Hard Disk Drive Data Recovery

Many people have thought, especially when they experience a catastrophic data loss that a hard disk drive failure canรขโ�ฌโ�ขt happen to something that hasnรขโ�ฌโ�ขt last for 15 years or so. They believe that hard disk drives are impossible to break down, thus the physical hard drive crash problem is not something they expect. The truth of the matter is, todayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs hard disk drives run fast, run hot, and as a result can break. There is simply nothing you can do to avoid it. But, there is a best way to save yourself money in situation where a hard disk drive data recovery is necessary รขโ�ฌโ�� back up your data.

But, what if you did not back up your data and your drive?

The solution for that is so simple รขโ�ฌโ�� consider a hard disk drive data recovery service. Note that a hard disk drive data recovery is highly appropriate in situations when your hard drive has physically failed. And, since todayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs hard disk technology is simply complicated, you must not perform a hard disk drive data recovery by yourself. Look for a hard disk drive data recovery services and let the expert do the job for you.

Most of the hard disk drive data recovery experts today set their hard disk drive data recovery as their primary business. They then work to help people recover lost files that are very important to them. As such, itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs no wonder that most hard disk drive data recovery companies are composed of trained staff of hard disk drive data recovery experts who will ensure that the contents of your hard disk are recovered and returned to you intact.

However, prior to bringing your hard disk drive to a hard disk drive data recovery shop for data recovery and repair, you should first know the real problem. Below is a checklist that you can consult if you think you may need a hard disk drive data recovery service.

รขโ�ฌยข Have you lost a few files?
รขโ�ฌยข Is your computer not booting properly?
รขโ�ฌยข Has your hard disk drive made buzzing and clinking noises?
รขโ�ฌยข Did you experience the so-called "the blue screen of death" and if so, what was the error message?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you are then ready to take a hard disk drive data recovery. It is necessary to choose, however, the right hard disk drive data recovery company as in todayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs highly technological era where thousands of companies offering hard disk drive data recovery services, finding the right service can be difficult. If possible, ask your friends or family members for certain recommendations. You might just be surprised to know how much hard disk drive data recovery experts they know.

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Computer Diagnostics and Data Recovery

One of the big advantages of Computer diagnostics utilities is that many of them are useful to determine the availability of destroyed or deleted data that can be recovered. PC diagnostics software may include a data recovery facility or simply diagnose and return a list of clusters available from where data can be retrieved again.

PC diagnostics applications are fastest, and one of the most convenient cost-effective solutions when it comes to rescuing your lost information, that otherwise a technician may charge a price that sometimes may be out of your budget. Some Computer diagnostics programs can recover up to 99% of hard drive data recovery problems.

Although, data loss may occur due to human mistakes, more often it happens due to a hard drive failure. That is the reason why it is recommended to use PC diagnostics software on a regular basis, since this type of software is very useful to prevent those errors from occurring, thus no data can be lost if the hard drive is kept in good condition.

Certainly, computer diagnostics may determine if the hard disk has a potential problem or not, but when the data is lost due to involuntary deletion, virus attack or any other form of file corruption, there is no PC diagnostics program that can anticipate an event of such nature.

Data recovery software is usually provided as floppy disk aid, this peculiarity allows that any crashed PC can work again after the software performs a series of PC diagnostics before running to determine what failed in your hard disk, and the conditions of your remaining information, if any.

Computer diagnostics will run until they gather enough information to provide you with several screens prompting you about particular issues and offering you the solutions to fix it yourself. When the Data recovery utility is part of PC diagnostics software, it probably will not require the floppy disk to run, except when the system is totally halted.

The goal of Computer diagnostics utilities and data recovery software is to help you avoid wasting time and money transporting your computer to get repaired, most of the time with no guarantee that all your data will be restored. Your hard disk is the most valuable piece of you computer because of all your valuable data files, so do not expose it to being lost, using PC diagnostics software and getting a data recovery utility, just in case can save you time and money.

Natalie Aranda writes on computer and technology. One of the big advantages of Computer diagnostics utilities is that many of them are useful to determine the availability of destroyed or deleted data that can be recovered. PC diagnostics software may include a data recovery facility or simply diagnose and return a list of clusters available from where data can be retrieved again.

Hard Drive Recovery Utilities

A hard drive is one of the most important parts of any computer. The drive physically stores data on magnetic disks. Since the hard drive has constantly moving parts, it is susceptible to wear and tear. This causes hard drive failures, which result in loss of important data.

Hard drive failure can be attributed to power fluctuations and physical damage or to internal file systems and software problems. The former is known as physical damage, while the latter is called logical failure. Both these cases can be resolved to recover the stored data. While the user can rectify logical problems at home, physical malfunctions almost always require expert help.

There are several software utilities available to help in hard drive recovery. Logical hard drive recovery can be of various different types. The basic problems include bad file sectors resulting from pirated software or due to virus attacks. Hard drive recovery softwares also prove beneficial for recovering lost files or folders due to accidental formats, partition losses, emptying the recycle bin and general software malfunctions.

Hard drive recovery utilities first scan the hard drive to detect the nature of the problem. Once the problem is analyzed, the software can be configured to take the necessary action. Some of the powerful softwares can even be used to extract data from compressed and inaccessible drives. Backup of the recovered data is taken onto a desired medium such as an external hard drive or CD/DVD media. Hard drive recovery is possible because the data continues to exist on the hard disk even after it is deleted. Unless data is overwritten in the same sector, the data will continue to exist even if the operating system does not show it.

As these data recovery utilities are mostly used in business organizations, they tend to be very expensive, often running into several thousand dollars. Most of these programs are easy to install and can be scheduled for self-maintenance such as taking a periodic backup of important files.

Hard Drive Recovery provides detailed information on Hard Drive Recovery, Hard Drive Recovery Experts, Hard Drive Recovery Software, Hard Drive Data Recovery Services and more. Hard Drive Recovery is affiliated with Hard Drive Data Recovery.

Backup And Recovery Plans - An Introduction

These days most companies secure their data by regularly backing it up onto tape and storing it externally รขโ�ฌโ�� either at the owners place of residence or in a safety deposit box at the bank. They follow a DIY IT disaster recovery plan to preserve their data in the event that a system failure or interruption occurs during day to day operations.

A back up and recovery plan allows them to minimize data loss and interruption to customers.

Some companies however, have taken this IT contingency planning one step further, by enhancing their backup and recovery strategy using expensive disk arrays and mirroring. Some companies feel that by implementing more comprehensive and advanced IT disaster recovery software at the problem they can still manage the processes in house and it will work out just as effective, but still works out more cost effective than engaging external IT disaster recovery vendors.

But at the end of the day, no matter how you look at it; whether it is an earthquake, a flood, a blackout or a hard disk failure that gets you, IT disaster recovery services are always helpful รขโ�ฌโ�� there is simply no doubt about it.

Add to this the risk that the data loss might be as a result of human or software error (which studies show, account for approximately 40% of all IT related disasters), then all your IT Officer needs to do is grab the most recent back up and restore the system.

Fingers crossed this would do the trick. While you canรขโ�ฌโ�ขt rely on IT contingency planning for everything, you have to hope that the IT disaster recovery solution you put in place will get you most of the way there.

If your IT infrastructure fails, you do need to know that sometimes your IT disaster recovery management tools may prove insufficient, for example, the back up does not complete, the back up tape you have does not include the most recent data or the tapes are unable to accessed when required.

What ever the reason, things can and do, go wrong with every DIY back up system. So, by conducting and indeed relying on traditional tape or disk backups that are processed in house, you need to understand that you could well be placing your business in jeopardy. If nothing else, do your homework and ensure that any IT disaster recovery plan you implement, provides you with the greatest level of security possible.

If in doubt talk to some local IT disaster recovery vendors and see what IT disaster recovery solution they would recommend for your business.

Robin Yearsley. Certified ITIL Masters (Managers) Consultant. Learn More About Business Continuity and IT Disaster Recovery Planning Today. Visit:- http://www.ITDisasterRecovery.info

Avoiding Hard Disk Data Recovery Services

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.

