Hard Drive Recovery Blog

FREE HDD Regenerator 1.61 Download

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:04:00 +0000

HDD Regenerator is a piece of software used to restore bad sectors from a defective harddrive, once you notice your harddrive becoming slow, unstable or unable to copy or write to disk, then that is clear sign that you may have bad sectors. The Great thing about HDD regenerator software is that it scans and repairs those bad sectors that you may experience on your harddrive, allowing you time to salvaged or restore the data you need from it, before your harddisk really dies. This tool is a must have for any harddrive recovery specialists, and it is free to download.
Click above to download the FREE Full Version.

EASEUS Disk Copy

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:14:00 +0000

EASEUS Disk Copy is a freeware, which can create an exact (Mirror Image, Disk to Disk) copy of your old disk, including the operating system, applications, personal preferences, custom settings, and all of your vital data.

EASEUS Disk Copy can be used for copying, cloning, or upgrading your original small hard drive to a new larger drive. Essential Utility for Disaster Recovery.

An excellent tool for RAID cloning.

Download here

RAID 1 also known as Mirroring?

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:02:00 +0000

RAID 1 also known as 'Mirroring' is when you have your OS on one drive and make an
exact copy of another drive. When the mirror process is complete any thing that is written
to the original drive will also be written to the mirror drive. This is a excellent way to
backup the OS drive because you can write all security and configuration to the mirror
drive with out any extra software or security considerations.

Recovering RAID 1?

RAID 1 is generally 2 Redundant identical hard drives.
If one drive fails you see a message like "RAID Status: DEGRADED".
You remove the bad hard disk and insert a new one and the machine automatically rebuilds the RAID by itself. Sometimes you can disconnect and reconnect the bad drive and it will salvage it if there is nothing physically wrong with it.

If you've deleted files, they're deleted from both drives you will need to download an undelete utility from this blogsite to recover them.

Hard disk interfaces

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:23:00 +0000

Hard disks also come in several flavors such as IDE (actually ATA), SCSI and SATA, as do optical drives. ATA is the most common interface used today. SCSI disks can usually be found on servers.

IDE
Integrated Drive Electronics, more commonly called by its acronym IDE, is an interface for hard drives. IDE is a marketing term; the real standard is called ATA.
EIDE (Enhanced IDE) or ATA-2 was later developed and increased transfer speed, added 32-bit transactions and DMA support.

ATA
ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment. The ATA -term is commonly used interchangeably with IDE. The older and more common paraller ATA (P-ATA) is currently being replaced by serial ATA (SATA).
Most PCs have two IDE controllers on the motherboard. One IDE controller can support two devices, so four storage devices is usually the maximum. Paraller ATA interface uses ribbon cables with 40 -pin connectors to connect the hard drives to the motherboard. The cable has usually three connectors. Of these one is connected to the motherboard and the rest two are left for hard drives. If two hard drives are connected to the same controller, one must be defined as master and the other one as slave. This is done with jumpers.
ATA-2 is the real standard for what is widely known as EIDE. ATA-2 introduced higher speed data transfer modes: PIO Modes 3 and 4 plus Multiword DMA Mode 1 and 2. These modes allow the ATA interface to run data transfers up to about 16MB/second.

SATA
Serial ATA, also known as SATA or S-ATA, is a bus used to communicate between the CPU and internal storage devices such as hard drives and optical drives. It is designed to eventually replace the ATA (also known as IDE) bus. Traditional ATA is beginning to be referred to as Parrellel ATA, P-ATA, or PATA to avoid confusion.
The main difference between SATA and PATA is in the cabling. SATA does away with the master/slave relationship of PATA (hence the difference in names), as well as PATA's ungainly ribbon cables. Instead, SATA has much slimmer and easier to manage cables, which will enable better airflow through cases. The connectors are keyed, preventing connectors from being plugged upside down. Truly native SATA drives will have different power connectors also.
A third advantage of SATA is hotplugging.
Currently, SATA has a transfer rate of 150 MB/s, which is only 17 MB/s more than standard PATA. However, with the introduction of SATA II, this is expected to go up to 300 MB/s, with 600 MB/s being released sometime around 2007. The faster bus isn't expected to affect performance in the short term, since hard drive performance is usually bottlenecked by the moving parts of the drive.
During the transitional period before true native SATA drives are released, most SATA drives actually have onboard PATA controllers, which connect to SATA by a bridge. This generally causes a 30-50% performance drop. Also, PATA power connectors are still being used.

