Archive for October, 2013

Computer Repair

Tuesday, October 29th, 2013

Repair, recycling and securityHmm I wonder, is computer repair a thing of the past ?

These days it seems to me that we live in an ever increasing disposable world – items that break are no longer repaired, they are simply replaced. Our TV breaks, and we just get a new one. Your printer breaks – why would you even bother to get it repaired? – just buy a new one – have you seen how little they cost ? I can buy a new printer (ok I admit it might not be a very good one, but it’ll do the job) for less than £50. Do you see what I mean? – we live in a disposable society.

I suggest that the only part of a computer system you would think to have repaired instead of replaced would be the hard disk, and only if you’ve got data on there that you want to recover that you haven’t got saved anywhere else.

Strange to think isn’t it that the funny looking little rectangular box you have holds all your data… If you’re a home user it’ll have your films, music and holiday snaps on. Perhaps it has pictures of the kids too. I’ve noticed that it’s often women who are more protective over family pictures than men. Men will often say that the data isn’t worth £500, but ask a woman if she’s prepared to spend £500 to get the pictures of her children back and the answer will often be a yes!.

If you use your computer for business purposes there may well be some sort of procedure in place to back up your data automatically – often to a central server of some kind or some cloud based system. Personally I have a mistrust of all cloud based systems. There are 2 main issues

The first point is obvious. The second takes a bit more explaining – US law (and with the co-operation of most of the G7 countries too it seems) as now legally entitled to look through your data. To paraphrase Obama – “If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” sort of misses the point doesn’t it ?

So in today’s world it’s all disposable except the data you value, and then, you need to be careful where you store it and who might be looking at it.

 

Recommended Data Recovery Specialists (UK)

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013

recommended data recovery companies in the UKIf you’ve ever suffered from hard disk failure or data loss you know what it’s like. Your family photos may be stored on an external hard drive that you’ve accidentally dropped, or your important business data was safely stored on the company NAS or RAID server until the server crashed and your data went with it.

I can think back to the turn of the century when the business of data recovery was extremely niche: there were only about 5 or so companies in the entire UK who specialised in recovering data from failed hard disk drives. The irony is that there still is this number BUT now there are hundreds of other companies who claim to be able to recover data.

When a hard disk fails it usually means that a part inside the drive has broken No software is going to be able to do anything about this because there’s a part that is physically damaged. The only way to recover this data is that have the part replaced and the drive rebuilt. This is an extremely technical process and requires specialists who know what they are doing.

But if your hard disk has broken and you need the data off of it how do you know you are sending it to a good company? Fortunately in the UK there is now a new website that provides up to date reviews of UK data recovery companies. If a company is good, the web site will tell you. If another company is bad, the web site will tell you. It’s a very good and trusted data recovery resource.

Hashtag: #datarecovery

How A Data Recovery Company Recovers Data From A Hard Drive Failure

Monday, October 14th, 2013

This weeks thoughts are about computer failure, or to be more specific, broken hard disks. I’ve chosen two decent quality links for you:

> Data Recovery Services by DataClinic – who are a UK based company> Hard Disk Drives – on Wikipedia

Hard disk headstack assemblyIf you have ever had a hard drive on your computer crash, you know what it means to have that sudden sickening feeling, wondering if you have anything backed up anywhere. The average life of a hard drive is about 5 to 8 years, before it gives up the ghost and crashes, or ceases to work. Yet, here you might have half of your life stored on that hard drive, and that is a sobering moment in anyone’s life.

While it is wise to backup our information on another storage device, it doesn’t always happen that way, and the backups are not always perfect. If you are one of the fortunate ones who has your information backed up, you can breathe a sigh of relief. If not, then things could be bad.

In the early days of computing, a hard drive crash meant that the read/write head on the hard drive had come into contact with the magnetic disc, which is spinning. This would cause a whole lot of damage, thus the use of the term, “crash.” Modern discs are pretty well protected against that now, and are less vulnerable to many of the problems that used to surface.

In these days, a similar situation can happen, but it is a problem with software, more than hardware. It can also be loose connecting cables, which can be easily checked, but if not then a partial recovery is still possible. Most of the time the problem stems from a file system that become corrupted, and usually it has to do with the files that communicate from the drive and the hardware of the PC, or the operating system. In this case the actual files that are stored on the hard drive will still be intact, in most cases, so they could possibly be transferred to another PC by a USB caddy, or another portable hard drive. If a virus is causing the problem, it might not be wise to transfer the data, because you will be transferring the virus as well.

Most data loss events are caused by human or mechanical error. The human part also includes not properly protecting systems from malicious viruses and such types of programs. The recovery of data can be performed by commercial services that can get to the bottom of what caused the problem. It can sometimes be expensive, depending upon the extent of the problem.

Recovery of file systems can usually be handled by system administrators or by users. Sometimes files may have been corrupted to the point of having their entry code changed, and it is a matter of changing it back to its original state. The file was not lost, it was just not talking. In these cases, once the file is repaired, then it can be accessed.

The best way to avert the problem is to store important data somewhere else in a separate location. In recent years, some commercial capabilities have offered their services to do just that, and more recently service has been made available for storage in the cloud.

Cyber Crime vs New Technology

Tuesday, October 8th, 2013

The following is a excerpt from a longer article. You can read the full post here.

Do we actually have great Protection on Mobile Phones?
I believe we may have great protection but because the utilization of said devices increases because, assaults to mobile products will grow, we won’t and ever have complete security on mobile devices. Certainly, security measures are improved too with technical progress but however mass use of mobile phones also increases user recognition and understanding of aforementioned methods which that may maybe transforms like a security dangers. (INFORMATION technology experience is really no longer a specific area recognized by a couple thousand individuals but by millions all over the world and such information is freely-accessible with several experts being self educated.)

Nevertheless, computer crimes increasing nearly twice by annually and it’ll keep increasing as web use increase. Consequently I believe every passing day provided that technology maintain creating people increasingly begin with them (more people become a specialist) mobile devices won’t be as safe.

Likewise, technical systems and mobile phones are produced by folks as are protection measures. Thus, there’ll remain the danger that such methods may probably be subjected to assaults by systems specialists. While technical improvement raising an individual’s functionality and functionality also it may expose them to risks from specialized experts who investigate and then uses any program weaknesses.

Reviewing the WD MyBook Ultra Hard Disk

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013

WD ultra hard disk driveCompact, elegant, and small enough to fit in your hand, WD’s My Passport Ultra is a portable USB3 hard-drive that is available in several various colours.

Western Digital include three utility applications using the My Passport Ultra:

1. WD Security lets you to really secure the drive’s content with a password. The protection feature supports strong encryption, and once you decide on a password, the drive’s data is utterly inaccessible in the event you forget the password.

2. Smartware is a backup program allowing you to back up your files either always in the background while you work or in accordance with a timetable of the wish. Smartware is intelligent enough to back up only those files which have changed since the copy, which saves time. You may select to back up special files or folders, or let the software reproduce entire groups of files, for example all of your pictures, music and movies. The program colourful images that visual depict just how much space is being used by diverse kinds of files, including files and jpgs.
Were you aware? – In place of backing up files to the My Passport Extremely, Smartware can back up files to your Dropbox account. If you wish these can subsequently be backed up to the Passport Extremely.

3. WD Drive Utilities comprises a housekeeping suite that includes characteristics that allow you to really check in the drive’s status, its features, run a SMART position report, as well as reformat the drive.