Posts Tagged ‘data recovery’

NAS and Other Ways to Store Your Data

Wednesday, November 27th, 2013

Computers sending data to serversYou can get this storage device via your PC and include all your essential data you wish to keep secure. The one difference is that it doesn’t connect to the PC to achieve success. In addition, it has the capability to include your data automatically on a routine schedule, by doing this you don’t neglect to include a specific piece of data that may be quite significant. Additionally you have access to your own storage device online.

There are lots of methods to save your data online. This is a good idea, particularly if you need to share data across a variety of PC’s and Mac’s. You see these mainly in business scenarios. Some of those on-line drives are accessed by means of your browser, including Google Drive, while some may be attached to your own PC just like another drive, including Dropbox. Whichever approach you pick, a alternative may be excellent because no matter what happens, this data won’t be deleted, although your home burns to the earth.

Time Machine is Macs variation of the storage application already on your personal computer. You too can restore data from a specific stage previously.

Some of those kinds of hard drives have a web interface too, in order to get your files from everywhere, because they’re saved online too as in your hard drive.

Memory sticks are ideal for carrying around small bits of data which are quite important to you. For instance, for those who own a demo which you spent 16 hours making, you’ll need to save it in more than one area along with a memory stick is a fantastic method to do that. They’re generally not large enough for most of you data, just what’s significant at that instant.

If you need to include more files of data, you’ve got to reburn the whole CD or DVD. In Addition, backing up your own data in this manner can be challenging and time intensive.

Windows has two integrated applications to back-up your own data. All these are Backup and System Restore. System Restore is automatic and it is meant to save your PC in case of a calamity failure or disease. Backup is run manually and will establish a Wizard to assist you through the procedure and ensure you receive all of your information saved.

 

Upgrading to Mavericks? Read This First !

Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
Apple and WD logo

If you use certain Western Digital products be careful when upgrading to Apple’s Mavericks software (OSX 10.9)

Do you use Western Digital’s Drive Manager, RAID Manager or SmartWare software products? If you do, don’t upgrade to Apple OSX 10.9 Mavericks.

Western Digital have issued a warning to it’s customers after they experienced data loss issues when upgrading their Mac’s to the new OSX 10.9 Mavericks software which comes as a free upgrade.

The issue concerns how Mavericks interacts with specific WD data management software. Often the interaction is catastrophic and cause all user data to be lost. A statement from Western Digital said: ‘We want to make you aware of new reports of Western Digital and other external HDD products experiencing data loss when updating to Apple’s OS X Mavericks (10.9)…WD is urgently investigating these reports and the possible connection to the WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager and WD SmartWare software applications.

Western Digital advise all users of it’s external hard drives not to upgrade to OS X Mavericks yet. For users who have already done so they advise uninstalling all copies of WD Raid Manager, WD Drive Manager and WD SmartWare – all of which WD has removed from its site to avoid fresh installations, and then perform a system reboot the system to avoid data loss.

If you’ve lost data due to the Maverick’s OS update and need it recovered we recommend you choose a reputable data recovery company to retrieve your information.

Protect Your Data

Thursday, November 14th, 2013
Commander Data, Star Trek TNG

Protect your Data! – Ok so it’s a picture of Commander Data from Star Trek TNG… It’s my idea of humour…

No matter what you are doing, if you are using a PC or Mac you’ll be creating and working with data and that data is saved on a hard disk drive. Let us say for instance that you are a journalist.  Journalists use computers to assist them in creating brilliant story-lines and characters for scripts, novels, stories and a lot of other things each day. Picture the scene: you are composing 100 pages of a new novel each day, just to wake-up one-day and discover your hard drive has destroyed it. In the event you weren’t ahead thinking enough to create at least one duplicate of it, you’d be crazy with worry.

It’s good to know there are some of top quality data recovery businesses out there you may call to help recall data similar to this. However, there are means to preserve your writing in the very first place.

Make duplicates of the data – You always need to get a copy of it should you spend hours creating something. Additionally, ensure that copy is offsite, or at least on another hdd. Ideally you ought to save a copy to the cloud if your entire computer chooses to crash.

Upgrade your data copies frequently – It’ll automatically make all of your copies aged if you work in your master copy. So make certain they all get updated each single time you work in the master copy. Be diligent with this – it just takes a couple minutes to-do but should you don’t remember or can’t be troubled, it decreases the ability of the copies.

It’s worth protecting, particularly if you’re in the midst of a big piece of work. Moreover it doesn’t issue in the event you’ve had work released yet or not. You nevertheless wouldn’t need to get rid of a whole novel should you’ve taken time to create one, would you?

Enter normal and great routines – This essentially means make sure you follow the instructions above. Additionally, you ought to occasionally assess the copies are really updating. You may perhaps do this once per week. The final thing that you need is to believe your copy and lose data is excellent – just to open it and discover it is 6 months old.

In a nutshell, take care of your work and understand who to ask for assistance in the event you actually are unlucky enough to loose your data.

Mac Problems In London ?

Tuesday, November 5th, 2013

City of LondonWhilst browsing my way thru many of the data recovery web sites last night my specific aim was to see if any of them had anything different to talk about. Appearance wise they are much the same – but how far do you trust a snappy looking web site? Well it seems to me that many people will judge the quality of the company’s data recover service by the look and feel of it’s web site. This is an unfortunate situation as some of the worst data recovery companies have the best web sites. My advice in these situations is always to DYOR – Do Your Own Research.

It’s not difficult, just go to Google and type ‘<name> review’, or even if you want a reviews site type something like ‘data recovery reviews’. Interestingly enough there already is a site called this and it provides visitors with the names and contact details of recommended UK data recovery sites. My opinion is that it’s a valuable resource and I’ve used it a couple of times – it’s helped me.

As there are a lot of computer users and data in London I notice that Data Recovery London dot net now has a new web page all about Mac data recovery. Good! a valuable extra information resource to a good website. So now in addition to the general hard disk drive repair and recovery service, their specialist RAID and server support recovery they now have everything Mac related to, so the next time my MacBook Air looses data, I know where to go.

Also I read that Google is now looking at hashtags and maybe integrating them into it’s search results… does this mean I have to start writing #datarecovery after everything? As an interesting experiment I’ll try it for a while and see what happens. In the meantime, thanks for reading and I hope you check back again soon.

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.