When and where data recovery might apply

Notice missing files? Stop, drop and roll. Plus any activity that make things worse. Don't overwrite your data by mistake. That will prevent data recovery in the future. If you don't know what you're doing you could simply make things worse. The thousand of data recovery software titles seem so tempting but beware. You could make your data unrecoverable by picking the wrong one.

There are some thing that even professionals can't fix and it often happens when amateurs try things on their own. Unfortunately data loss happens all the time. Whether it's a USB pen, external hard drive, laptop drive, DVD/CD. Keeping an up to date backup is the best way to go.