Although you may not list it in on your IRS form, information is your business’ primary asset. From your customer database to your financial records to your proprietary product information, information is the key element to maintaining both the day-to-day operations of your business and its long-term viability.

Unfortunately, as the sophistication of technology increases, so do the risks to your business. Viruses, hackers, and natural catastrophes can all attack your business information. At best, this renders your business inoperable for several hours or days. At worst, the loss of business information can cause you to go out of business.

Lest you think that information loss could never happen to your business, statistics reveal that the problem is pervasive and, oftentimes, devastating. During any given year, over five percent of PCs will have some type of data loss, and almost a third of PC users have experienced the loss of all of their data at some point in their lives. Almost two-thirds of companies that experience catastrophic data loss go out of business within six months. Of those companies that test their back up tapes, more than three-quarters have found problems with the tapes.

In order to minimize your company’s exposure to the risk of data loss, you should create an organizational culture of security and implement a security program that helps the company prevent and recover from data loss due to viruses, hackers, and natural catastrophes.

Just as you would store your most precious documents in a bank safety deposit box, you should store your company’s most important data with online backup services and use secure offsite backup.

According to SERVARE, the premiere company for online offsite backup services that are secure, affordable, and automated, you should consider backing up the following types of data:

* Databases and information that allow you to serve customers and maintain your market competitiveness. In other words, if you lost this data, you wouldn’t be able to fill customer or supply chain orders or provide client services.

* Information that manages your revenue generation, such as accounts receivable, and vehicles for customer ordering and payment acceptance.

* Data that controls your cash flow, such as your accounts payable and supplier payments.

* Data that, if lost, could result in additional expenses, such as employee downtime and late delivery penalties.

* Proprietary information that could be stolen or compromised.

* Data that is affected by governmental regulation, such as the Freedom of Information Act.

SERVARE’s online backup services protect your business’ information from data loss by utilizing advanced file encryption before transmission; quick, safe, and secure transmission to their online backup servers via a secure high-speed Internet connection; automated backups; flexible recovery capability; and scalable storage that grows as your need for storage grows.

With an offsite backup, you’ll rest easier knowing that your information is secure.

Chris Robertson is an author of Majon International, one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing companies on the web. Visit this Computers Website and Majon’s Computers directory.

The worst thing about any emergency is that it messes up our daily routine and throws us into a state of confusion and we really can never rule out emergencies from our lives, life is full of surprises; some good, some bad. What makes the difference is how readily prepared we are for such eventualities.

One of the most fatal emergencies most people are never really ready to accept is a problem with personal or business computers, as this most often results in vital data loss, and a data recovery system is probably the last thing on anyone’s mind when they buy a computer. Most of us never think something will go wrong until it’s too late. Data recovery or Disc Recovery services are things we hope we will ever have the need for.

There are several situations that can cause problems with your computer. Your computer could be running slowly or be loaded with powerful spyware that can destroy files, transmit personal data or, even worse, cause the computer to crash. A power surge, an electric storm, fires, floods, mechanical failure, user error and many other things can happen without any advance warning and that could be all it takes to lose all the information you cherish in your computer.

Data loss can be devastating. It could instantly take a small or medium size business from "Open for Business" to "Out of Business" in an instant. On a personal level, it can wipe away weeks, months and even years of critical data where there is no means of accessing or recreating this valuable information. Besides the situation of a complete computer crash, you could also accidentally delete important software or programs. Whether your computer completely crashes or you accidentally deleted software that is important or imperative to you, it may seem that your information is lost for good. If you have quality data recovery systems in place on your computer, you should feel confident in the fact that there is a backup. Whether you own your own business or work for someone or you just use your computer for keeping vital personal information, you’ll find that data protection is one of the smartest and safest approaches you can take to ensure the profitability and livelihood of your business. When dealing with data recovery and protection it is vital you remain calm and assess whether you are dealing with a hard drive or other issue. Fortunately no matter how dire the situation you can usually follow some easy steps to ensure maximum data recovery in the event of a computer crash. Here are some tips to follow to prevent a complete disaster from occurring.

First, always back up your data routinely. This is virtually the most important step in data recovery. If you can get an automatic program to do it for you, the better. You could also ensure you have "Backups of your Backups." It is good to always keep a current backup offsite for absolute worst case scenarios.

