As a home computer owner, one of the greatest threats to your information and to your wallet, is hard disk failure. When your drive crashes, you will quicky realize how valuable the information you can no longer access is.

And when you start searching for disaster recovery services, you will be surprised how much it will cost to recover that data. Here are a few tips to help you prevent a data disaster on your harddisk.

1. If you have an older hard drive, be sure to run free tools like Data Lifeguard software to check the current condition of your drive. By discovering any problems before they crash your disk, you’ll have a chance to copy your information before all is lost.

2. When the time comes to copy your data from one disk to another, remember to keep the old hard disk. You’ll want to make sure you have a backup while you give your new drive some time to make sure it is running well.

3. Even on new computers, files on your hard drive can become disorganized over time. Make sure to run your favorite defragmentation program regularly.

4. Partioning your disk can also help improve performance. Make sure to do this from within your operating system if your disk already has partitions on it. This can often be done through your operating systems management console.

5. Do not ignore any problems that crop up. If your computer starts acting strangely, running slower, or giving your error messages, run a scan disk or CHKDSK immediately. Remember, it will be much cheaper to repair your hard drive prior to a total crash!

If you think taking the extra time to follow these steps to care for your hard disk seems time consuming, I recommend you check out the cost of harddisk data recovery. You’ll quickly realize the value of these tips!

James B. Allen blogs regularly about disaster recovery planning. To learn more about data recovery and other aspects of disaster recovery, visit James at: DisasterRecoveryData.com.

With the value on information rising day by day, one of the greatest threats to businesses of any size is data loss. If the data centers in your business have ever experienced a hard drive disaster, you quicky realized just how valuable the information lost is.

And then, the situation becomes even worse, when you realize how much it is going to cost for a disaster recovery specialist to try and retrieve or restore your data for you.

Here are some basic tips for avoiding such a situation.

1. If you company is using older computers, be sure your tech support is regulary checking for any problems on your hard drives. By discovering problems before they have a chance to wreak havock on your data, they will have an opportuntiy to back the data up before it is no longer retrievable.

2. Make sure your techies are giving you the old hard disks when they do hard drive upgrades on your systems. Even when the information has been copied onto new disks, the old drives still contain all your valuable data. You don’t want this getting into the wrong hands. Plus, it is always good to have a backup while the new hardware is settling in.

3. Especially in a fast paced office environment, the thousands of computer files can become disorganized over time. Make sure your computer support is running defragmentation programs on a regular basis.

4. Keep the operating systems the same across all machines in your office. This will help prevent hard drive corruption from various users incorrectly installing programs on a system they are not familiar with. Better yet, leave program installation, removal and system partitioning to your tech support.

5. Make sure employess report any problems that crop up on their machines. If even one computer starts acting strangely, running slower, or giving error messages, have support run a scan disk or CHKDSK immediately. Remember, it will be much cheaper to repair one computer’s hard drive than to pick up the tab after a total system disaster!

Keeping the following tips in mind when creating your data loss disaster prevention plan will help limit not only headaches, but losses to your bottom line.

James B. Allen blogs regularly about disaster recovery planning. To learn more about data recovery and other aspects of disaster recovery, visit James at: DisasterRecoveryData.com.

Six months ago my computer crashed. When I turned my computer on it would not load Windows XP and so I could not get into my two hard drive files. As an author and writer of ebooks, I had all my files in two hard drives without any other backup. At first, I panic. The thought of losing all my data files and writings was unthinkable. Then I got angry with myself for letting myself get into this situation.

Have you ever felt the terror, fear, and then anger connected with losing data that you value so much? I started to think about the different ways I could try to get my data. After trying different things, I knew I could not recover my data by myself. I finally gave in and knew that I need help.

I thought about pulling the hard drives out or taking my computer to a data recovery service. As I looked in the yellow pages and through goggle search for local data recovery computer services, I was able to find a few. I knew it was going to cost me a few dollars, but I needed my data and I needed my computer to do my work.

Finally, I decided to call a computer friend of mine that had done some work for me in the past. After he tried what he could with his knowledge, he could not get windows to open. So here is what we decided was the best course of action:

* Buy a new 120-megabyte hard drive

* Format and install Windows XP on the new hard drive on another computer.

* Remove one hard drive C from old computer and install new hard drive on old computer

* Copy files from drive D that was left on old computer onto new hard drive

* Remove drive D old computer and install drive C

Job complete. With the new hard drive now call drive G, I now had drive C with all my old data and drive D with my old data.

There would have been many other ways to configure and transfer old hard drive data but this one worked for me and I was happy because I could access my files.

Cost was $150 for my friend and $100 for 120 MB hard drive and about a week of lost productivity.

