Regardless of which hard drive brand you own, it is just a matter of time before you will need data recovery. Whether it is due to mechanical failure or otherwise, hard drive data recovery for laptops, single hard drive servers, and RAID servers are required for a variety of reasons;
* Data corruption due to a virus
* Hard drive repair due to natural disasters (fire, flooding, lightning)
* Data restoration for crushed or physically damaged hard drives
* Hard drive failure due to corrupted operating system upgrades
* Data loss due to formatting a hard drive
* Multiple hard drive failures in a RAID array
At least there’s a little bit of good news: It is very likely that your data is not deleted and lost forever, especially if you take a few steps to protect your critical data ahead of time.
If you’d like to reduce your chances of requiring data recovery, consider giving some of these free or low-cost tips a try.
1. Back-up your critical files. With the ability to store data on CDs on a weekly or monthly basis, a small investment in a stack of CDs will save you from loosing your critical documents, files, priceless images and MP3s.
2. Run some sort of Anti-Virus Program. Viruses get into your computer a variety of ways; by reading an infected attachment in your e-mail, by sharing files (which are already infected), and by visiting websites that take advantage of security flaws to compromise and destroy your data.
3. Use power surge protectors. A power surge, either from the power company or a lightning storm, is one of the most common occurrences that can damage your data and potentially cause a hard drive failure.
4. Experience required. Never attempt any operation, like hard drive installations or hard drive repairs, which you don't have experience with. If you don't know how to install a second hard drive or rebuild a RAID, it would be best to get expert assistance before you accidently cause yourself data loss.
5. Shut down your computer. Always quit your programs before shutting down your computer. When you quit a program, it saves vital data and then exits the program. If you just turn off your computer without properly exiting your applications and closing your files, you run the risk of loosing your data.
6. Never shake or remove the covers on hard drives or tapes. Please don't disassemble your hard drive. In nearly all examples of this, data is usually not recoverable once an inexperienced person attempts to 'investigate' where that 'strange clicking noise' is coming from. Leave the diagnostics to a data recovery specialist who has experience with all types of hard drives and knows how to perform a successful data recovery.
7. Store your backup data offsite. While it is always a good idea to backup your critical data, if your data is stored at the same location as your server and there is a natural disaster, a fire or flood for example, odds are that you will still require data recovery on the hard drives, or tape restoration to get your data restored.
8. Beware of diagnostic programs. While it is a good idea to check the health of your computer running diagnostics software, be careful with allowing such programs to repair data files it may find. Check Disk can be your friend, but also may make it more difficult to recover data from a hard drive which has had such diagnostic programs run on it.
9. Be aware of your surroundings. Keep your computers and servers in safe and secure locations from accidentally getting knocked over, dropped, or spilled on. Laptops, while convenient to use, are often dropped and require hard drive data recovery. Just because it is a nice day and you are casually working by the pool with your laptop, don't assume that the guy jumping into the pool realizes his tidal splash will not only soak you...but ruin your laptop and require hard drive recovery for your critical data.
10. Backup your critical files. Worth mentioning again. Using CDs or even an external USB hard drive for data storage can potentially save you from having to hire a data recovery service to perform hard drive data recovery on your hard drive or RAID server.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Speed Up Your Computer
This is a very common question of everyone that my computer is very slow and what can I do to speed up my computer?
There are several things that can speed up your computer and increase the performance. You may have noticed that a newer computer is much faster than the older computer. Many people prefer to use new computers because of their speed and ease of working. You willingly spend more time working on the newer fast computer as compared to working on the older computer. So your perception is that your older computer is getting slower and slower. But in reality it can become as faster as a new computer by just implementing few following things.
Now we come to the real question: How to speed up a computer, whether it’s slowing down or not. Here are the few steps if you follow them you can speed up your computer.
Clean up the disk. First of all you have to uninstall the programs that run at the startup and put something in the system tray. Run Disk Cleanup and defragment utility. This is a first good step that saves sometime of system boot up and applications loading.
Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. Next step is to run a full system scan for viruses, spywares, adwares, malware and Trojan horses with some good anti viruses and anti spyware/malware tools. The good antivirus software is Trend Micro Antivirus, Norton Antivirus, Panda Antivirus and McAfee antivirus. These antivirus software/tools can help you get rid of pc-clogging detritus on your computer, viruses, temp files, old registry entries and spywares. Your computer can be secure with all these kind of threats if you enable a good antivirus on your computer.
Delete old network connections. Your computer can try to connect to the old network/shared connections and hard drives connections that are no longer exist. You can simply right click on any network share and delete them if it no longer exists. Under tools, also click on the “Disconnect Network Drive”. Stop auto-starting programs. Next step is to click start > run and type “msconfig at the command prompt. Now from the startup remove all the unwanted programs that run at the time when system boots up. This will definitely increase the speed of your system. You can turn off anything that looks useless but be careful not to remove Windows system components.