Anytime you hear strange noises from your computer, such as a clunking noise when you power up your computer, immediately turn your computer off.

If you have to leave your home for a long period of time, say, going on vacation, always make backups of critical data, verify that all electronics are plugged into UPS (as they should be) power down and unplug from A.C. if possible. (Including telephone and modem lines.). You never can foretell a sudden power surge, electrical storm, fire or anything similar that could destroy your computer data. We never really expect things like this, but you won’t be forewarned, especially when you are not at home to handle the emergency.

It’s not a good idea to attempt any form of data recovery on your own unless you are a specialist. Messing with the hard drive or other parameters of your computer can exacerbate any data losses you may have already experienced.

Here is the good news, never assume the worst. In most cases data is recoverable even under the worst conditions like if your computer was swallowed by a flood and fully saturated.

Finally, whatever happens with your computer and vital data, never give room for fear or panic. Think optimistically and get your computer to a repair technician as soon as possible, chances are your data will be salvageable and safe.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Data Recovery

Email loss causes majority of business loss, to overcome the common problem the backup of Outlook Express mails can be taken regularly and this article is aimed at explaining you how you can backup your Outlook Express mails (Since, Outlook Express lacks a backup option). Outlook Express the widely used email program is usually installed with the Windows operating system. Outlook Express is fairly easy to use, but finding and backing up the emails can be a little more complicated. Since there are a large number of files and folders on a computer running Windows, the first problem is to find the files containing the emails. Outlook Express stores emails in .dbx files and it stores and maintains different dbx files depending upon the email folders created in Outlook Express.

In Windows 98, you can probably locate your emails somewhere in the Windows directory. In Windows 2000 and XP, emails are usually stored somewhere in the user data or application data folder. The common reasons for email loss are virus attack, software malfunction, power failures, human error and hard drive failure.

One can easily save and backup the emails, attachments, address book and other important data from within the email client to a CDRW or DVD; otherwise in case of a computer problem the user will find himself in the impossibility to get them back, and this can be a really unwanted situation especially for web community or people who rely on their emails. Unfortunately the common practice among us is that we actually start to do backup copies only after we lose data.

The simple way to find out and locate the actual path where your emails are stored is as follows
1. Start Outlook Express
2. Go to the Tools menu,
3. Open the Options dialog box.
4. In the Options dialog box, Select the Maintenance page
5. Click the Store Folder button.

Here you can find the path to the folder containing your emails. To open the folder, copy the path and paste in the address field of the Windows File Manager. You should see a number of .dbx files (depending upon the number of folders created) and possibly some other files, too. After locating the email folder, you can simply select all the files, copy them and paste it to a new location or you can take the backup on another hard disk, a CDRW, a DVD or a network drive.

How to backup Address Book
1. Select Tools >> Address Book… from the menu in Outlook Express.
2. Choose File >> Export >> Other Address Book… from the address book’s menu.
3. Select Text File (Comma Separated Values) as the export format.
4. Click Export.
5. Select the location you want to export your address book to using the browse… button.
6. Give your backup copy a meaningful name.
7. Click Next.
8. Select the fields you want to include in your backup. 9. Select Finish.
10. Click OK to finish.

If you have not backed up you emails so, take a backup now. If you face any email loss and you have no backup then don’t panic the Nucleus Kernel for Outlook Express – Mail Recovery Software will help you retrieve your deleted and lost mails back. The software uses QFSCI technology to quickly retrieve lost emails. So in case of email disasters try the demo of Kernel for Outlook Express – Mail Recovery Software. Nucleus Technologies.com offers a complete range of professional data recovery software and utilities for recovering lost, corrupt data and files from Windows, Linux, Unix, Novell Netware, Apple Macintosh operating system and supports various file systems including FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, NWFS, Net386, NSS, HFS, HFS+, UFS, FFS, VxFS, EAFS, HTFS etc. The Hard Drive Data Recovery Software offered by Nucleus Technologies.com ensures safe and precise disk data recovery against numerous threats like accidental file deletion, disk formatting, partition related problems, virus or trojan problems, software malfunction, employee sabotage etc.

