What exactly is data recovery? If you've ever broken a cell phone, you probably lost some good pictures along with the phone itself. Data recovery is a process of attempting to recover the data that's lost from the broken phone. But this is just one example of attempting to recover from unexpected data loss. Data recovery, in general terms, is the process of trying to restore data after an unexpected event that results in data loss or corruption. Maybe a device that contains data was physically damaged, or an attacker performed malicious actions, or malware deleted critical data. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same. You suddenly lost some really important data and you need to figure how to get it back. How you go about trying to restore this lost data depends on a few factors. One, is the nature of the data lost. If a device has been damaged, you might be able to recover data from the damaged hardware. This could involve using data recovery software, which can analyze failed hard disks or flash drives and try to locate and extract data files. Another factor that would effect your data recovery is the presence of backups. If you're lucky, or you had the foresight to plan for the unexpected, you have data backed up. And you can restore the data that was lost. Data recovery is an important part of an IT system or organisation. Since data is critical component of any business operations, as an IT support specialist ,part of your role is to ensure that this data is available and protected from corruption or loss. So if something goes wrong, the organization can continue with their business operations with minimal disruptions. That's why it's critical to be able to recover from unexpected events that could impact your business data. When an unexpected event occurs, your main objective is to resume normal operations as soon as possible, while minimizing the disruption to your business functions. By the end of this module, you'll have practical tools and methods that you can use to protect your data. One of the most important techniques you'll learn is how to effectively backup your data. The best way to be prepared for a data-loss event is to have a well-thought out disaster plan and procedure in place. Disaster plans should involve making regular backups of any and all critical data that's necessary for your ongoing business processes. This includes things like customer data, system databases, system configs and financial data. You'll learn more about how to design and implement a data disaster plan throughout this module. And lastly, you'll learn more about what IT folks call a post-mortem. Imagine that something did go wrong with your systems and you had to use a disaster plan. You might have discovered issues when recovering your data, that wasn't covered in the disaster plan. A post-mortem is a way for you to document any problems you discovered along the way, and most importantly, the ways you fixed them so you can make sure they don't happen again. Being unprepared for a major data loss event can and has severely impacted businesses. In the upcoming lessons, you'll learn how to prepare for data loss, which is a key part of any IT role. If you're interested in hearing more about how real companies have been impacted by unexpected data loss, check out the supplementary reading. Otherwise, we're going to kick start our journey of data recovery with learning how to backup data, ready? Let's get started.