CD Rom Backup Software

Creating backup for the data on an electronic device like a computer or a digital camera is very important. Most electronic equipments are bound to suffer crashes, leading to the erasing of all the data within. Creating backup for the data enables not only storage but also effective retrieval of the data whenever required.

There are many backup devices, including floppy disks, hard disks, other computers on the network, compact disks, and DVDs. Each of these has its own conveniences, risks and capacities. Use of these devices depends on several factors: the amount of data to be stored, the frequency at which the data is altered, presence of other backup devices, and the kind of files that need to be stored.

CD ROMs are one kind of a removable backup device. CDs are being increasingly used for storing files as they are inexpensive, easy to store, easy to transport, and have varying storage capacities. Some CD ROMs can take as much as 700 MB of data. They are also relatively safer than floppy disks or hard disk on the system. The data stored on a CD ROM however, cannot be altered. This makes them more ideal for storing permanent data. There are also other advantages from using CD ROMs for storing backup data: they have a high shelf life, they are not affected by magnetic fields, and they can be taken through airport security without any problem. They are nevertheless fragile and require careful handling.

CD-ROM recorders or writers have now become very inexpensive. A basic model is available for a price below $1,000 while those with optical drivers are more expensive. These days, most backup software programs are compatible with CD-drives and CD-recorders. There are many kinds and brands of backup software programs available. These are compatible with basic Windows NT/2000 configurations. Prices range from $30 to $3,700 or more, depending on the options and the features available. Veritas, Symantec, Acronis, Dantz, and Stomp are some of the popular brands in CD ROM backup software.

Backup Software provides detailed information on Backup Software, CD ROM Backup Software, Free Backup Software, Computer Backup Software and more. Backup Software is affiliated with Network Status Monitoring Software.

When Your Computer Fails: A Disaster Recovery Strategy for the Home-based Business

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:

Buy an external hard drive. These hard drives, which connect to your computer via the USB 2.0 or FireWire port (check which port your computer has) have fallen dramatically in price. Some of them are about the size of a paperback and can be easily transported. Most come with a backup program that lets you schedule automatic backups for your data.

Put all crucial computer-related information in a folder. This includes the customer support numbers of hardware and software manufacturers, serial numbers, warranty documents and configuration information. The last thing you want to do is to hunt for these items while you are desperately trying to get your computer working again.

Back up data and store the media offsite. Having an external hard drive is great, but what would happen in the case of theft, flood or fire? You should regularly (let your calendar program remind you) back up important data on CD-Rs or DVD-Rs and store these elsewhere, such as at a friendรขโ�ฌโ�ขs house or in a safe deposit box at your bank.

Back up data online. There are numerous companies that will store your data online for a fee, but it might even be enough to use a web-based e-mail service such as Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, as these now offer very generous storage quotas. Just mail important files to yourself.

Have extra hardware. If your main computer fails, you can just move the external hard drive to your laptop and continue working. It might also be useful to keep an old computer around as a backup machine, as long as it still runs the programs you need to use. This way, you do not have to run out and buy a new computer right away, if your current one fails.

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".

Knowing Your Hard Drive - A Guide to Data Recovery

Hard drives are usually reliable devices that store all your important files and data. Todayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs Information Age runs on data, making the storage of such worth its weight in gold. However, no matter how evolved this technology has become, these media devices are still prone to serious errors that could result in the loss of invaluable data. Hard drives may crash or may develop logical errors.

Most data crashes occur when some physical or logical error is introduced into a system. Hard disks, CD-ROMs, Tape Drives and other storage media can and will fail eventually. This could be caused by a host reasons รขโ�ฌโ�� power outages, physical damage to media, head crashes, motor problems and the like.

Whatever the reason, you will need a means to restore all this data. This is especially true if for some reason the deleted, destroyed or corrupted data contains information that is not backed up or existing in any other location anyway.

You will also want to get your hard disk in running order again, if that is possible.

Signs and Symptoms to Look out For
Most hard disks show signs of croaking before completely crashing. Symptoms of an impending crash include frequent disk error messages, the disk not showing during start up, garbled information regarding the disk when analyzed, and weird clicking or whirring sounds.

If you notice any of these back up at all costs! This ensures that you at least have your data safe before anything untoward happens to your hard disk.

Some disks suddenly croak without a warning. You can, however, gauge and maintenance your hard disk by running a check disk utility to scan and repair logical errors. Bad sectors get marked too so data is no longer stored there.

Reasons for a Crash
Hard disks crash for various reasons. One of the more predictable offenders is unstable power supply. When there is a sudden power outage or sudden power surge, hard disks can take quite a pounding. Aside from physically damaging the disk, logical errors to the diskรขโ�ฌโ�ขs file system can be traced to this reason.

Logical errors for such happen when the disk suddenly loses power while it is writing critical information to the disk. Such errors can make the data on the disk unreadable unless the file system is corrected.

Viruses and malicious code can also be a cause for a crash, as well as the ill handling of a disk รขโ�ฌโ�� sudden shock, dropping, or magnetizing can seriously damage your hard disk.

What to do
If you hard disk does crash, the simplest thing to do is to go for your back ups. If the data you need is not backed up. You can try recovering the data yourself.

There are softwares available that can help recover your hard diskรขโ�ฌโ�ขs data and even make your hard disk usable again. These softwares try a low-level read and access of your hard disk and are usually able to at least recover some of the data.

Some software applications can recover deleted or corrupt data. They also are able to correct file system errors and logical errors that beset your hard disk.

But in the case of truly important data, like that of company data and others, you may want to employ the services of a data recovery expert. They have both the expertise and equipment to handle a problem like yours.

If you found those tips useful more information on Data Recovery can be found at "Data Recovery without heartache"

What To Do If You Receive A "Drive Not Formatted" Error Message

Many computer users have experienced it, and unfortunately it can arrive at any time whether your computer is new or old. The dreaded "Drive not formatted. Do you want to format now?" error message. It can happen quickly and without warning leaving many users wondering what to do. The data on the hard drive still exists, but a wrong response to this error message can damage or delete the existing data.

The "Drive not formatted. Do you want to format now?" error message generally indicates a corrupted partition, deleted partition or damaged partition. This can occur for many different reasons including a computer virus, power surge, software installation or software that partitions the hard drive.

If you receive this type of error message, it is important that you act carefully to keep your important data intact. It is important that you: 1) do NOT say "yes" to format the drive; 2) do NOT attempt to repartition the hard drive; and 3) do NOT attempt any "do it yourself" data recovery techniques.

A successful data recovery depends on how you respond to the "Drive not formatted" error message. In most cases, a data recovery company can recover data from a system displaying this error message.

This article can be freely published on a website however it must not be modified in any way including the author bylines, and the hyperlink must be made active as shown below. Andrea Stone is employed with ReWave Hard Drive Recovery, a data recovery company serving clients in cities worldwide including Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Durham, Greensboro, Houston, Jacksonville, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, San Diego, Tampa, Virginia Beach, and Winston-Salem. Visit the ReWave Hard Drive Recovery website for more information about data recovery.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Risk Analysis and Control

In the risk evaluation phase, there are a number of key areas that must be covered. One of the most important is to understand probable threats. In an ideal world, which most of us have noticed does not exist, we would identify and protect ourselves against all threats to ensure that our business continues to survive. Obviously, we are constrained by other factors such as budgets, time and priorities and need to apply cost benefit analysis to ensure we are protecting the most critical business functions.

A second important step is to identify all probable threats and prioritize them. Threats, typically, can be classified in several ways such as internal/external, man-made/natural, primary/secondary, accidental/intentional, controllable/not controllable, warning/no warning, frequency, duration, speed of onset etc. While classifying threats is helpful in terms of understanding their characteristics and potential controls, grouping and understanding by business impact is also important. Obviously, the same impact can result from a number of different threats.