I don’t know what cause my computer to fail but I could have been a virus. If your computer crashes, can you afford to be a week without your data? As an individual, maybe you can fix it yourself or with the help of a computer expert. For a company computer you will need the help of a data recovery service if you don’t have a resident IT person.

Rudy Silva has a degree in Physics from the University of San Jose. He is author of ebooks and has a variety of sites on various subjects. For more information on data recovery methods and techniques check out his site at: http://www.datalostandfound.info

Bill gates provided a ready made option in Microsoft windows, which is very useful for data recovery.

Several time we make mistakes unknowingly and we lost our data, then we need to recover the data. There are so many data recovery solutions available but most of them are very costly. There may be a very easy way for data recovery.

To use data recovery you can back up your files to CDs, DVDs, external hard drives, other internal hard drives, tape drives, etc. They all work, it’s just that each media choice has it’s own pros and cons regarding ease of use, data storage capacity, and so on. It hardly matter what media you choose for data recovery but the important thing is that it should work.

There are several good backup programs that are very much useful for data recovery job, but Bill gates provided one very good option to do data recovery very easily. Most Microsoft Windows users have a great backup program included with their operating software. If you are a Windows XP user that program is called NT Backup. If it’s not already installed on your computer insert your Windows CD, find the folder titled ValueAdd\MSFT\ntbackup, and run the program in that folder called ntbackup.msi. It will set up the backup software for use on your computer in no time and you will even have simple to use wizards that will walk you through doing file backups and restores simply and easily.

After properly installing the software you can be prepapered for any time data recovery. Probably this is the easiest way to recover your data. Whenever you will need this trick will work and the cost of data recovery will be negligible.

Author is an engineer and is running a website http://engineering-updates.com, you can reproduce this article if all the link are alive.

Helping your business survive in the event of an unforeseen disaster: Most business failures are not from bad business but from bad business practices.

Most companies that fail are the ones that have not planned how their business will continue to function in the event of a disaster.

We put in the conventional safeguards such as alarming the premises, locking up vital areas and information, putting in fire prevention systems.

But what thought is given to make sure that the vital data that is needed for a business to continue is in a safe place- can be accessed and is current information.

Sales/purchases ledgers.

Do you know what the company is owed?

Can you prove to your insurers what is owed and what your replacement costs are?

Business processes.

Where are your procedures manuals, technical drawings, and patents?

Insurances.

Where are your policies kept?

Back up tapes- they are off site but what do we load them on to.

How often do we back up our information? Where is it kept? On site-in your briefcase? How do we restore it.

Cheque books-paying in books-writing paper-invoice paper. Have they gone up in smoke?

There are a few safeguards that we can put in place so that the business can continue to function in the event of a disaster. These processes do not have to be expensive or costly.

They require common sense, a little professional help and a place that is risk free where you can store the information vital for your survival.

We spend millions each year with insurance companies, insuring for the eventuality of the business having a disaster- surely the small amount of time cost & effort in making sure that you have the wherewithal to continue trading as soon as possible is the prime objective.

"BattleBoxes™” containing essential items for business continuation can be created for your company with a minimum of effort and will give you the peace of mind, so that you can continue the business in the event of a disaster.

Oh! And by the way ask your insurers for a reduction in your premiums. Lowering the risk limits their exposure- why should they reap all the rewards.

Terry Cohen is a director of Archival Record Management PLC, who specialise in looking after the data that companies create - in all formats. They offer a full records management service that includes scanning services. Contact him on 020 7703 3915 or email:tc@londonweb.net

Right now you probably in a lot of mental pain, and all you’re concerned about is recovering your data as quickly as possible - so we’ll refrain from comments on the wisdom of regular back ups. The time for preventative measures has gone - the issue at hand is data recovery.

First - a simple tip could save you a lot of money. Take out your rolodex and get hold of your tech-savvy friends. If you’re in luck, they’ll offer to help, and if you’re really lucky, they might even have some disk recovery software.

If you’re out of luck, then get out your wallet or purse out now… because this is going to cost you. Also, be prepared for a lot of time being wasted - data recovery can take a long time.

The first thing to establish is what exactly is wrong with your hard disk:

• Either your computer won’t boot up, or
• Your computer boots up OK but you can’t see one of your other drives.

Let’s see if we can eliminate the worst scenario. Listen closely to your hard drive - is it making any sort of weird noise, such as scratching, scraping, ticking etc?

If so, then your drive is physically damaged and the only hope that you have is to take it to a data recovery service where experts might be able to get your data off for you. These services are expensive and time consuming - so you need to make a judgement call as to the value of data on the disk:

• If it’s only your saved game data or downloaded music files you would like back, you’re probably better off kicking yourself for not backing up, and accepting the data loss.

