Everyone can benefit from data recovery freeware from those who use their computer at home for fun to large corporations who use computers to run million dollar operations. It makes sense to protect your personal files as well as those of your customers. You don't want hackers to get your financial information, copies of your contracts, or passwords for your online accounts. This can happen if your hard drive crashes or the server fails for one reason or another.
There are some great places online to find quality software programs. Take your time and choose the right one for your computer security needs. By entering keywords into your favorite internet browser you can find pages of freeware programs to use. Try typing in a variation of keywords to get the most results. For example you should try both "recovery freeware" and "free data recovery".
Compile a list of websites you want to look at for their freeware program. You should have a good idea of the features you want the data recovery software to offer. You can find information about the pros and cons of a particular software program just by reading the reviews posted by other users. This way you avoid accessing one that isn't going to live up to the standards you are looking for.
In most cases you will be asked to register with the site before you are allowed to download the installation package. The time it will take to download the material depends on the size of the package and how fast your internet connection is. The installation process should be simple and you can easily get started using it. Most of the data recovery programs offer you step by step instructions to help you zip right through the set up process.
Don't underestimate the importance of protecting your data. It is very easy to do so just by downloading a data recovery program that you can find online. The process doesn't take very long and it is the responsible way to protect all of your personal information for your home or business.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Do You Know Where Your Data Is?
The spinning disk is bound to fail - they all do eventually. Safeguarding your personal data from the electronic abyss is now as easy as sending an email. Thanks to broadband and encryption technology, online backup has become a viable alternative to the old tape backups.
One online vendor in particular has developed a rock-solid solution. Mozy.com allows any computer to achieve the lofty status of being properly backed up. The Mozy solution works for PC's, MAC's and Servers.
Getting started is very simple. If you are interested in backing up your personal computer, they have a free option for the first 2gb. This is a fairly generous amount of storage if you don't need to backup music or movie files. If you need more storage, you can buy 1gb for .50/mo. after the initial $5/mo. license fee. So you can get about 10gb of storage for about $10 per month. For a personal computer, that should cover a lot of ground.
If you are small business, you can get multiple PC and server licenses for a reasonable monthly fee.
So how does it work? After you sign up and select your plan, you can download the "client" software. This small piece of software will ask you a few question during the install about what kinds of files you would like to backup. If you are not sure, the wizard will choose the typical types of files. Then, you set the time that Mozy should do it's thing. It's probably best to set a time like 11pm every night. This will insure there is enough time get a good batch of files before you need to start work in the morning.
If you are backing up over 10gb, the process might go for a couple of days. Don't worry, the Mozy backup process knows when you are working on the computer and will pause itself, not to suck up computer resources.
Every morning you can get an email notification showing the success of the backup from the night before. You can also logon to you account on Mozy.com and check everything about your data that was backed up.
And here is the greatest feature about Mozy. File restores actually work! If you've ever tried to restore from a tape, then you know the nightmare that can ensue. If you have accidentally deleted a file or directory, simply open the Mozy client and click "restore files" and it will walk you through the rest.
How to Recover Photos Deleted From SD Disk Or XD Card
Digital cameras have become an integral part of our lives; we use them on regular occasions in order to store our precious memories. The days of taking photos on film and then having them developed are a thing of the past and these days all our photos are stored on a memory card such as an SD Card, XD Card, MMC Card etc. Digital Cameras have many advantages over normal cameras, however the one major problem with them, is what do you do if you accidentally delete a picture from your memory card? Is there any way to recover deleted photos from a SD Disk or XD Card?
Well if you somehow managed to delete a picture off your SD card that you really needed, I think you will be pleased to know that in most cases your file hasn't been permanently erased and it can still be retrieved and restored. Even if the memory card has been damaged, corrupted or formatted, it is still possible to restore the photos; with the aid of a good photo recovery tool you can get your photos back very easily. However you must act fast!!
The reason you must act quickly is because, when you delete a photo from your memory card it isn't actually permanently erased, all that has happened is that the space occupied by that photo is now available for re-use space. So until that space is re-used and overwritten by new data (new photos) your pictures are still there and can be easily restored. Hence you must act quickly and not take many new photos, because the new pictures you take may overwrite the old space occupied by your deleted photos.
Here are some common situations that occur to most digital camera users who wish to recover deleted photos from their SD Card-
They see the message:
1."Media is not formatted would you like to format now?" or "Memory Card Not Formatted"
This a common error amongst many users and if you have a lot of pictures on your storage device which you would like to recover then don't panic! All your pictures can be restored, all you need to do is grab a hold of a good photo recovery program and you will be home and hosed.
2."They wish to recover photos after they format SD Card or accidentally hit the Delete- All Button"
If you have accidentally used the Delete-All option on your camera or formatted the memory card, you can still recover your deleted photos from the SD Card if you act quickly. The reason the files are still recoverable is due to the fact that the Memory device won't overwrite the data immediately, so until you take any new pictures or download new data all of your old pictures will still be there.
