10 Simple Tips to Prevent Data Loss

Regardless of which hard drive brand you own, it is just a matter of time before you will need data recovery. Whether it is due to mechanical failure or otherwise, hard drive data recovery for laptops, single hard drive servers, and RAID servers are required for a variety of reasons;

Data corruption due to a virus
Hard drive repair due to natural disasters (fire, flooding, lightning)
Data restoration for crushed or physically damaged hard drives
Hard drive failure due to corrupted operating system upgrades
Data loss due to formatting a hard drive
Multiple hard drive failures in a RAID array
At least there’s a little bit of good news: It is very likely that your data is not deleted and lost forever, especially if you take a few steps to protect your critical data ahead of time.

If you’d like to reduce your chances of requiring data recovery, consider giving some of these free or low-cost tips a try.

1. Back-up your critical files. With the ability to store data on CDs on a weekly or monthly basis, a small investment in a stack of CDs will save you from loosing your critical documents, files, priceless images and MP3s.

2. Run some sort of Anti-Virus Program. Viruses get into your computer a variety of ways; by reading an infected attachment in your e-mail, by sharing files (which are already infected), and by visiting websites that take advantage of security flaws to compromise and destroy your data.

3. Use power surge protectors. A power surge, either from the power company or a lightning storm, is one of the most common occurrences that can damage your data and potentially cause a hard drive failure.

4. Experience required. Never attempt any operation, like hard drive installations or hard drive repairs, which you don’t have experience with. If you don’t know how to install a second hard drive or rebuild a RAID, it would be best to get expert assistance before you accidently cause yourself data loss.

5. Shut down your computer. Always quit your programs before shutting down your computer. When you quit a program, it saves vital data and then exits the program. If you just turn off your computer without properly exiting your applications and closing your files, you run the risk of loosing your data.

6. Never shake or remove the covers on hard drives or tapes. Please don’t disassemble your hard drive. In nearly all examples of this, data is usually not recoverable once an inexperienced person attempts to ‘investigate’ where that ’strange clicking noise’ is coming from. Leave the diagnostics to a data recovery specialist who has experience with all types of hard drives and knows how to perform a successful data recovery.

7. Store your backup data offsite. While it is always a good idea to backup your critical data, if your data is stored at the same location as your server and there is a natural disaster, a fire or flood for example, odds are that you will still require data recovery on the hard drives, or tape restoration to get your data restored.

8. Beware of diagnostic programs. While it is a good idea to check the health of your computer running diagnostics software, be careful with allowing such programs to repair data files it may find. Check Disk can be your friend, but also may make it more difficult to recover data from a hard drive which has had such diagnostic programs run on it.

9. Be aware of your surroundings. Keep your computers and servers in safe and secure locations from accidentally getting knocked over, dropped, or spilled on. Laptops, while convenient to use, are often dropped and require hard drive data recovery. Just because it is a nice day and you are casually working by the pool with your laptop, don’t assume that the guy jumping into the pool realizes his tidal splash will not only soak you…but ruin your laptop and require hard drive recovery for your critical data.

10. Backup your critical files. Worth mentioning again. Using CDs or even an external USB hard drive for data storage can potentially save you from having to hire a data recovery service to perform hard drive data recovery on your hard drive or RAID server.

ADR Data Recovery has 18 Regional Labs and 22 Service Centers across the nation. ADR Data Recovery uses the latest technologies–including a unique, proprietary method–to restore recoverable data. Even the most difficult of data recoveries from crashed hard disk drives (hardware, software, viruses, fire or flooding), SQL and Exchange servers, failed RAID arrays, backup tapes, and other storage devices can be recovered successfully.

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How to Recover From the Black Screen of Death

When all is right with the world, you turn on your PC and in a couple of minutes you’re ready to go to work. You probably don’t notice any of the magical things that have to happen with the operating system. You just wait for the desktop to appear and you can start computing.