Data Recovery Software and File Repair Utilities

Brief Overview

The Novell Storage Services (NSS) File System is the default file system for NetWare 6 and later. Its many features and capabilities include visibility, a trustee access control model, multiple simultaneous namespace support, native Unicode, user and directory quotas, rich file attributes, multiple data stream support, event file lists, and a file salvage sub-system. These features can help you effectively manage your shared file storage for any size of organization, scaling management of the system for even the largest of organizations with hundreds of thousands of employees. NSS is a 64-bit file system that can manage a virtually unlimited number of file objects.

On each physical storage device, NSS abstracts up to four physical NetWare partitions to make them appear as contiguous free space. NSS recognizes physical and logical devices up to 2 TB in size from which you can create any number of virtual storage resources, called pools. You can choose space from at least four devices of up to 2 TB each to create a pool with a maximum pool size of 8 TB. A pool can contain an unlimited number of volumes. If the pool spans devices, the volumes automatically span the devices. A single volume can contain up to 8 trillion files and grow to 8 TB in size, depending on the size of the pool and space consumed by other volumes in the pool.

NSS Volumes

The logical volumes you create on NSS storage pools are called NSS volumes. You can specify a maximum storage quota for the volume, or allow the volume to grow dynamically to the size of its pool. You can add any number of volumes to a storage pool.

Because there is no limit to the number of volumes you can create, it is possible that the combined size of all the volumes taken together is larger than the storage pool itself. NSS refers to this process as "overbooking." If you overbook space in the pool, the individual administrative size of a volume cannot exceed the size of the storage pool.

NSS allocates space from the pools to the volumes only as needed. Typically, user consumption of a volume’s available space ebbs and flows; it is quite unlikely that users concurrently consume volumes at 100% of their available capacity. Each volume consumes the space it needs as it needs it. By overbooking space, NSS provides a flexible and cost effective way to accommodate expanding storage needs.

How to recover data from crashed NSS Volumes ?

Kernel for Novell NSS - Novell Netware Data Recovery Software recovers data from corrupt volume(s) of a crashed Novell Server. Kernel for Novell NSS - Novell NSS Data Recovery Software can recover and allows access to the data when the volume(s) cannot be mounted, it recovers and allows you to save your data to another drive after cases of missing volumes, deleted files, corrupt volume(s), allocation errors and novell partition loss. Kernel for Novell NSS Data Recovery Software uses quick algorithm for searching and restoring lost partitions, files and folders and hence is a fast, simple and easy to use Novell NSS data recovery software, which helps you to recover your lost data and files in minutes in case of disk crash or data loss disasters and hence supports your business continuity.

Professional Data Recovery Software and File Repair Utilities

Online backup services are one of the most revolutionary ideas of the internet age in my opinion. All computer users who rely upon their computers for their day to day operations know how important it is to have a recent backup at all times. Technology has simplified our lives in so many ways; however, technology is not fail proof. Because we are so highly dependent on it in this day and age, a technological failure or a simple spurt of human error can throw us back, seemingly into the stone ages, especially if we do not have our computer data backed up where it can be quickly and easily recovered.

Of course we all have good intentions and plan to do regular backups "some day". Some companies even require computer users on their staff to make regular backups as a matter of policies and procedures. However, in both cases we are relying on humans to take care of backing up data so it will be available if unexpected hardware failures occur. Humans don’t always do what they are supposed to do, and making backups is one of those tasks that gets overlooked more often than others. Automating the process of making backups on a regular basis using online backup services diminishes the odds that you will caught in a bind without a backup of your electronic data.

Another major advantage of online backup services is that they provide an offsite backup of your computer data. Sometimes the backup is even stored on a separate computer network in a remote location that is in a different geographic region. This is a remarkable advantage of online backup services because not only is the backed up data safe in case of a hardware failure, it is also protected against catastrophic events like fires or floods at your place of business as well as being protected from loss in case of a natural disaster like a tornado, a hurricane or a major earthquake. Online backup services can literally save the day, and the business, when such disastrous events occur.

With online backup services you can schedule backups to be done through an automated process at regular intervals throughout the day. The frequency of your backups conducted through online backup services is pretty dependent upon your business and the volume of business you do in a day. With most online backup services, the frequency of the backups affects the cost of the services, so this is something to consider when deciding how frequently it is necessary to backup your computer systems.

