Help! All my work! My records, photos, music.. It's all gone!

Losing something that was important enough to collect or slave over for years is a shock to the system to say the least. It does unleash an overwhelming flood of feelings - loss, fear, anger.. (we know, we've been there too!) Only a few moments ago, everything seemed fine... Suddenly the world has gone from under our feet. It feels like freefall. Help! Someone! Anyone!

Sorry. We do understand. But while we understand the feeling, we also do know that getting angry with the disk drive and hurling it across the room (real story) will not improve your chances of recovering the very data that you've lost. So, take things slow and be as rational as you can. Sleep on it. Make yourself a tea. Go for a walk. Just don't rush: it's too important. You'll be glad in retrospect.

Next, you will need to get your bearings. Find out what's actually gone wrong and what options you have. It is actually quite rare for the data to be completely gone: Xyber's recovery rate is well over 90%. In many situations, it is quite feasible to recover everything, just the way it was and it doesn't have to cost the earth. In addition, some types of data are much more easily recognisable than others - things like JPG photos and many others can be extracted even from a hard disk that has been initialised. But we are running ahead of ourselves.

Do you have some backups, even older ones? Do you have hard copies, test prints of the important stuff? Have you emailed copies of important documents? All of these should be easily accessible.