One of the things that happens without your awareness is that the system checks what’s called the boot sector on your hard disk. This is a physical location where it finds the necessary magnetically encoded information to get Windows loaded so you can use it.

But sometimes something goes wrong and the boot sector gets compromised. It might be caused by a virus infection. Or it might just be physical degradation of an aging hard disk. That’s what happened to me about a year ago, without any warning.

The result is that when you turn on your machine, nothing happens. All you see is a blank gray or black screen called the Black Screen of Death (BSOD).

But all is not lost. If you know what to do, you can recover from this seeming tragedy.

First, turn OFF the computer. Wait a minute or so before turning it on again. Look in your owner’s manual to see what key gets you into SETUP mode. Better yet, look it up now and write it down so you have it if you need it.

HINT: most computers use either the F2 key or the delete key. When your computer starts normally, it usually flashes a message at the top telling you to press this key if you want to enter setup. look for it the next time you boot up.

Now, turn the computer back on and at the same time, press the key to enter setup mode. It might be hard to get the timing just right, since you probably won’t see anything on the screen. If you hit it at precisely the right time, you’ll see a screen filled with setup options.

If you still have the BSOD, turn off the machine and try again.

Exactly what you’ll see where depends on your particular computer. Look carefully until you find the section of the setup instructions that tells where to boot from.

It will be set to hard disk (because that’s where you normally boot from). Change this option to boot from CD. Click on save, then exit. Insert a Windows bootable CD into the CD drive and turn off the machine.

Turn the computer back on and you should be able to get to your desktop and get back to work.

WARNING: What I mean by a Windows bootable CD is NOT something that came with your computer. That’s probably a reinstallation CD which reinstalls Windows and gets your machine back to its original factory condition.

There are many disaster recovery services and backup software products on the market that can help you create the bootable CD. Two of the most highly rated are True Image from a company called Acronis and Shadowprotect from a company named StorageCraft.

I hope you never see the BSOD. And I hope you prepare for it ahead of time anyway.

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Flash Memory and Data Recovery

Flash memory gets its name due to its microchip arrangement in such a way, that its section of memory cells gets erased in a single action or “Flash”.

Both NOR and NAND Flash memory were invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka from Toshiba in 1984.The name ‘Flash’ was suggested because the erasure process of the memory contents reminds a flash of a camera, and it’s name was coined to express how much faster it could be erased “in a flash”. Dr. Masuoka presented the invention at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Jose, California in1984 and Intel recognizes the potentiality of the invention and introduced the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988, with long erase and write times.

Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory that can be electrically erased and rewrite, which means that it does not need power to maintain the data stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times and better shock resistance than hard disks. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory for applications such as storage on battery-powered devices.

Flash memory is advance from of EEPROM (Electrically-Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that allows multiple memory locations to be erased or written in one programming operation. Unlike an EPROM (Electrically Programmable Read-Only Memory) an EEPROM can be programmed and erased multiple times electrically. Normal EEPROM only allows one location at a time to be erased or written, meaning that flash can operate at higher effective speeds when the systems using; it read and write to different locations at the same time. Referring to the type of logic gate used in each storage cell, Flash memory is built in two varieties and named as, NOR flash and NAND flash.

Flash memory stores one bit of information in an array of transistors, called “cells”, however recent flash memory devices referred as multi-level cell devices, can store more than 1 bit per cell depending on amount of electrons placed on the Floating Gate of a cell. NOR flash cell looks similar to semiconductor device like transistors, but it has two gates. First one is the control gate (CG) and the second one is a floating gate (FG) that is shield or insulated all around by an oxide layer. Because the FG is secluded by its shield oxide layer, electrons placed on it get trapped and data is stored within. On the other hand NAND Flash uses tunnel injection for writing and tunnel release for erasing.