Identifying mission critical business processes and systems is another fundamental building block of the business continuity plan. After your critical business processes and systems and probable threats are established, the next step is to identify vulnerabilities and loss potential. This requires an extensive scan of the organization to identify vulnerabilities and then analysis to understand those vulnerabilities which would have the greatest impact on your critical business processes and the organization. This starts to clarify and quantify potential losses, which helps to establish priorities.

Following the identification of the most probable threats and vulnerabilities, an analysis of existing controls is needed. This spans physical security as well as people, processes, data, communications and asset protection. Some controls such as physical security and data backup are obvious. Other controls required are often less obvious, but they can be identified through the risk evaluation process.

Once the key building blocks of critical business functions, most probable threats, vulnerabilities and controls are identified, the next stage is to develop an understanding of the probability of threats factored by the severity or impact of the threats. This leads to the business impact analysis phase which establishes priorities for protection.

The goal is to minimize threats, impacts and downtime and to mitigate any losses. Fundamentally, the goal is to protect your people, protect your data, protect your vital communications, protect your assets and to protect your brand and reputation. Overall, of course, the goal is to ensure your business continues to operate and to do it in a cost-effective way meeting standards of reasonable and prudent judgment.

About The Author

Robert Mahood has significant technology and management experience in data communications, internet, storage, disaster recovery and data recovery. He is currently the president of Midwest Data Recovery. www.midwestdatarecovery.com

bmahood@midwestdatarecovery.com, 312 907 2100 or 866 786 2595

Computer Hard Drive Recovery Ideas

If you have never faced the loss of data, you still need to take precautions that your server, hard disk or RAID stay in good health. Also, you need to have some sort of plan in mind to help you in case there is any problem. Data losses, if and when they happen, take time to amend and may be expensive The primary symptoms of data losses are:

รขโ�ฌยข Error messages telling you that the device is not recognized
รขโ�ฌยข Previously accessible data is suddenly nowhere to be seen.
รขโ�ฌยข Scraping or rattling sound in the drives especially hard disks.
รขโ�ฌยข Hard drive may not spin and may be still.
รขโ�ฌยข Computer or hard drive does not function at all, like no booting is possible.

Mostly data loss is due to drive failure. Most hard drives rotate at very high frequency and that causes physical wear and tear. Sometimes the corrupted Master Boot record may be the culprit also.

Data recovery is in fact the science of putting the file system back together so that data files can be accessed again. Every operating system has a file system, which nothing but a unique method of indexing and keeping track of the files.In case of lost data, file systems can be very complex, and thatรขโ�ฌโ�ขs why it can be so difficult to locate missing files.

The best data recovery companies have developed proprietary tools to work with all of the main file systems in use today. Recovery engineers are internally trained to work on data recovery, working with computer hardware for a number of years and learning the low-level specifics of every type of file system.

Data recovery can either be worked out with help of software and some simple steps. This is usually the case when the drives are not physically damaged. In case they are damaged, you need to send the drives to the specialists who will take care of the data and work it out for you.

To recover hard drive data, lost due to physical damage, you need to decide the optimality as the costs of data recovered need to be balanced with the cost of data involved. In case, the data lost is not critical, just take a lesson from this failure. Replace the faulty drives and start backing up. There should be adequate drives and a schedule so that regularly you create copies of your data.

Data recovery is possible using softwares also. In case you detect any data loss, try to first locate some data recovery softwares from your technically inclined friends. They may have some disk recovery softwares that may actually be used to get your data back. Log on to the site, http://www.recoverdatafiles.com and see what data recovery softwares are ranked best and suit you. These softwares usually will not be free but they may access the data and recover it for you. Some other data recovery techniques are listed below:

รขโ�ฌยข Loss of Database files: In case of MICROSFT EXCHANGE and SQL data failure, you should never used for direct operations. Keep a copy of the database files and then start the work on the copies not on main files.

รขโ�ฌยข The health of drive: If you have by any means determined that drive is healthy, you still might recover that data all by yourself. Try using the recovery softwares or using the drives as slaves etc.

รขโ�ฌยข Locate logical corruption: This can be easily found by booting from the floppy or using the F disk and then viewing the partitioning information.

รขโ�ฌยข Server Crash: In case you had been working on server and it has crashed, never try data recovery on the same server.

รขโ�ฌยข RAID Drive Crash: Replace the RAID data drive that failed, never ever reuse it.

รขโ�ฌยข RAID Drives: Label the multiple drives in RAID array.

รขโ�ฌยข Utilities: Do not try to run Volume Defragmenters and Volume Repair Utilities on the suspect drives.

รขโ�ฌยข Other utilities: Also avoid the use of Volume Repair utilities if there has been power outrage and or your file system looks corrupted. This must be done only by people who are extremely confidant and are technically wise.

รขโ�ฌยข Keep information: Always keep the following information at hand:

• Size of the drive

• Operating system (i.e. Windows 98, Windows XP etc.)

• Situation of failure (what happened just before the drive stopped working)

• Is the drive recognized by the computer or not

รขโ�ฌยข Boot Drive malfunction: In case the drive that has crashed also had the OS, things are tricky. In this case try to get the Recovery Software with boot functions that ways the computer will boot from the software and then you will be able to see your data files and copy it to safe drives.

รขโ�ฌยข Avoid physical cleaning of drives: Never attempt shaking, cleaning the data drive on your own. This may cause more physical harm.

รขโ�ฌยข Do not remove drive covers: Hard drive cover are best left to specialists. Never try taking them off yourself. This requires special equipment and is nest left to technicians in labs.

Jeffrey Meier offers these Computer Hard Drive Recovery Tips and more tips at http://www.harddriverecoveryinfo.com For Information about Data Recovery we recommend http://www.jam727.com/datarecovery.htm

Is Your Backup Good Enough?

As someone who has seen quite a few hard drive crashes over the years, I believe that performing a full backup of your computer's hard drive should be an important part of your weekly (if not daily) routine. There's nothing more frustrating & costly than trying to restore a computer with only a handful of Floppy disk drives, a couple of scratched CD-ROMs or poorly stored backup tapes.

All too often have I been called upon to try and get a home or office computer working again, only to find that the backup (if any) consists of a few word files and maybe a copy of some accounts data?

Now you might be thinking what's wrong with that? Aren't those the important files? Well, yes! But what about your Emails, Address book, all your Desktop/Internet Shortcuts, FTP settings, Anti-Spam & Anti-Popup filters etc.? You've spend months if not years getting your PC looking and running just the way you like it and in one split second it's all gone.

Now assuming you've got all these backed-up, just think, how long it's going to take even for an experienced technician to re-install the Operating System and then all your programs like MS Office etc. and that's if you can find the original CD-ROMs that came with your PC. Plus what about the programs & updates you downloaded from the Internet and stored on your now crashed hard drive. What a nightmare!

So you do the best you can with what you've got and get your PC back to some useable state, but it's only then you fully realize how poor your backup really was and how much time & money you lost while waiting for your system to be restored, not to mention the repair bill.

But you're probably thinking to yourself, backups take so long to complete and how can you be sure your backing up all the necessary data? Well, as I see it, the only way you can be guaranteed you're getting all your data is to create what's called an image of your system (C:) drive.

By creating an image of your hard drive you are basically taking a snapshot or complete copy of your drive at a moment in time, you can then use that image to restore your system drive with a few clicks of the mouse and in a fraction of the time & hassle than with the earlier example.

You will need to have a second hard disk installed on your PC to store your image. I'd recommend one of equal size to your C: drive, you can use drives with less storage capacity but this would mean you'd probably have to apply compression when creating the image.

You'll also need a backup software capable of creating drive images. There are numerous softwares available such as True Image from Acronis and Norton Ghost from Symantec to name but a few and most of these will allow you to schedule backups to run even when your away from your PC.