Different online backup services also have a range of packages with different levels of online backup services and relatively varying fees. Pricing structures for online backup services generally fluctuate based upon the level of service provided. The cost, automation capabilities, security and the availability of the backups for immediate restoration are important considerations when selecting online backup services for your business.

The price of online backup services usually increases along with the amount of storage needed in terms of megabytes or gigabytes. So, before you choose a particular plan for online backup services, be sure you know what data will need to be backed up, the intervals at which the automated backups will need to be made, and the storage space required from your online backup services to house your data.

Regardless of the type of business you operate or the size of your business, the use of automated online backup services is recommended. Online backup services give you peace of mind knowing that your backups are safely stored in a remote location and available for restoration whenever you need them. Online backup services that are automated also ensure that backups are made in a timely manner at preset intervals that you have determined are necessary.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

Is there something more annoying than losing a paper you saved in your computer, on which you worked for weeks? I guess not. For this reason, data recovery is the word of law for people who use computer in their jobs or for school or college.

Many things can cause data loss, such as accidentally deleting files, having your system invaded and corrupted by hackers, power failure when you hadn’t saved what you had been writing and other hundreds of possibilities. The truth is: everybody that uses a computer will experience data loss at some point in their lives.

Well, if we are not safe from experiencing data loss, what can help us recover the data we’ve lost. If we lose something personal, in our homes, it’s not as serious as if we lose some important paper from work.

There are mainly two categories of data recovery: Common Recoveries and Complex Recoveries. The first one consists of recovering the data of a single user, either from a floppy disk or hard disk. Complex Recoveries consists of recovering data from a computer with multiple users.

Using data recovery

Many people think that just because they can’t find the file in the folder it was saved to means that they have lost the data and they need data recovery. It’s not always like this. We may have accidentally changed the location where the file is saved or even renamed it. Before using data recovery, we have to be sure the data is lost. In general, people can use data recovery either if:

- they deleted the file by accident
- they deleted the file, but regretted it later
- the power failed and they haven’t saved the information
- they had their data corrupted, usually caused by intruders
- they found some drives or partitions simplly are not accessible.

Recovering data

Experiencing data loss for any reason is really a nuisance. However, recovering the data may not be that difficult.

We in general forget - or simply are not aware - that all the files we lose, especially if we accidentally deleted them, remain in our computer, hidden somewhere where we can no longer see them. In order to recover the data, we just have to find where it is hidden and save it all again.

The best way to recover data without suffering for days and nights in order to accomplish this task has to do with creating backups of important data. You can save your data on CDs or floppy disks in order to always have a second copy of the file in case you lose it. It’s important to keep it as up to date as the original saved in the computer because if you don’t do that, the files will be different and you lose information in the same way.

Creating backups of data

One of the biggest problems people have is choosing the data to backup. It is a difficult task, we have to admit it. So, here is a simple list of things considered important enough for people create backups of:

- Financial information, including bank records
- E-mail address book
- Important correspondence
- Business information, especially if we are talking about companies and offices that deal with clients
- Papers from school or college
- Personal projects
- Important documents

People can create backups on the computer, however if they experience a theft, fire or flood it will be lost. That’s why it’s advisable to backup and save files in different places. In order to get the most of your backups, try to follow some guidelines:

- Always backup! If you are a home user, creating backups once a month is a good idea, however, if we are talking about companies and offices, the best option would be to create backups once a week.
- Avoid volatile data, which is data that is not saved in your computer because you are creating it and haven’t saved it yet.

- We are humans and we forget things, for this reason configure your computer to create automatic backups.

Safe data recovery

Data recovery is not that simple do to, but it’s not impossible either. In order to do data recovery in the right way, the best thing is to observe some rules:

- Don’t try to continue doing data recovery if your computer starts making weird noises
- Running the scan disk is not the best option since it puts more pressure onto the system
- Running utilities that you don’t know how to deal with can cause even more damage
- Formatting or reinstalling systems is not the solution either.

A last word: the best thing to do is to create backups and keep them up to date in order to avoid the problem of data recovery.