If your hard disk sounds OK, then you stand a decent chance of recovering data yourself.

First you’ll need to download some software to help you out.

Unfortunately, the better software utilities are not free, but the good news is that many allow you to try them out to see they can access the data. There are some freeware versions available but generally speaking these are not easy to use - no user interface / little documentation, or they are not very effective.

There’s a list of recommended software on our site - http://www.recoverdatafiles.com - compare the different options then download a few of the trial versions.

Your next steps will be based on how your hard drive/s were setup:

• If you only have a single hard drive that has not been partitioned or split into different “logical” drives, you’ll probably need to attach the hard drive to another computer that has enough space to store all your data. This can be quite technical so if you don’t have the skills please get a computer savvy friend to help out.

Another option is to purchase an external USB hard drive case. You can then simply slot the hard drive into the case and plug it into another PC using a USB port.

Look for a data recovery software package that has a boot disk option available. What this means is that when you start your computer with the boot disk in it, it will automatically run the data recovery program without trying to start windows. You should be able to see your files and then copy them across to another drive.

Hopefully these tips will enable you to get all your important files back.

Once you’ve had some time to recover, please take a look at the various articles on our website - our goal is to make it one of the best resources on data recovery.

For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters’ interest has been in making the most effective use of a business’s information assets. He has lead several data-to-information projects : ABC Costing, analytical CRM, datamart /data warehouse development, and Balanced Scorecard.

For help with data-related projects, contact Jeff Walters through either site: Data Recovery, or Customer Relationship Management

The Hurricane Katrina Disaster has lessons for all business owners. Now is a Good time to look over your Disaster recovery plan and see if it would survive a Hurricane Katrina Type Disaster. You may be surprised how easy and cheap it is to have a Disaster Recovery Plan that will protect your business from all types of Disasters from simple theft to a Hurricane Katrina Like Disaster.

As a small business paying for 3 backup data centers might be more like taking a Ferrari to a bicycle race. For many small businesses the key is to have critical data ready and available as soon after a disaster strikes as possible. If you run your business off a computer or even a server then an offsite back-up of key customer and vendor data is a minimal requirement for a good Disaster Recovery Plan.

Most of your Major Fortune 1000 Companies have extensive off site back up plans. A company based in St Louis for example may contract with 2 or 3 companies around the country to provide essential computer services in case a Disaster occurs in St. Louis that makes it impossible for their Data Centers to continue to function in St Louis.

Major Companies in St Louis may have backups in 2 or 3 remote sites like Chicago, New Jersey and Arizona. These Sites are located in different directions and distances from St Louis. Once a year this company may send key Data Center employees to these location to test the back up plan.

As a small business paying for 3 backup data centers and running annual test might be more like taking a Ferrari to a bicycle race. For many small businesses the key is to have critical data ready and available as soon after a disaster strikes as possible. If you run your business off a computer or even a server then an offsite back-up of key customer and vendor data is a minimal requirement for a good Disaster Recovery Plan.

At one time My own personal Disaster Recovery Plan consisted of placing a tape back-up weekly in a safe deposit box in a bank a few miles from my home based business location. If the Area of my home had suffered a Hurricane Katrina like Disaster even if the bank and the contents of that safe deposit box survived the Disaster that backup may not be available to me for weeks or months. Clearly a delay of weeks or months could mean the end of my business.

Keeping Data in an Off Site Local location is still a good idea so you can have fast access to your data and recover from small disasters like fire or theft that only effect your location. Clearly in light of what we learned from Katrina you may want to mail a DVD backup to a trusted friend or relative in another part of the country. A 2nd solution you may want to consider is a service that backs up your computer daily via the Internet. Clearly you would want to make sure the provider you choose for this service is not lo acted across town.

A lesson to learn from Hurricane Katrina is that 1 or even 2 back-up plans may not be enough. You need to judge how valuable your business is to you and possibly mail a DVD to one or more trusted associates in remote off site lo actions and still maintain a local and Internet back ups as well.

While you may not be able to fly cross country for a week to test your back up plan, you could test your back-ups by trying load them on a ‘clean’ computer.

About the Author
Mike Makler Offers Financial Services (Mortgages,Life Insurance, Annuity) in Florissant Missouri which is in North St. Louis County Missouri Just Across the Bridge from St. Charles Missouri

Call Mike at 314 398-5547

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http://ewguru.com/finance

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http://ewguru.com/Mo-Finance

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Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler

"Data-recovery is something we hope that we will never need. Whether you simply make the mistake of deleting important software or you lose it all in a computer crash, that valuable asset of information may seem like it is lost forever. But, if you have complete and quality data-recovery software on your computer or through your system, you can be confident that it has a backup and it is there even though these things have happened to you. This can be so important when it comes to safeguarding your business or your personal information.