With regularly created full backup images, stored securely on a secondary drive out of harms way you can put your mind at ease and get on with more important tasks safe in the knowledge that when disaster strikes youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll be more than capable of handling it. With a few mouse clicks you can start the restore procedure, go for a short break (have lunch, stroll around the block, catch up on some phone calls etc.) and in no time youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll be up & running as if nothing had ever happened.

Give yourself that extra piece of mind and do something about putting a reliable backup system in place right now, because you know it's not a matter of if your hard drive crashes but when and will you be ready for it?

You need to ask yourselfรขโ�ฌยฆ is your backup good enough?

Jeremiah O'Connell is an IT Administrator with AbbeyIT.net and has helped numerous home & small business users protect their data. For his preferred backup solutions visit: http://www.abbeyit.net/acronis-true-image.asp

Keep Your Computer Healthy By Repairing Windows Registry

Windows Registry is a database used by Windows operating system to store hardware and software configuration information. Computer problems are often caused by invalid key entries in the registry. Anyone with Administrator privileges can edit the Registry by using the registry editor (regedit.exe) that comes with the Windows operating system. However, great attention must be given to registry editing or repair because changing registry keys could disable the computer in the worst scenario. The registry editor is a GUI-based tool for managing the registry. When you type รขโ�ฌห�regeditรขโ�ฌโ�ข in the รขโ�ฌห�Runรขโ�ฌโ�ข dialog box and click รขโ�ฌห�OKรขโ�ฌโ�ข, the system will present a registry view similar to the Windows Explorer view of the file system. In general, the registry consists of 5 Root Keys that contains file associations, all preferences set for current user, settings for hardware, operating system, and installed applications, to name just a few.

Now you see how important the registry is to your computer. Maintaining the registry and stabilizing its growth can greatly increase the life expectancy of your Windows system. With this being said, it is a daunting task to repair registry because there are so many complex registry entries stored in your system. Most experienced technicians tend to stay away from the registry unless there are no other options to resolving a computer problem except editing registry keys.

In view of this, there are many third-party registry cleaner utilities that are dedicated to scanning and repairing the registry. By default, registry cleaner scans the registry for all types of errors. It also allows users to customize settings and scan for particular types of registry errors, like shared DLL errors, missing fonts, and invalid startup entries.

Besides finding incorrect or obsolete information in the registry, most registry cleaner utilities provide backup or restore function, allowing users to backup the whole Windows Registry so that they can use the backup to restore the registry to the current status in case they encounter serious system failure. Some of registry cleaner utilities even have the startup organizer feature that lets users disable unwanted startup programs and manage IE settings with ease.

Moreover, registry cleaner software is able to remove harmful viruses, adware, spyware, and Trojans because these intrusive programs tend to attack PC by creating and modifying registry keys. To sum up, there are so many advantages associated with cleaning registry. If your computer is running slow and even shutting down out of the blue, you should check out websites out there which feature a free scanner that can track down evil program lurking on your hard drive and protect you from possible future malicious attacks on your system.

Wayne Wu has been a freelance technical writer for several years. For more information about Registry Cleaner Software, check out http://www.businessinfo.tw/LP/fixregistry/

How to Choose Right Data Recovery Software

Data recovering is a process to make available lost or damaged data that was previously available in either a hard drive or diskettes, either due to an accidental deletion or due to a disk physically damaged by shock. Data recovery was a feature accessible in older systems with MS-DOS 6 operating system.

However, the arrival of the 32 bits architecture in PC processors, and later upgraded to 64 bits, override this functionally. When data is lost, the opportunities to recover valuable or sensitive information are not lost at all. Computer data recovery software can do the job.

This type of software help people retrieve lost or inaccessible files from almost any imaginable data recovery disaster, and without the need to send your hard drive to a specialized technical service.

Computer data recovery software makes it possible for the rescue of any file more often than everybody might think. Like the old MS-Dos, modern applications not only can undelete accidentally deleted files, but also partitions, and even when power failure, software failure, or virus caused the deletion attack.

Choose the right data recovery software, which is associated with your needs. Some applications can get your files back using different utilities after the disk command, while others can retrieve the data even if the hard drive has been formatted.

System restore is another function handled by computer data recovery software. Whether logical hard drive failures or RAID reconstruction and recovery, data recovery is possible, even when your system does not recognize the drive to be rescued.

The key for you to choose the right software is by taking some time to do a search. Recognize if your data recovery problem is beyond your immediate control and even having old undelete software installed, most of the time it will not work because all of them were programmed to work in systems developed with 16 bits architecture.

Double check what every computer data recovery software offers, and be aware of those claiming to recover your files in a way outside all limits of reality, because of the saying; "if something looks too good to be true, it probably is."

Data recovery is not a matter of a high price, in fact, sometimes smaller and cheaper or freeware programs can recover the files as well as the costly versions using mega-gigabytes. However, most of the small gems usually can make a few tasks in comparison with large, full-featured versions.

Again, make sure you do research and comparison before deciding on the best computer data recovery software to fit your needs.

Natalie Aranda writes about computer, training (NETg etc.) and technology. Data recovery is not a matter of a high price, in fact, sometimes smaller and cheaper or freeware programs can recover the files as well as the costly versions using mega-gigabytes.

Data Backup Solution: Why You Need a Backup Plan in Place - Part 2

In the first part of this article series, I talked about the three main threats to the data on your computer. I talked about the need for a data backup solution that protects your data properly. In this article, I'll outline the most common data backup solution options available to you.

A simple data backup solution

A simple way to backup your data is to save everything to CD. By burning your vital information to a CD-ROM, you can have another copy of your data if something goes wrong with your computer. Burning your data to a CD-ROM will provide rudimentary data backup protection. There are some problems with this approach however.

Burning your files regularly to CD requires human intervention and effort. It isn't automatic. You have to take time out of your schedule to do it. People get busy, things happen and before you know it, you haven't done a data backup in over a month then BAM! Your data is lost.

The second major threat to using CD's as your data backup solution is that there are limitations to CD media. The first is that they won't survive a fire. If your place or office burns down and you've stored your CD's on site, your data is gone too. The second problem with CD media is that the media itself degrades over time. A recent study found that even CD's that were advertised to last for 100 years were loosing data after just two or three years.

Burning your data to CD is certainly much better than doing nothing but it has limitations.

Saving Data to a Web Server

With the advent of inexpensive online data storage options, it is now possible to archive your most crucial data online. This option potentially protects you from theft and it is an off site option so it protects you from fire. The only way theft could risk your data is if your computers are not password protected by default and you choose to save all your passwords automatically in your applications. If this is the case, someone who gains physical access to your computers could certainly gain access to your data. This issue aside, saving your files to a web server is certainly an option.

The limitation to this data backup solution usually revolves around the cost for the web server storage. While it is usually cost effective for up to 2 GB of data, it isn't appropriate for backing up an entire hard drive worth of data.

In House Hardware Data Backup Solutions

Another data backup solution is to equip your computers with RAID compatible motherboards and install multiple hard drives in each computer. This option protects your computers from hard drive crashes. It will usually require the services of a computer hardware technician to setup. Done properly, it can pretty much protect you from all hardware failure type data loss.

This solution doesn't usually protect you from theft as the extra hard drives for RAID storage are usually installed in your computer or in other equipment on site. It usually won't protect you from fire either so this method does have its limitations.

Use a combination of all three data backup solutions

For maximum protection, you should consider using a combination of all three data backup solutions for maximum protection. Burn critical documents to CD on a regular basis. Get a web hosting account with lots of storage and upload critical files to the web server. With this option however, keep in mind that unless the data is encrypted on your end, an administrator of the web server could potentially access all your data.

Finally, along with burning a CD and using an off site web server, get a qualified computer technician to install a RAID system in your computer systems. If cost is an issue, get at least one of your computers installed with a RAID capable hard drive and at least one other hard drive.

Using these three data backup solutions, you will minimize the risk to your data and to your livelihood.

Joe Duchesne is the webmaster of GreatComputerInfo.com a computer hardware information site. Reprint freely as long as you maintain the live keyword rich links in this resource box.