NOR flash that was developed by Intel in 1988 with unique feature of long erase and write times and its endurance of erase cycles ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 makes it suitable for storage of program code that needs to be infrequently updated, like in digital camera and PDAs. Though, later cards demand moved towards the cheaper NAND flash; NOR-based flash is hitherto the source of all the removable media. Followed in 1989 Samsung and Toshiba form NAND flash with higher density, lower cost per bit then NOR Flash with faster erase and write times, but it only allows sequence data access, not random like NOR Flash, which makes NAND Flash suitable for mass storage device such as memory cards.

SmartMedia was first NAND-based removable media and numerous others are behind like MMC, Secure Digital, xD-Picture Cards and Memory Stick. Flash memory is frequently used to hold control code such as the basic input/output system (BIOS) in a computer. When BIOS needs to be changed (rewritten), the flash memory can be written to in block rather than byte sizes, making it simple to update. On the other hand, flash memory is not practical to random access memory (RAM) as RAM needs to be addressable at the byte (not the block) level. Thus, it is used more as a hard drive than as a RAM.

Because of this particular uniqueness, it is utilized with specifically-designed file systems which extend writes over the media and deal with the long erase times of NOR flash blocks. JFFS was the first file systems, outdated by JFFS2. Then YAFFS was released in 2003, dealing specifically with NAND flash, and JFFS2 was updated to support NAND flash too. Still, in practice most follows old FAT file system for compatibility purposes.

Although it can be read or write a byte at a time in a random access fashion, limitation of flash memory is, it must be erased a “block” at a time. Starting with a freshly erased block, any byte within that block can be programmed. However, once a byte has been programmed, it cannot be changed again until the entire block is erased. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations, but cannot offer random-access rewrite or erase operations.

This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors, or by write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure.

Due to wear and tear on the insulating oxide layer around the charge storage mechanism, all types of flash memory erode after a certain number of erase functions ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000, but it can be read an unlimited number of times.

Flash Card is easily rewritable memory and overwrites without warning with a high probability of data being overwritten and hence lost.

In spite of all these clear advantages, worse may occur due to system failure, battery failure, accidental erasure, re-format, power surges, faulty electronics and corruption caused by hardware breakdown or software malfunctions; as a result your data could be lost and damaged.

Flash Memory Data Recovery is the process of restoring data from primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Flash memory data recovery is a flash memory file recovery service that restores all corrupted and deleted photographs even if a memory card was re-formatted. This can be due to physical damage or logical damage to the storage device. Data even from damage flash memory can be recovered, and more than 90% of lost data can be restored.

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ABBA Demo Song Dancing in the moonlight

I’ve made the ABBA Demo “Dancing in the Moonlight” from the song Summernight city. (I’ve read that Dancing in the moonlight is a slower demo of Summernight City) Enjoy. It took a long time to make the Demo. I hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8hgowp-DB0&hl=en

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Backup Reporting Relieves Executive Anxiety

Backup reporting serves to reduce executive anxiety about business continuity. With this function, businesses can back up all of their crucial data on various computer systems. The best way to ensure proper backup security is to use a third party or independent entity to test, validate and optimize your backup files.

Reports are useful for monitoring media usage, device status, errors, vault coordination and other information about the backup process. The more paperless this society becomes the more need you will have to back up your data files in a safe place that is easily accessible, yet independent from your computer system.

You will begin your backup storage solution with advanced software. This solution can store your files online. Some popular web backup storage solutions include VERITAS NetBackup, VERITAS Backup Exec, Tivoli Storage Manager, EMC Legato NetWorker and HP Data Protector.

Regardless of the storage solution software that you choose, you will need an independent backup manager to perform your backup reporting. Once you know that your computer data is safely stored away, you can rest assured that will not be losing data that is crucial to running your business.

When you decide which software to use and what backup managing service to use, all that will remain for you to do is to decide which data is crucial enough to back up and to decide how you want to arrange and organize the files.

Aptare provides web-based enterprise software that makes it easy for storage administrators to achieve maximum data protection.