——————————————————-
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Data Recovery
——————————————————-

Know what you’re dealing with

The world of data recovery is a big mystery for most consumers and even some IT professionals. This is largely because hard drives themselves are complex devices and their technological specifics are not generally well known. Data recovery companies thrive on their customers’ lack of information and often get away with charging obscene rates for any recovery, regardless of complexity. I hope this article will be a helpful resource for consumers and professionals alike. I provide some basic information about data recovery by shedding some light on how hard drives work, how they can fail, what are the chances of successful recovery and how much the user can expect to pay. This information will enable the user to make an informed decision when choosing a data recovery company.

A bit about Hard Drives

A computer hard drive stores data on metal oxide platters which spin up to 10000 revolutions per minute. An actuator arm contains the ‘head’ which reads and writes the data in the form of magnetic charges one millionth of an inch above the surface. Any given drive can have multiple read and write heads and each head can ‘crash’ independently. A head crash occurs when the read/write head comes in contact with the platters of the disk (more on head crashes below). As manufacturers strive to cram more space on hard drives without increasing their physical size, the data gets written increasingly closer together, making for very difficult recovery should one or more heads crash. The brain of the hard drive is its controller board and this is unique for each individual hard drive. One other detail worth a mention is the service track of a hard drive. This is an area located on the outer part of the disk platter and it contains the drive’s firmware zone. The firmware of a hard drive is the information used by the computer to communicate correctly with the drive. These are the main components that make a hard drive work, now let’s talk about what can go wrong.

There are many ways in which a hard disk can fail

Hard drives are extremely fragile and can suffer failures in many different ways, leading to a loss of data. The five most common types of drive failures are: logical errors, mechanical failure, electronic failure, firmware corruption, and bad sectors, or any combination these. Least severe of these is usually data loss due to logical errors.

Logical errors are often the simplest and sometimes the most difficult problems to deal with when recovering data. They can range from an invalid entry in a file allocation table, a simple problem that needs little work; to severe issues such as the corruption or loss of the entire file system. Logical errors can be spotted when files become inaccessible, there is a delay in starting up the computer, and programs do not run properly. Logical errors are often seen as simple because there is nothing wrong with the physical drive leading users to try recovering it themselves by using third party software. This is quite risky, however, as running such software on a damaged drive can result in total loss of data. The most effective way to prevent logical errors on your hard drive is to regularly use the Disk Defragmentation tool in your operating system.

Recovering a drive with logical errors can be simple and quick, however if the problem requires manual bit-by-bit reconstruction of the data, it can also be quite complex and time consuming. Normally, logical errors are in the lower end of the price range as they do not require manual disassembly of the drive, however there are cases when logical failures end up in the higher end of the price range. The bottom line with logical errors is the sooner they are caught and the less a user tampers with the drive, the better the chances for a quick and thorough recovery.

Mechanical failures are often much more serious than any other failure and frequently lead to a partial or even total loss of data. The most common type of mechanical failure is a head crash, which is when the read/write head comes in contact with the disk platter. Head crashes can be caused by a variety of reasons, including physical shock, static electricity, power surges, and mechanical read/write failure. Mechanical failures are detected by a constant clicking or grinding noise coming from the drive. If you suspect mechanical failure, you must immediately shut down your computer and call a data recovery company for advice.

Mechanical failures are usually the most severe and most challenging to recover from. All mechanical failures require physical disassembly of the drive. The replacement of a read/write head is one of the most complex and costly procedures that can be performed by a data recovery engineer, especially with larger capacity drives. The chances of recovery depend entirely on how much damage the drive has sustained, however they can be quite good. A crashed head does not mean that all your data is lost! Once again, the sooner you catch a mechanical problem and turn off your drive, the more of your precious data is likely to be rescued.

Electronic failures are most common after a power surge or due to some other electric problem, and the most common type is control board failure. A power surge can knock out the control board, making the drive undetectable in the BIOS. Because each drive is fitted with a unique control board, recovery of this type is relatively complex. However, the good news is that normally once the control board issue is fixed, the data is usually 100% recoverable.

Recovering a drive that has suffered from an electronic failure can be time consuming, mainly because the specific problem takes some time to diagnose. Once diagnosed, though, the recovery is usually not tremendously complex and would probably land in the mid-range in terms of price. Most of the time, we are able to achieve a 100% recovery from drives that have suffered an electronic failure.