DMA
DMA (Direct Memory Access) is a function of the memory bus in the computer that lets connected devices like hard disks transfer data to the memory without the intervention of the CPU, thus speeding up the transfer. This is superior to the way PIO works.
There are two distinct types of direct memory access, DMA and bus mastering DMA. The plain DMA relies on the DMA controller on the motherboard to grab the system bus and transfer the data. In bus mastering DMA all this is done by the logic on the interface card itself. Bus mastering allows the hard disk and memory to work without relying on the old DMA controller built into the system, or needing any support from the CPU.

USB
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a hardware bus using a serial protocol used by many different hardware devices and supported in most computers/mainboards. Originally developed by Compaq, Intel, NEC and Microsoft. It allows many devices to be connected to the bus at the same time, the theoretical maxmium is 127 devices. The maximum data transfer bandwidth is about 12Mbit/s (USB2.0 supports 480 Mbit/sec).
Firewire is a less known alternative to USB that (at its time) was better then USB for media related tasks. As of USB2 there have been significant increases, specifically more bandwidth.

SCSI
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface. Pronounced "scuzzy". It's a specification for a hardware interface for connecting devices such as hard disks and scanners to a computer.
Most PCs have an ATA(IDE) bus instead of SCSI for connecting internal hard disks. SCSI is seen more often in servers, as it tends to be faster and more reliable (though more expensive). Another advantage of SCSI controller is that it requires only one IRQ and can hadle usually at least 7 devices whereas ATA can handle only 2.
Typically, you put a SCSI card in your computer, and then connect internal hard disks with a ribbon cable to some connector on the card. Also, the card will have an external connector which you might also be using simultaneously

What is a RAID 5 - block level data stripping

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:50:00 +0000

A RAID 5 is the most popular of all RAID levels it uses a minimum of 3 disks, however it adds a parity bit to the data on each disk, so if one disks fails you can easily swap the failed disk without turning the computer off, this is known as hot swapable, this RAID provides the best cost and very high performing and data protection RAID of all RAID levels.

What is the Conficker worm?

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:30:00 +0000

The Conficker worm infects mostly windows machines (2000pro, xp, vista) what it does is it paralyse computer machines from recieving security or antivirus updates, if some how you think you have not updated your machine please do so now, before your machine will be infected by this worm, the creators of the worm have come up with a smart way of exploiting systems using a bot program that will run on April the 1st, this will tell whether your computer is infected with the worm or not.

Things to do to protect your computer from this nasty worm?

Make sure you have the latest microsft patches or hotfixes for your windows operating systems, if not do a manual windows update or a automatic update through your windows control panel settings, And also make sure you have the latest antivirus software which is fully up to date and ready on guard, when startup.

If you don't have an Antivirus software installed download one below FREE

Migo Drive Washer

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:44:00 +0000

Your Hard Drive Contains Every File You Deleted
Identity thieves target discarded computers to look for hard drive data that has not been securely erased. What many people do not know is that even after deleting files, emptying the recycle bin, formatting the hard drive or repartition it is possible to quite easily recover and steal the personal data that was deleted.

Complete Hard Drive Sanitization
The only reliable way to truly erase data is to overwrite your hard drive with either random or new specific data patterns based on established file sanitation standards. With Migo Drive Washer you can securely overwrite all of your hard drive data to ensure that your social security, credit card number, passwords, health records, financials, business plans, photos and other sensitive information does not end up in the wrong hands.

Works Even if Your OS is Not
Migo Drive Washer sanitizes hard drives of any size and will securely overwrite the entire physical hard drive including operating system, program files and all of your personal data. Migo Drive Washer boots from a CD-ROM or creates a bootable floppy that runs independently of the operating system ensuring total drive erasure even if your operating system is no longer operational.

Beyond Recovery
Migo Drive Washer meets the U.S. Department of Defense 5220.22-M and most other recognized international standards for drive and data erasure. Rendering your data unrecoverable by any software means.