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Hard Drive Backup? – Best Solution, Offsite Backup Service

Your hard-drive may be high-capacity and fast, but don’t forget it’s also sensitive and fragile and can become victim to a crash for a multitude of reasons. Excessive Heat, Reader head Stick, General breakdown of internal parts, data Corruption, power surge, exterior magnetism, and viruses just to name a few. So how do your prevent hard-drive crash? You can’t and when it happens there’s little hope to get it back into operation; Bwahahah!

The good news is that your hard-drive should not be your major concern; it’s the data upon it. The data will be just as vulnerable as the storage medium, so you would obviously do backups of your hard-drive. You are backing up your hard-drive, aren’t you?

If you’re not backing up your data, now is the time! If you do backup, and you’re not using an offsite backup service, I would strongly suggest that you consider it. In todays market of offsite backup services you will easily download a client, set your target data, and put it on an automated schedule and BOOM! Never to worry about your data loss due to a hard-drive failure ever again.

Sound good, eh, well I’m not done. Take a look around the web, offsite backup services are Internet based, and will secure your data with high encryption technology that will protect it from anyone; even the service provider will not be able to open your stored data. The Setup is simple and you can finish the setup in under an hour.

The alternative equivalent would be to backup your data on DVD, or external hard-drive and drive it over your to a Nabors’ house, every day! Or may use an FTP and write your own shell script to do a full backup of your data every day; that would be a bit clumsy… Did I mention that most offsite backup services today will back up only the “delta” after the initial backup? This means only the data that has changed since the last backup session will be (encrypted first and) sent to the backup server. It’s super efficient, and no alternative can boast this efficiency!

What are you waiting for, time to scout out an offsite backup service provider today…

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ABBA – Givin’ A Little Bit More (Extended Mix)

More ABBA stuff on my blog: justlikeabba.blogspot.com. This is an extended mix of an Undeleted snippet that I made some time ago now but have never uploaded (unlike my Rubber Ball Man, Crying Over You and Just A Notion extended mixes). I suppose it’s not perfect, and I should really re-edit a lot of these extended mixes I’ve done, since I am more skilled at splicing audio now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwKQBJToqno&hl=en

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How To Recover Files From Your Computer Hard Drive After A Crash

There is no denying the fact that every computer user will eventually experience the nightmares of hard drive failure. Much as we try to prevent hard drive failure in our computers, we cannot prevent the intrusion of viruses or other system intruders. These bugs can often cause our computers to crash.

The sad truth about hard drive crashes is that most of the time, we end up losing several important files that we have accumulated over time. Although some people may be lucky to have that hindsight of creating back up for their files, there are those who never bother to secure another copy of their files. Worst, those who do not bother to back-up their files often store very important data is just one place that when their computer actually breaks down, they are completely at the lost as to where and how to recover their life’s work.

The continuing dilemma on how to recover important files from a malfunctioning computer has been the subject of much study and discussions over the years. As thousands of computer users are threatened by the fact that their computers could crash down and wipe out their files completely, the importance of data recovery could not be overly emphasized. This is the reason why many software companies came up with data recovery tools to solve the problem of lost files. With the use of data recovery software, almost all hard drives can be recovered.

The good thing about these data recovery programs is that they are user friendly. You don’t need to be a computer wizard to know that your files can still be recovered with the use of these tools. As long as you can still hear your hard drive ticking or making those scratchy sounds when you attempt to recover your files with the data recovery software, there is still hope that you can actually recover most of your files from your malfunctioning hard drive.

Although in most cases you can easily recover your data using the data recovery software available in the market, there are instances when the hard drive is totally compromised that you can no longer recover your files using the software.

In the event where you could no longer recover your data using those data recovery software programs, it would we best to send your hard drive to a computer technician for data recovery. Most computer technicians could rebuild your hard drive and recover your files. Whether your hard drive is just a simple 2GB or the huge 300GB type, as long as there are important data in it, you should always send it to the technical advanced computer geeks when you could no longer recover your data using the data recovery software.