Do I Really Need To Backup?

Okay, computers a machine, right? Okay, maybe not yours. You have this special relationship, but that a subject for another article. Machines break. Software gets fouled up. People make errors. These things happen, and for those reasons alone, you need to back up all your critical data, redundantly, in a couple of different locations.

You can do this using the tools your system provides, or a utility you buy for that purpose, but however you do it, do it! Some more things that can go wrong include disks that turn bad and erase sections of your files, power failures or surges, the aforementioned human error (one of the most frequent causes of data loss!) overheating, water or your beverage of choice, magnetic issues and last but certainly most popular, computer viruses.

How is all this accomplished, you ask? There are many ways to backup your data these days, from DVD's to CDR's to ZIP drives, to portable hard drives, as well as offsite internet backups. All have their pros and cons, but the cold hard facts are that it's becoming increasingly easier to back up your critical data.

Don't let that lull you into a false sense of security regarding your sensitive data. Either do it now, and frequently, or start preparing an epitaph for your lost files!

Keith Thompson is the webmaster at Data Recovery Service, offering the latest and most affordable http://www.data-recovery.giftsforbiz.com, data recovery solutions.

Hard Disk Crash & IT Recovery Techniques

Most of us are dependent on our computers for our living in one or the other way. Either we do a business or are in a job or use computers in our daily life requirements, computers are everywhere. With computers come the problems associated with them. Here I am talking about the most disastrous problem with computers, that is, hard drive crash. The diagnosis of hard drive crash alone is sufficient to drive you crazy as all your data is lost with that horrifying scratching and screeching sound. Recently, the hard drive of my computer crashed and I was in the middle of nowhere as all my business data was lost with it. Then like angels in the devils room, the hard disk data recovery service entered in my life which helped me a lot to get out of this misery.

All my miseries ended since I associated myself with hard disk data recovery service. The technical engineer explained me that the data recovery in case of hard disk crash is not always an easy task. It depends on severity of the problem whether the data recovery is easy or complex, expensive or cheap. The technical engineer told me that sometimes the problem is only due to the fact that there is some minor problem with the loading mechanism of the hard drive. Although there are many factors for a hard disk crash but usually the potentially cause for a hard disk crash that necessitate a hard disk data recovery is when any one of these dozens of programs and macros which have to be loaded to enable the computer to boot successfully becomes cross-linked or there is any error with one or more of it's files. In such a case the data recovery is very easy as you can simply slave boot the hard drive to another one and extract the data from it.

However, the hard disk data recovery can be a much more difficult and problematic task even for the professional if you actually scratch the disk's surface. One of the alternatives in this case is to recover as much data as you can physically from the data using a simple software hard disk data recovery but it would not be able to recover the data from the scratched surface. The data at the place where it is scratched may be lost. The hard disk data recovery can cost you thousands of dollars if the hard disk is badly scratched and would not spin without doing further damage to the disk. In this case the hard disk is separated from the system and the plates of hard disk are analyzed by sophisticated and expensive machinery.

http://www.computeruniverseweb.com is a Computer and Technology site dedicated to providing quality articles and information. Click through for more articles.

Electronic Media Copying and Backups: Enhance Your Life and Your Business

First you need the right equipment. What kinds of copies do you want to make, and what media are you going to be copying from? If your answer is VHS tapes, youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll need the proper hookups in the back of your computer to accommodate a cable from the VCR. If you need backups primarily and you want to back up to DVD and to the Internet, youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll need a high-speed hookup and a DVD burner. Make your list, and then take it to your computer store. Youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll almost certainly need to get a new computer; innovations today are leading to more and more robust computing technology, and you should have the best for your copying needs.

If you want to copy DVDs, you need to be aware of copyright restrictions. You absolutely must not copy DVDs for anything but your own personal use. To do otherwise is breaking the law. And the record companies have shown us that large media companies can come after individuals who performed activities when said activies were in the shady part of lawรขโ�ฌโ��and they can win. Until digital media rights are clarified for everyone, err on the side of caution and make only a single copy; archive the original in your personal collection.

If you only want part of a DVD, you can copy clips or single images to either a DVD or a CD. Youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll need blank media for burning, and youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll need DVD editing software. Some of the newer DVD burners will also burn an image into the back of your DVD to label it.

If you want to copy software contained on DVD or CD, you should be aware that, just like with movies, itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs not a hundred percent legal; make sure you keep those copies for your personal use, just like you did with your movies. And it may be impossible to copy some software; for instance, newer Microsoft software is copyblocked to disallow copying. Fortunately, most game software companies and many others have realized the value of allowing you to back up, thus have chosen to trust you to do it responsibly rather than blocking you from doing it at all.

Copying video games is more complex. In order to copy them properly, youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll need a physical plug-in for either your computer or for the game itself so that the game console will boot the game properly. And while copying video games is understandable, in light of how often the disks get badly scratched, it also may be illegal. And software designers often save their best copy block technology for games. Be ready for a difficult struggle if you copy video games; but if you persevere, youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll be able to get it done.

With a good scanner and image editor, you can copy all your personal and family pictures onto CD, and then copy them if you like to send as Christmas greetings, gifts, or family newsletters. Digitizing pictures is actually a very straightforward thing to do; of the different electronic copying techniques, itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs probably the easiest. To digitize pictures, you can take them with a digital camera to begin with; you can ask for them as digital pictures at the photo counter (for that matter, you can take your pictures to the photo technicians and ask them to digitize them for you รขโ�ฌโ�� they will for a fee); or you can buy a scanner and scan them in yourself.

Small businesses have a special problem: the Blue Screen of Death. When it pops up, generally in the middle of something important you really need to finish, you have a serious problem; you may experience loss of hard drive data. Thatรขโ�ฌโ�ขs when you reboot your computer and รขโ�ฌโ�� nothing happens. Or an error message happens. Suddenly, you canรขโ�ฌโ�ขt access your hard drive.

Instead of hoping this never happens, you should back up your hard drive regularly. The worst thing that could happen is that youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll never need to restore a backup. The best thing: that when your hard drive crashes, youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll have the backup to restore. Itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs like a digital insurance policy.

If you own a small business and depend heavily on your computer รขโ�ฌโ�� for instance, if you run a merchandise business and need accurate copies of orders and of inventory รขโ�ฌโ�� you might want to consider data backups. You can back your data up on tapes, DVDs, CDs, or online; the best method by far is online, though. Subscription costs for online backups can be high, but if youรขโ�ฌโ�ขve ever lost your data, youรขโ�ฌโ�ขll agree itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs worth its price. Your company without data is like a boat without sails or anchor รขโ�ฌโ�� adrift.

If you prefer not to use Internet backups, tape backups are reasonably cheap, easy to use, and very stable. Theyรขโ�ฌโ�ขve been used for years, and itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs quite straightforward to recover data from a tape backup to your computer.

If youรขโ�ฌโ�ขre backing up your data, you do need to be aware of the proper methods; or if your computer autoexecutes the backup, you need to remember to leave the computer on.. And if youรขโ�ฌโ�ขre backing up, you should do it every night without fail; it wonรขโ�ฌโ�ขt cost you any more, and it may save you a full dayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs work.

Phil Edwards is a freelance writer and published living and working in the City London and author for Backing and Copying up DVDs and Games and DIY.

Data Backup and Security

Whether your computer is for business or personal use, losing your data is tragic either way. Your data is your life, keep it protected and secure! This is why you should always have a data backup plan! There are many different data backup methods to choose from. You can use a zip drive, USB drive, a secondary hard drive or simply use a CDR/DVD writer and copy your data onto CDs. What ever method you use, your system should be backed up at least once a week.

A simple and easy method is to get 4 blank CDs and label them week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4 and also write the month and year. Then, at the beginning of each week, backup your data onto the disc labeled for that week. Do this for each week every month, so that if your computer was to crash you will only at the very least be one week behind on your data. This way it wouldnรขโ�ฌโ�ขt be so devastating and it will be much easier to recover.