Therefore if you wish to recover deleted photos from SD Disks or XD Cards then you must obtain a good picture recovery software, and you should have all your favorite photos back within minutes. The good news is that most recovery programs offer a free download, so you can try and see if your photos are recoverable at absolutely no cost.
Why "I'm Sure the Data Will Be Fine" is Not an Actual Data Retention Policy
What would be your guess about the kind of email and data retention policies Apple has in place? It's a company that carries a lot of secrets, so you might expect that they would have a lot of very comprehensive and strict rules in place. Well, guess what? They don't.
A new twist to the Apple vs. Psystar antitrust case shines a harsh light on Apple's policies - or really, lack of policies. A federal Judge recently tossed out Psystar's countersuit, which brought to surface notable facts about some of Apple's internal policies. In a recent article, "Psystar case reveals Apple's questionable policy on email retention," The Standard goes into detail about a recent legal filing in which Apple discloses their e-mail and data retention policies.
If you look to page seven of their filings (embedded below), you will notice that Apple's policy limited the courts ability to accurately discover data relevant to this case:
"At Apple, individual employees are tasked with maintenance of their own files including hard copy documents, emails, voicemails and other electronically recorded materials. Apple has not implemented any programs that result in the automatic deletion of emails."
See? No real policy. Now, I'm sure Apple employees are basically a trustworthy bunch, but I'd be willing to bet that properly retaining their email and data is not topmost on their list of things to worry about. In fact, I'd be willing to bet a new Mac that data retention is bottommost on their list. Even if it isn't, everyone probably does it differently, so there's no unification of methodology.
The newly amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make this lack of a cohesive internal policy a corporate liability, because sanctions can be imposed for improper reporting of Electronically Stored Information (ESI). While Apple has an army of lawyers on hand to help them with the legal side of being possibly non-compliant, I am surprised that a company as secretive as Apple isn't on the forefront of the new compliance rules. Actually, I wonder if Apple's lawyers even have a data retention policy of their own. The reason for my surprise is that the tools required for compliance would help them maintain their secrets at an internal and external level. Those tools are available today, and they can automate and unify data retention policies even for a widely geographically dispersed organization.
Evidently, Apple does have a policy for placing legal holds on ESI. It also surfaced as a result of this case, furthering their possible compliance nightmare.
"Apple identified a group of employees who could potentially have documents relevant to the issues reasonably evident in this action. Apple then provided those individuals with a document retention notice which included a request for the retention of any relevant documents, including but not limited to emails, voicemails and other electronically-recorded materials relating to the issues in this lawsuit."
Backing Up Your Data Frequently Can Save You Money
Information Technology Companies and Internet Business rely on their data being safe and available. Hard drives that hold your valued data can break at any time and might be a great loss to your operations. Here is some things you might want to consider for you backups.
Why Backup ?
The problem with backups is that sometimes we are too busy with our work and tend to forget to backup our digital data every once in a while, which can lead to some serious consequences. Most people never think a hard drive crash will happen to them. This mentality can be devastating. It generally starts with something like, 'My hard drive failed.' And end with, 'How can I get back the files of the project I was working on for the last month?' To avoid this nightmare again, you must sit down and ask yourself 'what are you going to do to prevent something like this in the future?'
Computer viruses are everywhere and they are spreading from computer to computer through the internet or through removable media with great speeds. The viruses are always ahead of the Antivirus programs and thus you can't always trust when they say your hard drive is clean from viruses.
Hard Drives contain tiny mechanical parts and this makes them vulnerable to mechanical errors and failures. Hard drives fail without warning us of a disaster coming. That kind of disaster happens more often than you might think. Information gets lost all the time on the Internet and on the Desktop hard drives. Statistically its almost impossible for two of your hard drives to fail at the same time.
What to do ?
If you have only one drive, go buy one. Hard drives are pretty cheap nowadays which allows you to backup another copy of your data. Another form of backup that is becoming very popular is the use of what are called key or removable drives. Key drives are tiny drives which can fit on your key chain but can still hold a few gigabytes of data. CD or DVD backup is another option that you might want to consider.
Make it a habit to hold all your important information and all the data you produce with your computer in an easy navigable way. Keeping things scattered all over your computers folder system makes so much harder to backup all of them. Make a folder in your C drive and name it projects and keep in there every project in its own folder. Remember to copy the projects folder to your backup drive at the end of day or week depending on how sensitive your data is.
There are programs that can assist you with your backup and synchronization. There are professional solutions for this but they are quite costly. For individual or small companies shareware or even freeware backup utilities might be enough. Spending a little time getting to know them and use them properly might save you lots of money when time comes and you are in need of a previous day's backup.
If your hard drive fails and you have not made proper backups of your projects "data recovery software" might come in for the rescue. Depending on the severity of the damage data might not be able to be recovered with software solutions. Professional data recovery services are available online for the worst case scenarios that all else fails.
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