What people do not realize is that there are a number to ways that things can go wrong on their computers. Whether you are responsible for the computers of a large corporation, a small business or even just your own personal computer, having a way to restore information when things do go wrong is quite important. Here are some things that could happen to you, well, anytime, even right now. 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. All of a sudden, it’s gone. Or, you could be working along nicely without a care in the world and bam! A power surge, an electric storm or something else electrical happens and it’s all gone.

There are many more ways in which you can lose all of the personal data that is stored on your computer. You don’t even have to have the programs running to lose it. Nevertheless, many people mistakenly believe this will not happen to them and therefore do not do anything to prevent this total loss. Data-recovery is necessary for this to happen. The strange thing is, is that it takes only minutes to install and use and it virtually takes care of itself. It is not overly costly either. So, why don’t more people use data-recovery? They just don’t realize its importance. And, that is one mistake we don’t want to make. Data-recovery is a need all computer users have. "

for mroe information please see http://www.data-recovery-help.co.uk

Here is the situation. A laptop comes to us with a dead hard drive. Unfortunately, the user needs some files off the dead drive. After much research on the internet and a couple of data recovery quotes we decide to try and recover the information ourselves.

Luckily for us the drive won’t spin up at all. I say luckily because the usual problem is that the circuit board on the bottom of the drive went bad. That doesn’t mean that something else isn’t the problem, but replacing the circuit board is the simplest thing to try.

The first thing needed is another hard drive. That may sound easy but it isn’t. You need an identical hard drive, and by identical I mean the same model number, part number, firmware, everything. In our case we had a Hitachi Travelstar hard drive that had three numbers to match. The important numbers were the model number, part number, and MLC number. I believe the MLC number has something to do with the firmware revision but don’t quote me on that. After speaking with Hitachi I was referred to a company called CueTech. They specialize in finding "hard to find" or obsolete computer parts. The wanted to charge between $200 and $400 for the drive, which I thought was reasonable for the work required to find one. Instead of using them I decided to search on my own and after two days, still had not found another drive for sale that met my needs. We then started looking in house for similar laptops and found one that had an identical drive. Now we were in business.

Now that we had our drive, we needed to protect ourselves because the user wanted their machine back in working order. So before we started any kind of surgery we made a ghost image of their hard drive. After waiting the 20 minutes or so for the backup to finish we began the surgery. First we removed the hard drive from the working system and laid it on a static pad with the circuit board up. We then used a T-5 Torx drive to remove the screws securing the circuit board to the hard drive. Your drive may need a different size or style of screwdriver. We then repeated the process on the bad drive. We put the circuit board from the good drive onto the dead hard drive and placed it back in the laptop. It booted! As soon as we new it worked we then setup the system to make a quick drive image. After waiting another 20 minutes we had a drive image of the bad hard drive and our data was recovered.

To finish the process we had to put the circuit board back on the original good hard drive and verify that it was working correctly. Once that was completed and the laptop returned to its owner, we installed a brand new hard drive in the system that had the original issue. The last step was to restore the drive image to the new hard drive, verify that it worked, and give the laptop back to the owner.

Gary Higbee
http://www.greatnorthcomputing.com - A community for SysAdmins and Programmers.

Common And Easily Remedied Computer Problems

There are a number of easily remedied computer problems that users often fear will require data recovery. Fortunately there are a number of equally easy solutions to many of these problems. There are a number of reasons computers can act up. Some may be powered up correctly, others may have incorrectly connected or poorly connected cables. It is important you investigate all potential problems before panicking and assuming our data has been lost.

Here are some common problems that may or may not necessitate data recovery:

Your computer freezes up and you can’t extract your data. Usually this is a temporary situation. This often occurs when the user has too many applications open at the same time. You may have to manually restart your computer to get things working again. Chances are no data recovery will be necessary in this situation.

Power outages. In some cases your computer may stop working due to a power outage or failure. The best way to check this is to check your outlet. You can minimize your risk of data loss and the need for data recovery in this case by using a surge protector. This is particularly beneficial during storms.

Computers also tend to act weird when contaminated whether by dirt, dust, food particles or even unintended spills. Be sure you routinely clean your computer and keep the area you work in free of potential hazards that can wreak havoc on a computer (like a large spill). Doing so will minimize your risk for major computer meltdown and subsequent need for data recovery.

Article by Frank Owen, visit his web site on data recovery for more information on data recovery http://www.datarecoveryinsiders.com