 also link the town, both being part of the old A34 and often heavily congested.

Local bus services to Oxford and the surrounding areas are run by Stagecoach Oxfordshire, Thames Travel, the Oxford Bus Company and smaller independent companies.

Abingdon is the largest town in southern England with no rail service[citation needed] (except Gosport, which is part of greater Portsmouth, and Canvey Island). However the small, primarily stopping-service, stations at Culham and Radley are both just over 2 miles (3.2 km) away. Abingdon’s eastern ring-road and newest suburbs are under a mile from Radley station. The Radley to Abingdon branch line closed to passengers in 1963. The nearest major stations with taxi ranks are Oxford (8 miles/13 km) and Didcot Parkway (7 miles/11 km). All are managed by First Great Western. Frequent express buses operate between Oxford station and Abingdon.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abingdon-on-Thames