Another simple method is to use an online storage service. This method is the most popular and one of the best options for data backup. Here are some of the reasons why this is the best option.

Number one is SECURITY!!

With an online storage service, you never have to worry about losing your data or your data being destroyed. You can always be sure that your most important data is stored safe and secure.

Number two is AVAILABILITY!!

With an online storage service, you access your data whenever and wherever you are. You can be sitting at your home, or visiting family and friends in another state or country. You will always have access!

Number three is SHARING!!

With an online storage service, you can easily share your data with business cliental or even your family and friends! You can share any data you may store, whether it is important documents, or simply photos from your childรขโ�ฌโ�ขs birthday! Sharing is simple and easy!

For whatever purpose you use an online storage service, make sure to pick the most perfect and secure one for you, and make sure it is always password protected in a safe manner.

You should never use an obvious password. You should never use anything like your date of birth, the city or state you live in, your name or even your social security number. One of the safest ways to make a password is to use letters and numbers and make the letters in different cases. This makes it harder for anyone to guess. And you should never use the same password for everything. Yeah it may seem easy for you, but remember, it also makes it easier for someone to access your information and accounts or, even worseรขโ�ฌยฆsteal your identity. So make sure to always be secure and backup your data.

Did you know that 70% of businesses that lose their data never fully recover and go out of business within a year?

That is why it is very important to backup your computer as often as possible. You can even use the old-fashion floppy disc if necessary. But backup your computer as often as you can and do it now before disaster strikes and it is too late and you lose everything!

Remember 76% of data loss is due to hardware failure or simple human error!

Hurry up before it is too late!

Elizabeth is a researcher/writer who is a successful website publisher. http://www.treksoftware.com

Online Data Backups for Newbies

How long have you been doing business online? Whether you are new or an old timer you need to understand the one important truth of the e-world. That being that the largest threat to business survival is data loss.

Online data backup is not just for huge multinational corporations and computer geeks anymore. More and more everyday computer users are saving important data to their hard drives. From schoolwork to financial documents, digital media files to journal entries, our computers are storing more and more digital data that holds personal, and in some cases monetary, value to us. It is because of this that online data storage and other backup solutions are becoming more and more critical to our everyday lives.

If the statements above describe you, you should consider utilizing an offsite data backup solution. These online-based backup providers come in many forms but can be very easy to use and convenient for end users to implement no matter what the platform or how large the network. Whether you need to back up a single laptop, or an entire network of machines, there is an online data backup solution that will meet your needs.

Although there are several methods to accomplish online backup and data retrieval the simplest method is for the end user to install a backup package that has been pre-configured to connect to the service providerรขโ�ฌโ�ขs offsite servers (supplied by the offsite backup service provider). This software will allow you, the end user, to select a number of customizable settings, including what directories and files to backup, how often to back them up, number of file revisions to archive, etc. These packages take care of the complicated details such as server IP addresses, encryption levels, and secure logins for you so you can concern yourself with the important choices of what and when to backup.

Once you have set up an account with a service provider and have configured your software the rest of the process is typically transparent and requires little to no interaction from you. You can choose to be notified (via email or various other methods depending on provider) of successful backups for your records and to provide peace-of-mind, but beyond that, you can usually "set and forget" these solutions and rest assured knowing that the most critical data you generate is being saved in a safe and secure manner that is easily accessible to you whenever you may need it.

Your DATA is your LIFE. Protect it!

Harald Anderson is a freelance writer and webmaster for http://www.online-remote-data-backup.com an online backup service. Experience the Digital Peace of Mind that safe, secure, encrypted online data backups can offer. Online Backups

2 Tips to Getting the Best Data Recovery Companies on Your Side

Forbid it that you have to experience a major hard disk crash รขโ�ฌโ�� containing a lifetime of work รขโ�ฌโ�� before considering the importance of your companyรขโ�ฌโ�ขs data. Since todayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs economy is becoming increasingly technology driven, the loss of sensitive data without backups is tantamount having your business burn down to the ground.

However, if this has already happened to you, then this must be a terrible time for you. If the hard disk that contains all the important data of your company รขโ�ฌโ��which costs a fortune รขโ�ฌโ�� has totally crashed, then you will need to employ the services of a professional data recovery expert.

Most data recovery services will tend to be pricey; no matter how much you may wince at the price they may quote you, the fact remains that in most cases, the data you may lose could very well be worth ten time more than that anyway.

But still it remains that you have to know how to choose and deal with a data recovery service provider to make sure you donรขโ�ฌโ�ขt get the raw end of the deal.

1. Assess You Loss รขโ�ฌโ�� First of all, you will have to assess the data loss you are experiencing. If the data is dispensable, then you may want to just suck down the loss. If the data is valuable but ultimately not invaluable รขโ�ฌโ�� you may try some data recovery techniques that you can perform yourself รขโ�ฌโ�� software recovery and other like methods.

If the data is invaluable รขโ�ฌโ�� then you might want to hold your horses and employ a professional software recovery company to do the work itself. It would also be advisable that you refrain from doing anything to your hard disk as you could very well exacerbate the damage to the drive. All you should do is secure the offending drive and set it aside properly.

2. Choose the Right Company - When considering a data recovery company, always consider whether they have the right equipment and facilities to deal with your data recovery needs. You will want to choose the right company to deal with the kind of media you need recovered รขโ�ฌโ�� hard disks, CD-ROMS, tape media, etc.

Many hard disk failures due to motor head crashes or other physical malfunctions in the media will require that the disk be opened and possibly disassembled in the data recovery companyรขโ�ฌโ�ขs laboratories. Hard disks are sensitive, precision instruments and cannot be opened and exposed to our normal environment.

The data recovery company you will deal with should have Class 100 clean room facilities to deal with such instruments. Class 100 facilities means that the area has only 100 airborne particles larger than .05 microns per square foot. This ensures that further damage to the drives is avoided when they are disassembled.

Also, just because a data recovery company charges much for its services does not mean that they are better than the rest. Since the data recovery business is becoming increasingly saturated, it would do good to shop around for the best service at the right price.

Beware of bait and switch schemes some data recovery companies perform. They will quote you a price saying that they are willing to perform the job for letรขโ�ฌโ�ขs say $600 - $2800. You will be attracted to the lower end quotation of the job - $600. Unfortunately, more often than not, they will charge you the higher end price - $2800.

If you found those tips useful more information on Data Recovery can be found at "Data Recovery without heartache".

Is Your Organization at Risk Without a Sufficient Backup and Recovery System?

What if you lost physical access to your office? Could you be back in business at another location within a couple of days? If not, you should explore cost-effective, reliable backup choices.

No one ever thinks it could happen to them. Yet, we have all seen and possibly experienced the devastation that can be caused from natural disasters, accidental file destruction or even terrorist attacks. Everyone needs to think about what would happen if all business operations suddenly came to a halt. Could your business recover if you lost all of your data?

Data backups is a subject so overdone that it has become "incidental". Today, everyone knows that they need to be taking backups of their system data and the big issue today is that everyone "assumes" that this is being done at their companies. Network people are hired to install the network and "everybody" naturally assumes that this was part of the set-up and that somehow this is magically being taken care of. This is a big mistake.

All companies, large and small, need to have a secure backup and recovery plan in place. The key word here is perhaps "recovery". Having been in the software business for over 20 years, I am no longer amazed when companies routinely perform backups and yet never test them to see if they are actually working. When it comes time to restore, itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs an unpleasant surprise to find out that the backup wasnรขโ�ฌโ�ขt really backing anything up or it was not backing up the correct files.

Having a sound plan in place extends farther than simply running a tape every night (which by the way is mandatory step one in the process). In addition, tapes need to be rotated each night so that the same tape is not being used over and over again. One never knows when one may need to recover data from a couple of days ago because the current data is not good. A tape should exist for each day of the week that the system gets backed up (minimum 5 days). Besides the rotation, copies should be kept off site, preferably in a safety deposit box and/or another secure location that is not in the immediate area of the office. It should be a site that can be accessed quickly if data needs to be retrieved. Ideally, the off-site copy should be refreshed at least once a month.