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Data Disaster Recovery For a Secured Back Up!

Fast and reliable data recovery services for storage media used in virtually all computers, devices, and environments. Data Disaster Recovery, is a vital component of disaster management for an individual or for an enterprise. Finding the right backup software or mechanism is quite tough. If you’ve thought so, don’t be under this impression that it’s quite daunting to find it hard to decide on data disaster recovery solutions provider.

Online backups with Snapshot Technology minimize data loss, enabling near-instantaneous, transparent backups by storing multiple read-only versions of each data volume. Such Snapshot function requires minimal disk space and as only changed data is stored, it is possible to take copies far more frequently than tape backups.

The disaster recovery solution enables the use of remote standby servers to take over an application in case of server or application failure. Data is replicated in real-time to the remote site by using data replication software or storage devices. When a failure is detected, recovery procedures are started automatically. There are currently two options available for disaster recovery:

One being a 2 node: this is when there is one server on the local site and one server at the recovery site.

The other being 3 node: this is when there are two servers at the local site and one at the recovery site.

The latter one is preferable, where the budget permits easier recovery for non-disaster related failures, and high availability against WAN failure and is therefore a cleaner overall solution. Avoid data replication, with 2 node disaster recovery. And 3-node solution adds high availability and local failover for those not-quite-disastrous occasions.

Data replication is used to maintain separate identical local copies of the application data on the two servers. With the application active on the primary server, all updates to the application data are automatically replicated to the standby server. If the primary server is returned to service, the direction of the data replication can be reversed, and after an initial resynchronization process to bring the primary server up-to-date with any data changes which may have occurred while it was unavailable, returned to front line service.

Why should you seek for data disaster service?

God forbid, but in case, your business is struck by some disaster. Hurricanes, landslides, earthquakes, and other recent world events have underscored this risk for organizations of all shapes and sizes. Analyze possible solutions for protecting your data, and learn the basics of documenting, testing, and maintaining your data protection plan. Avail Data Disaster Recovery [http://www.adaptplc.com/services/data-centre/disaster-recovery/] services.

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The Options for Digital Photo Recovery

Imagine this: after forcing the kids to stop countless times to pose for the perfect picture, you come home to find that the priceless memories you thought you had conserved are gone. Without a trace it seems you have lost your digital photos for good. Maybe you accidentally deleted or formatted the card; maybe the card was pulled out when the camera was still on? Or the camera was turned off during a write process?

But all may not be lost quite yet. Is it true that recovery is still possible when we think that the photos files are gone for eternity?

Experts suggest that there are different ways to recover digital images that we believe we have lost. A lot depends on how you lost the image, of course. For instance, if you just put it in your recycle bin, click on the ‘restore’ or ‘undelete‘ button there, and your image is retrieved (easy enough!). This is the most common mistakes that individuals make and many can save a trip to the file recovery technician simply by checking the recycle bin.

All image recoveries are not as simple as this, of course. There are instances when data corruption occurs, and therefore your files are inaccessible. For the more complex recoveries, you can seek out good software that is created specifically for this purpose. Alternately, you can take the help of a good service that will assist you in the process of recovery and restoration.

A good software or service should be able to recover lost files such as photos, audio, video, PDF’s, and Office Files. It should be able to assist you with data that was stored within hard drives as well as removable media used in digital cameras, PDA’s and other storage devices. Images (JPEG, EXIF, TIFF, PNG, GIF, and BMP), RAW Image files (Canon CRW, Nikon NEF, and Kodak DCR), audio/video clips, Office Files, and PDFs are some of the files that can be recovered with the use of relevant software.

Different services and software packages use differing methods to recover lost files, but if you’re not technically minded, the details aren’t important. What is important is that the solution you choose has a good reputation and is competitively priced. The bottom line is, if you have lost digital photo files, there is no need to despair – look into ordering the proper software or service, and you can usually recover your lost images and files, so you can enjoy them for years to come!

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