Clean up the registry. Registry cleaning is a not a simple task because the changes are not reversible so only the expert people should work in the Windows Registry. Some expert says that registry cleaner don’t really work and help. I have seen some good software for registry cleaning and system speed up. CCleaner is among one of them and you can use it for increasing the performance of your computer. Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns.
• Reinstall Windows. If the above mentioned steps haven’t helped then it may be the time to reformatting your hardware disk, reinstalling your applications and reinstalling your Windows. You may be surprised by seeing that how much responsive is the Windows as you have wiped out years of temp files, registry entries and old versions of the software program that have not been upgraded repeatedly. Reinstalling is easy if you have got the recovery disk. There is a one more option and that is to take the image of your hard disk with Norton ghost. Norton ghost can recover the Windows in it original working stage when it was newly installed just in minutes. An image of the hard disk drives can be taken with this software and can be recovered. But be assured to back up everything before your start your work.
• Upgrade RAM. This is one of the most important steps to run the computer faster. With the older computer you will rarely have enough RAM to run. Adding RAM is a very simple and even a novice can add it and increase the speed in few minutes. Adding a high quality RAM will give a quick speed to your computer. Today’s RAM sticks have the greater capacity and speed than before.
• Upgrade your hard drive. Upgrading a hard disk is a more complicated solution but if you are upgrading/reinstalling Windows then you may consider upgrading the hard disk as well. Hard Disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every computer. The magnetic disks tend to decrease their performance over time. Some performance and speed issues are caused by the hard disks failure. You can also use the new Hard disks for backups and occasional use.
There are several things that can speed up your computer and increase the performance. You may have noticed that a newer computer is much faster than the older computer. Many people prefer to use new computers because of their speed and ease of working. You willingly spend more time working on the newer fast computer as compared to working on the older computer. So your perception is that your older computer is getting slower and slower. But in reality it can become as faster as a new computer by just implementing few following things.
Now we come to the real question: How to speed up a computer, whether it’s slowing down or not. Here are the few steps if you follow them you can speed up your computer.
Clean up the disk. First of all you have to uninstall the programs that run at the startup and put something in the system tray. Run Disk Cleanup and defragment utility. This is a first good step that saves sometime of system boot up and applications loading.
Run a full anti-virus and anti-spyware scan. Next step is to run a full system scan for viruses, spywares, adwares, malware and Trojan horses with some good anti viruses and anti spyware/malware tools. The good antivirus software is Trend Micro Antivirus, Norton Antivirus, Panda Antivirus and McAfee antivirus. These antivirus software/tools can help you get rid of pc-clogging detritus on your computer, viruses, temp files, old registry entries and spywares. Your computer can be secure with all these kind of threats if you enable a good antivirus on your computer.
Delete old network connections. Your computer can try to connect to the old network/shared connections and hard drives connections that are no longer exist. You can simply right click on any network share and delete them if it no longer exists. Under tools, also click on the “Disconnect Network Drive”. Stop auto-starting programs. Next step is to click start > run and type “msconfig at the command prompt. Now from the startup remove all the unwanted programs that run at the time when system boots up. This will definitely increase the speed of your system. You can turn off anything that looks useless but be careful not to remove Windows system components.
Clean up the registry. Registry cleaning is a not a simple task because the changes are not reversible so only the expert people should work in the Windows Registry. Some expert says that registry cleaner don’t really work and help. I have seen some good software for registry cleaning and system speed up. CCleaner is among one of them and you can use it for increasing the performance of your computer. Those are the easy and free things you can do. If your computer is still slow you need to move on to the bigger guns.
• Reinstall Windows. If the above mentioned steps haven’t helped then it may be the time to reformatting your hardware disk, reinstalling your applications and reinstalling your Windows. You may be surprised by seeing that how much responsive is the Windows as you have wiped out years of temp files, registry entries and old versions of the software program that have not been upgraded repeatedly. Reinstalling is easy if you have got the recovery disk. There is a one more option and that is to take the image of your hard disk with Norton ghost. Norton ghost can recover the Windows in it original working stage when it was newly installed just in minutes. An image of the hard disk drives can be taken with this software and can be recovered. But be assured to back up everything before your start your work.
• Upgrade RAM. This is one of the most important steps to run the computer faster. With the older computer you will rarely have enough RAM to run. Adding RAM is a very simple and even a novice can add it and increase the speed in few minutes. Adding a high quality RAM will give a quick speed to your computer. Today’s RAM sticks have the greater capacity and speed than before.
• Upgrade your hard drive. Upgrading a hard disk is a more complicated solution but if you are upgrading/reinstalling Windows then you may consider upgrading the hard disk as well. Hard Disk storage is a performance bottleneck on every computer. The magnetic disks tend to decrease their performance over time. Some performance and speed issues are caused by the hard disks failure. You can also use the new Hard disks for backups and occasional use.
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