Besides the daily backup tapes, backups should be taken at the end of the month, quarter and year. These backups should never be used again and should be clearly labeled in the event that you need to access the data. If you are doing payroll, the government can call at anytime, even in several years. You want to be prepared. Not being able to produce the data can mean penalties, legal and accounting fees.

Running a backup tape and keeping it off site is just the beginning of the process. Backups need to be periodically tested to ensure that data is being copied. A knowledgeable, technical person should be in charge of this task. The line, "you can never have enough backups" is very true. However, testing that the backup you are taking is "good" is equally important.

Having a good routine for taking, testing and storing backups is critical. If your data is protected, even if you do not have access to your office and even if your server is destroyed, you can always restore on another system at another site. We had customers that had offices near ground zero and were unable to return to their buildings for quite some time. In a couple of days, with good backup tapes, they were able to restore to new hardware at another location and were back in business within a couple of days. Being prepared is the difference between business recovery and business failure.

In addition to the physical backup plan, every company should have a plan in writing that outlines the steps that the company will take to recover and resume work at locations other than the office. The plan should encompass not only the steps that will be taken to restore the data, but how and where the employees will access the data. If remote access is possible how would that option work? Would multiple offices be blended into one temporary central location? Several possibilities and solutions should be available so that most situations can be addressed without a last minute appeal for a solution.

A disaster represents many challenges, most of which cannot be prepared for. Restoration of data and resumption of use of the data is one thing that can be arranged. Unfortunately, this type of plan is traditionally not a top priority and considered secondary to the core business operations. The primary point to keep in mind, however, is that it is essential to securing and preserving core business operations. The smart business choice is a solid backup and recovery plan.

Terri Roeslmeier is president of Automated Business Designs, Inc., software developer of Ultra-Staff, a full-featured staffing software solution with components for front office, back office and the web. http://www.abd.net

Corrupt Excel File Recovery

Excel worksheets are used to create and manage financial transactions, performance reports, charts, business reports, accounting transactions, and other financial and diagrammatic records. The excel (.xls) files generally get corrupt due to registry corruptions, virus attacks, unexpected system shutdowns, power failures and media corruptions. To recover back the lost and deleted excel files and data you can utilize the inbuilt recovery measures provided in MS Excel which performs the recovery procedure effectively and repairs the corruption in almost every case.

Whenever an excel file gets corrupt due to unexpected system shutdown or power failure, the very next time when the application is launched, MS Excel displays a Document Recovery Window, where list of all the repaired files are listed. You can select the appropriate file and the last saved data will be recovered instantly.

But in case if MS Excel does not recovers the file, you can manually start the process of recovery:

1. Open New Excel worksheet

2. Click the File menu and select the Open option.

3. In the Open dialogue box, select the .xls file which you want to open. The Open button will get activated, click the arrow and select the Open and Repair option.

4. Click the Repair button to start the process of recovery and Extract Data button to extract data if excel was unable to repair a previous workbook.

The Excel workbook with corruptions can be easily recovered and repaired by using this method.

The additional methods which can be utilized to recover data from excel workbooks are, opening the file on different hard disk or on a different computer system, saving a backup copy, opening the file in ms word or notepad or otherwise using a third party utility.

Third party utilities prove beneficial in the cases where inbuilt recovery methods are not able to recover major corruptions like, the complete formulas or are unable to convert the excel values.

Kernel Recovery for Excel is advanced excel recovery software which efficiently recovers excel sheets, restores formatting, recovers password protected excel worksheets, data structures, OLE objects, headers and footnotes, hyperlinks, formulas and values. The software tool for excel is simple and easy to use which recovers and repairs the excel data and files in minutes.

Kernel Recovery for Excel supports recovery from almost every version of MS Excel including MS Excel 2003, 2000, 97, XP.

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Safeguard Your Information with Data Recovery

You are about to lie in bedรขโ�ฌยฆyour back pain is attacking you once againรขโ�ฌยฆ

This is your feeling every time you finished a brain draining paperwork. It is really hard to earn money. You have to consume a lot of perspiration. But amidst all that is the satisfaction that you are able to fulfill your job.

In the recent inventions of technology, everything is made easy for you. By just being equipped with your own computer set, there is no need for you to jot down every data that you need. It is as easy as pressing your keyboard and clicking your mouse.

How about when you lose all the data? Will you frown? Shout? Freak out?

For sure you cannot imagine your expression when this incident happens. This is one of the drawbacks of the technological advancement that the world has today. Some things are out of your control. All the tiring and sleepy nights in doing the paperwork will just turn into a nightmareรขโ�ฌยฆ

In one phase, you have to pay gratitude to technology for the third time around because the inventors are able to discover the data recovery software. There are plenty of software packages out there that can already be purchased in safeguarding the information in your desktop or laptop. The only key is for you to learn the initial steps immediately after you have lost the files stored in your computer.

For you to choose the right software, know how the data were lost. It can be due to the virus, mistake on your part or failure on the hardware. This will help you assess the perfect software or method for you to use.

This is another tip. In most cases after you have lost the data remember that it is not always trashed right away. Maybe if you are quick enough you can still have the chance to recover it through a system in your computer. You can ask a friend who is well adept about this.

Next is for you to identify the gap in the system before you will use the computer into something else. On this way, you do not need to purchase or install data recovery software anymore.

Therefore the hoax is only your quickness and wittiness in finding the gap. But if you think that thereรขโ�ฌโ�ขs no other way for you to recover your files, then it is high time that you go for the data recovery software.

Khieng 'Ken' Chho is author and owner of Online Data Recovery Resources. For related articles and other resources, visit Ken's website: http://datarecovery.1w3b.net

What is a UPS Battery?

There can be a power surge and outages at any time, which can cause you to lose unsaved data and important items on your computer. This can be frustrating and in some cases devastating. There are ways to protect your computer from power related disasters. All you have to do is get a UPS battery; this will be the best way to protect not only your computer but also your sanity if you use a computer quite often.

A UPS battery is a device that keeps your computer running with power in the event of a power interruption. To do this put a battery that provides power to your computer or other important electronics. When you loose power to your computer, UPS batteries will provide power to you for a short time to enable you to save the data you were working on at that time. You will usually have about fifteen to twenty minutes to complete the saving and shut down your computer properly.

If you have business documents and information on your computer, it is essential that you have one of these batteries hooked up to your computer. Not only will a UPS battery protect your computer from power outages, it will also help with power surges. Surges can harm your computer and do a lot of damage. It should make you feel better knowing a backup battery is protecting your computer.

UPS batteries are not expensive at all. They usually run anywhere from thirty to fifty dollars for a good one. You can buy these batteries almost anywhere. They are defiantly an investment to anyone who lives on their computer. It does not matter if you have business or personal information on your computer; it is worth saving with a UPS battery.

They are compact so that they will fit almost anywhere. You can have them under your desk, or on top of it. UPS batteries will plug into a normal three-prong outlet. They are reliable and safe for most home electrical systems. There is really no reason not to have a battery backup and surge protector like a UPS battery hooked up to your computer. It will be a device that you may never need to rely on, buy why take the chance? It is worth the few dollars to save your precious work.

For more information on the batteries, please visit =>http://www.rechargable-nimh-batteries.info

Backups Required for Your Online Business

Your on-line business cannot afford a feeling like this in your stomach

Have you ever experienced that terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach? You know the one. The one you hope is just a mistake. Nah, that couldnรขโ�ฌโ�ขt really be happening to me. This only happens to the other guy. Not me.

Well it is happening to you. You just got a Windows blue screen. No, this is not your typical Application Error blue screen. This blue screen makes reference to "unable to find boot sector" or "failure writing to default drive" or some other ominous message then makes your body shutter, because you just lost your hard drive.