Firmware corruption is caused by logical problems or physical damage to the firmware zone on the disk platter. When the firmware becomes corrupt, the computer is often unable to properly communicate with the hard drive, and drive is not recognized in the BIOS. Fortunately, when the drive fails due to firmware corruption, the data is usually fully recoverable once the drive has been repaired.

Recovering a drive that has suffered from Firmware corruption is possible with the use of our proprietary technology. Because the firmware information is isolated on the outer rim of the disk, most of the data can be recovered successfully. The complexity of recovering a drive that has suffered from firmware corruption depends on the amount of damage suffered by the service track on the disk’s platter. Expect the cost of this type of recovery to be in the mid- to high-price range.

Bad sectors are a common fate of all hard drives.

Eventually, all drives develop areas that are no longer functional and when this happens, they are isolated by the operating system. Bad sectors are very much like bumps in the road, areas which are avoided by the read/write head and which are no longer accessible to the user. If mission critical data exists on the drive, we recommend to backup as soon as possible, as the formation of bad sectors often indicates the impending demise of the drive. Finally, and most importantly, do NOT under any circumstances run the ScanDisk or Chckdisk utilities when data becomes inaccessible. These utilities are designed to fix only file system errors and not any other types of errors, so if your hard drive has suffered from bad sectors, these utilities only make things worse.

Bad sectors are accessible

We are able to recover drives with bad sectors using our proprietary mirroring technology. The process often involves manual mirroring bit-by-bit, which can be time consuming. The price of this type of recovery will generally be in the mid-range of the pricing schedule.

I hope the above explanations are of some use to all computer users. The basic fact is that data loss happens to everyone. Every hard drive crashes, and often when you least expect it to. Backup is essential for end-users and business users alike, and there are many excellent ways to back up your data. But if you’ve lost data, attempt to understand the problem before calling a data recovery company. Be informed, save your money, get your data back.

For more comprehensive information on preventing data loss, visit our website tips section.

Alex Bezborodov is the technical writer for Accurate Data Recovery, specializing in data recovery solutions and research. Let ADR bring your data back to life!

The services of a data recovery specialist is undoubtedly something you desperately need when you have a need to have data recovered. However, it is not usually necessary or cost-effective to have a data recovery specialist on staff, unless of course they serve multiple roles because data recovery tasks are necessary only in the event of a catastrophe or hardware failure.

If you have a staff member that has data recovery expertise and could serve as a data recovery specialist when needed of course that is beneficial but not necessarily a necessity. Outsourcing to a data recovery specialist is usually the best and most effective way to salvage your data if data recovery services are needed.

It is important; however, to have a well thought out data recovery plan when you have a business such as an internet business that is highly dependent on electronic data for its operation. In order for the services of a data recovery specialist to be beneficial or even possible, regular backups of data must be made and stored in a safe location so that in the event of a catastrophe - a natural disaster or a fire - access to data for the purpose of restoration is possible.

Without backups, a data recovery specialist can sometimes retrieve and restore data from devices such as computer hard drives, mainframe computers, tape backups or similar technology even if there are no backups to be used for restoration. However, without backups that are kept safe by being stored in a remote location, there is always potential that your data will be lost forever and that a data recovery specialist won’t do you a bit of good. When you lose data, your service to your customers declines and the very existence of your business as you know it is threatened.

A good data recovery plan for an internet business should certainly identify a data recovery specialist that is easily accessible in the event of an emergency that requires the services of a data recovery specialist. It should also contain contact information for the data recovery specialist who hopefully is available twenty-four hours a day even on weekends and holidays to ensure that customer service is not jeopardized by extensive downtime.

The data recovery plan should be updated frequently to make sure that the data recovery specialist specified by the plan is active and available. It is a good idea to list more than one data recovery specialist whose credentials have been approved in case, for some reason, the preferred data recovery specialist cannot be reached when needed.

In addition to identifying a data recovery specialist and an alternative data recovery specialist, a data recovery plan should contain procedures for day to day operations to ensure that PCs and databases are backed up regularly.

The importance of backups to data recovery is often recognized, but sometimes the need for keeping backups stored in a safe, remote location is overlooked. On site backups are fine if the problem that creates the need for a data recovery specialist is related to hardware failure, but other events can actually damage the backups as well as the primary storage devices for your data.

