Data recovery or Datenrettung is the process by which the data is recovered from damaged or inaccessible storage media. Data recovery is done from storage media like CDs, DVDs, Floppies, Hard disks, Magnetic tapes etc. There are two reasons due to which the data becomes inaccessible. They are logical damage and physical damage to the storage media.
Physical damage to storage media can occur in many ways. Magnetic tapes can break, get crumpled or dirt may settle on the tapes. CDs and DVDs can have scratches or the metallic layer may get damaged. Magnetic heads in hard disks can crash or motors may fail. The floppy is notorious for failing frequently due to bending, overheating, cold, dust etc.
There are other reasons like fires, electrical surges etc that can cause data to become inaccessible or lost. There are many methods by which data can be recovered from magnetic media or optical media. The methods most commonly used are Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM), Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM), Magnetic Force Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) etc.
In these methods a sharp magnetic tip is placed closed to the surface to be analyzed. It interacts with the stray...