Healthcare IT support & IT support Florida Services

Posted by Alltek Services Inc on May 25th, 2016

Data recovery is the process by which no longer accessible data is salvaged from inaccessible or corrupted devices when those devices can no longer be accessed in traditional ways. These devices can include hard disk drives, USB flash drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), CD-ROMs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. The reason for the media's inaccessibility will vary and can include physical damage, disaster (such as a fire), or catastrophic failure which prevents mounting to the OS.

 In general, there are three circumstances in which data recovery services are necessary:

The first and most common scenario is an operating system (OS) failure, storage device malfunction, or accidental damage or data deletion. This typically pertains to systems that are a single-drive, single-partition, single OS system. In this case, the goal would be to copy needed files from the damaged drive to a new drive. Cases like these can be resolved by using a LiveCD, which allows both the system and backup drives to be mounted, and allow for files to be moved from the system drive to the backup. This case can often be mitigated by partitioning the disk and keeping backup copies on a different partition from the one that houses the OS.

The second scenario is a drive-level failure. This can include a compromised file system, drive partition, or a general hard disk drive failure. In all of these cases, the drive has failed irretrievably, and the data cannot be easily accessed, which necessitates salvaging any data that can be recovered and read. If repairing the drive is attempted, the solution may be as simple as repairing the file system, partition table, or master boot record. If those techniques are not feasible, software-based data recovery of corrupted data can be attempted.

The second scenario is 'permanent deletion' from a storage medium. In general, deleted files are not removed from a storage medium when a file is deleted. Instead any references to that file in the directory structure are removed and the space occupied by the file is made available for other files to overwrite it. While the data technically still exists, it cannot be found through standard file managers. The original files still remain, though they are often stored on the media in disconnected fragments and may still be recoverable.

In the health care field, it is important to have proper Healthcare IT support. In recent years, hospitals, doctor's offices, and other medical facilities have transitioned from traditional paper records to electronic records. With electronic records, patient health records are stored on computer networks. With the advent of electronic medical records (EMR), the health information for thousands of patients is stored on hard drives and other media. If a hard drive fails, or the data on it is rendered inaccessible, it can risk significant health ramifications for patients of a medical facility. Whether due to a hard drive failure or a freak accident such as a fire or lightning strike, good IT support will minimize any downtime due to storage device issues or failure, and can recover any data that may have been damaged or inaccessible during the downtime.

When conducting healthcare IT consulting Florida, you will want to make sure you are familiar with the various management and charting software programs used by medical facilities. You will need to know what file formats they save in, as well as the location saved files are stored at and the type of device that stores files. This way, you can provide the best IT support Florida for your healthcare clients.