Automated, offsite backup services that are accomplished electronically are an excellent solution for ensuring that your data recovery specialist has access to unaffected, up-to-date backups of your data if your primary place of business is subjected to fire or natural disasters.

Choosing a backup provider that is in a different geographic area is also a great idea, especially if you live in an area that is prone to natural disasters. If you can find an automated backup service provider with an on-staff disaster recovery specialist coordination of your data recovery plan can be simplified.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope, fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing, or a website owner who wants to make more money from your website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

If you are self-employed and work from home, you wear several hats, so to speak: you may be the marketing manager, accountant, receptionist or PR person. You are also your own technical support department and therefore responsible for safeguarding your data.

You should be clear about two things:

1. Sooner or later, disaster will strike. It does not have to be anything as dramatic as storm, fire or flood - an overheated motherboard, a malfunctioning hard drive or a computer virus can be enough.

2. The cost of backup hardware and media is trivial compared to the value of your data. Imagine that you lost your customer list, your product database or other crucial business data. How would your business continue?

Here are some tips for implementing a disaster recover strategy:

Pamela Bruce lives in Austin, TX. She is the owner of Love Beads Unlimited and sells the sterling silver and Swarovski crystal bead jewelry she designs and creates both in her eBay store (http://stores.ebay.com/LOVE-BEADS-UNLIMITED) and on her website at http://www.lovebeadsunlimited.com, where you can also download the free e-book "A Consumer’s Guide to Buying Bead Jewelry Online".

On 28 of December a severe Windows security flaw, WMF Flaw, was detected, in all Windows versions from Win98 to WinXP, no fixing patch exists yet. Using it, anyone can do any malicious action with your computer, steal or even erase your data.

This article will help you understand what it is and how YOU can fix it until Microsoft releases a patch.

By Washington Post: "Computers can be infected simply by visiting one of the Web sites or viewing an infected image in an e-mail through the preview pane […] even if users did not click on anything or open any files."

"Microsoft said in a statement yesterday that it is investigating the vulnerability and plans to issue a software patch to fix the problem. The company could not say how soon that patch would be available." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901456.html

How severe it is: "This vulnerability can be used to install any type of malicious code, not just Trojans and spyware, but also worms, bots or viruses that can cause irreparable damage to computers," said Luis Corrons of Panda Software.

In a security advisory posted on its Web site, Microsoft confirmed the vulnerability and the associated release of exploit code that could compromise PCs, and listed the operating systems at risk. Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP, Windows Server 2000, Windows 98, and Windows Millennium can be attacked using the newly-discovered vulnerability…

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/912840.mspx

BlogAutoPublisher support expert comments on the situation, advising a cure:

"The vulnerability is in the Microsoft Windows Graphics Rendering Engine, that is why the exploit affects Windows versions from Win98 to WinXP.

Unlike other security vulnerabilities, this one allows a _data file_ to execute arbitrary code upon it being viewed. In other words, a (picture) data file can contain executable code to "help" Windows display it, and Windows will execute it unquestionably.

Your computer can be infected whenever Windows uses its default image viewer to display certain image types. This means there is a long list of applications that are vulnerable that rely upon the image viewer code. Windows uses this code when previewing images, for example.

*What YOU can do right NOW*, to secure your computer until a patch from Microsoft is released:

Go to Start > Run, paste there the following line: regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll and press OK.

If everything goes right, you’ll see the following message: "DllUnregisterServer in shimgvw.dll succeeded."

It will disable the problematic dll, forcing all other programs to use their own engines, if exist. Keep in mind that this will disable thumbnail previews in Windows Explorer. One may experience problems with opening any image file after unregistering this dll.

(To reactivate this feature: Start > Run > regsvr32 shimgvw.dll)

We will send another update, when the patch from Microsoft is released, with instructions how to apply the patch and re-activate the feature."

And another important thing: since this is such a serious flaw, you may start getting phishing emails pretending to originate at Microsoft, urging you to do something with your computer, apply some "patches". Don’t do it.

Find the true information at microsoft.com or wait for the links at microsoft.com we’ll publish later.

Copyright 2006 Olga Farber Becker

Olga’s areas of research are internet marketing, blogs, RSS feeds. Find out 55 ways to use the Marketer’s Blogging Software Olga recently released: http://blogautopublisher.com