If you are like most people, you have little to no backup available. If you run an on-line business, this can be the "kiss of death" or at least a major financial set back.

This scenario happened to me recently. Well almost. I was lucky because my hard drive failed over a 2-day period so I was able to frantically start backing up data before the drive completely failed. I was sweating bullets before I got done. I did manage to recover about 85% of my data before the drive completely died.

Well, once I got a replacement drive in place, I vowed to not get in that situation again. I put a very simple (and cheap) backup process in place, which I recommend you do to รขโ�ฌโ�� especially if you rely on your computer for income.

First get an external USB hard drive that is at least as large as your computerรขโ�ฌโ�ขs hard drive. Preferably one that is 2 to 3 times larger than your computerรขโ�ฌโ�ขs hard drive. Depending on the size, they can run from about $75 to $300. If you watch the ads for your local computer stores you can find some great deals especially when a rebate is involved.

Next you need a simple backup up tool. I use a very cheap program called Ez-Back-It Up. I picked this program for several reasons: It was cheap, it would backup just changes, it didnรขโ�ฌโ�ขt use a proprietary format (Windows Explorer could access the backed up files), it was easily configurable, and it had a built in scheduler. What more would I need?

So I hooked the external drive to my computer, installed the backup software, and did a little configuration. Since I have most of my programs save data in the My Documents folder I only had to select a couple data directories to backup (My Documents, Favorites, and Outlook). I scheduled it to run every night at 4 AM and I now have regular backups. The most I can lose now is a dayรขโ�ฌโ�ขs worth of data. If I need to, I could have the backup run several times a day and even cut this window down.

So in just a few minutes, Iรขโ�ฌโ�ขve created a system that will pretty much prevent that ugly feeling out of my stomach.

Gary R. Ferguson is a writer, publisher, and on-line marketer who publishes the Only One Page Newsletter available at http://www.onlyonepage.com and also the recently released ebook Hypnotic Auctions at http://www.hypnoticauctions.com

HasYour Computer Hard Drive Ever Crashed? Are You Challenged by Backups?

The following scenarioรขโ�ฌโ�ขs have probably been repeated thousands of times, on computer systems of all kinds and sizes, operated by all levels of users from complete novice, to expert user.

ร�ยท You log on and your computer will not boot to your operating system.

ร�ยท You have installed some piece of new hardware, or some new software, your computer cannot find your operating system.

In more than 20 years of using personal computers, I have experienced all kinds of computer/operator failures. Some were caused by equipment failure, others by me doing something dumb. It really makes no difference, when your computer does not work, the only thing that matters is getting it up and running, and saving as much data as possible

All mechanical devices, will at some point fail, there is no timetable that tells you exactly when they will fail, however it is usually when you can least afford the time lost or the cost of repair, or of course immediately after the warranty has expired. Current computer hard drives are very reliable, they work for hours on end and keep right on ticking, they are however partially mechanical, as such they are subject to unannounced failure. They could fail in 5 minutes, or in 5 years or even longer.

As computer users we have all been admonished time and time again to backup our work on a regular basis, as insurance against losing data. Data can be lost in other ways of course, but if you do have a current backup you will only lose whatever you created or changed just before the failure.

My first experience with a hard drive failure was the classic computer will not boot. My first course of action was to call tech support from the manufacturer. The customer service rep stayed on the phone with me for about 4 hours, as we tried to diagnose where the problem was, after trying every thing she knew to try, she said they would send a technician to replace my hard drive. Of course none of my data was easily retrievable, and I did not have a current backup. Immediately after this episode I began to backup my data frequently. However at this particular time, backup software was not real easy to use, and choosing the media to backup to required the installation of more hardware. I quickly fell out of the habit of frequent backups.

I have experienced logon failures after adding or changing hardware or software many times. Usually followed by a call to customer support, which you most likely will have to pay for. Your support call may be transferred to a foreign country, your support person may or may not be highly qualified, there have been many instances where I felt that I knew more than the support person. There have been many instances that I managed to fix the problem myself, while waiting for support to get back to me. Sometimes I lost information, sometimes it was there but hard to find etc. The times that were most successful were when I did have a current backup.

Backup software has evolved, there are very easy programs to use, they are very easy to automate, the media options are many and easy to set up.

In my current setup I use Norton Ghost 9.0 as my software of choice, and I send my backups to a removable USB 2.0 hard drive. The advantages of this system are an extremely easy to set software program that can do anything form complete backups on whatever schedule you choose to complete copies of hard drives. The speed and safety of using a removable hard drive would be hard to beat. Because of the "set it and forget it" nature of this system, I now have complete backups always at hand.

Peace of mind is a wonderful thing

Jim Newell

Please visit http://www.edotmall2000.com/backup.htm for more information on these products and other solutions to backup and storage problems.

Jimmie Newell is an experienced computer user, and web publisher with many articles to his credit. Jim is the webmaster for http://www.edotmall2000.com an online shopping destination.

The True Value of Hard Drive Data

Hard Drives store most important data of a computer, including the system files. At times, due to various reasons, the drives fail. This causes serious issues as one may loose all the data on disk. A hard drive crash may cause terrible financial losses as well.

There are various methods to recover the data from a hard drive. The most common method is using the data recovery software. These can be used to recover the data from hard drives. Most of the software is simply read only and nondestructive.

This type of software usually begins by detecting the hard drive, analyzing and assessing the damage. Then they try to correct it and retrieve as much data as possible.

These software solutions are a bundle of utilities which help users in recovering data lost from a hard disk, like an accidental format, partition loss software malfunction, file or directory deletion or sabotage. There is data recovery software available for as low as $300 to $500. They are available on Internet freely and can be downloaded after paying using a credit card, in most cases. The data recovery utilities that are available for $30-$50 are nothing but rip offs and will only harm your hard drive instead of recovering and data for you. The choice of data recovery software depends on the operating system used. If one is using windows or Linux, the same utility may not work on both. In fact for Linux, separate utilities are available.

There are lots of data recovery companies that have customized utilities to retrieve data from the corrupted drives or deleted data. All these offer specialized services for recovering the data from various hard drives. Some may need a person to ship the drive to their labs. Yet some other companies also offer remote recovery process. The hard drive data recovery processes differ from drive to drive and from problem to problem. Before sending a hard drive to any lab for data recovery, one must decide whether the costs justify the real value of data. Hard drive data recovery process, in labs, involves identification of damage to disk, causes of damage and then the best approach for recovery. At times, itรขโ�ฌโ�ขs possible that entire data set may not be recovered. Common hard drives from which data can be recovered are:

รขโ�ฌยข Standard IDE Hard Drives
รขโ�ฌยข SCSI Disk Drives
รขโ�ฌยข Portable Drives
รขโ�ฌยข Removable Storage Devices
รขโ�ฌยข Hotswap Drives
รขโ�ฌยข Micro Drives
รขโ�ฌยข Multi Disk Raid Arrays
รขโ�ฌยข Pocket Drives
รขโ�ฌยข External ATA & SATA Drives

Most common drive failures are:

รขโ�ฌยข Hard drive clicking or making noises
รขโ�ฌยข Hard disk head crash
รขโ�ฌยข Primary hard disk error or not found error
รขโ�ฌยข Invalid or corrupt FAT table
รขโ�ฌยข Accidental file or folder deletion
รขโ�ฌยข Non system disk error
รขโ�ฌยข Computer unable to access hard drive
รขโ�ฌยข Corrupt or damaged master boot record (MBR failure)
รขโ�ฌยข Lost or deleted office documents, spreadsheets, emails, presentations
รขโ�ฌยข Virus damage & password recovery
รขโ�ฌยข Blue screen of death

The best possible solution to hard disk data damage is to back all data regularly. Other then that, there is almost no method, which can provide complete protection, against hard drive disk failure.

Jeffrey Meier of Jam727 Enterprises at http://www.Jam727.com offers these detailed tips into Hard Drive Recovery at http://www.jam727.com/HardDriveRecovery/harddriverecovery/index.html