For the Novice and Expert User Alike
Migo Drive Washer is easy to set up and use. The intuitive "point and click" graphical user interface allows you to quickly erase your entire hard drive at once or select a specific partition to overwrite and keep the remaining partitions intact. Advanced settings permit you to configure your own overwrite patterns.

Confidently Discard Your PC
A progress meter show elapsed, estimated and remaining time for each pass. Migo Drive Washer provides confirmation that a drive and/or partition have been erased for good so you can safely pass on your computer.

Migo Drive Washer - Permanently Erase Your Hard Drive - 10% Off with Coupon: CJDW10

How to Clean Disc Drives

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:15:00 +0000

When your CD or DVD (disc) drive starts giving you problems, your first thought may be to replace it or take it to the repair shop, but a good cleaning may be all it needs.

Below are three methods to clean the disc drive. The easiest method is the least effective. The hardest method is the most effective. Since the hardest method takes some time to do, I recommend that you start with the easiest method. If it solves your problems, congratulations. If not, try the next method.

The Cleaner Disc method - this, the easiest method, uses a special cleaner disc which can be purchased in computer stores. The disc usually comes with a little bottle of cleaner solution. Apply a few drops of the solution to the disc and insert it in the disc drawer (be sure to read and follow the instructions that come with the cleaner disc). The drive will turn the disc and clean the lens. Unfortunately, this only works adequately about half the time.

The Cleaning Stick method - this is what I do in desperation when the cleaner disc does not work and I don't want to disassemble the drive. Since all that is needed (at least in my mind this is true) is a little more pressure applied to the lens, I start out in search of a thin, flexible stick of some type which is at least six inches long. It should not have sharp or rough edges that would scratch the lens. Next, get a soft, thin cloth and put water or rubbing alcohol in the middle of it. Place one end of the stick under the wet part of the cloth and slide it into the opened disc drawer. The goal is to rub the wet cloth on the lens to clean it. Do not apply so much pressure that you will scratch and ruin the lens. Also try blowing into the disc drive to remove any dirt that may have accommulated in it. If you do not succeed at this, proceed to the next method.

The Disassembly method - this method should work but it requires you to disassemble the drive. So if you are not comfortable with taking the drive apart, please take it to a computer repair shop and let them do it.

Take the cover off your computer, unplug the cords from the back of the disc drive, remove any screws holding it in, and slide it out (you may need to remove the face plate on the end of the drawer to get the drive out). Remove the screws in the drive housing and take the cover off. The bottom side of the drive is a circuit board, so if that is what you see when you take the cover off, figure out how to access the other side. On the correct side, you should see a lens that runs on a track (there is no harm in moving the lens along the track but do not touch the lens itself). Use a wet, soft cloth to clean the lens.

Sometimes a disc drive malfunctions because there is too much dust or debris in it, so be sure to clean out the inside with either compressed air, a soft cloth, or a cotton swab. Reassemble the disc drive, put it back in the computer case, and cross your fingers. Hopefully, it will work when you turn on the computer.

If these methods work, you just saved yourself some money. If not, you needed a better disc drive anyway.

Ray Geide writes a free weekly newsletter called Ray's Computer Tips and moderates a discussion board answering computer questions called Computer Q&A.

He is an experienced computer programmer who has been writing top-rated software for over a decade. Though he has written for some big-name companies, he prefers to write for his own company, Super Win Software, Inc. http://www.superwin.com/

Seagates External FreeAgent desk 1TB Review

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:38:00 +0000

USB 2.0: 500 GB, 640 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB

Smart, sleek desktop solution for storage and safekeeping of all
your photos, music, videos, and more
Store all your photos, music, videos, and documents with the powerful yet simple
Seagates FreeAgent Desk storage soluti on.
The FreeAgent Desk storage soluti on includes easy-to-use software that helps keep your
information safe and private with automatic backup and encryption of your important files
and folders. Environmentally smart utilities help save energy by putting your FreeAgent
drive in sleep mode once it has been idle for 15 minutes. Its design is sleek and modern,
so you can take advantage of its flexibility to lie on its side or stand upright to maximize
your workspace.
Count on the FreeAgent Desk storage solution to store and safeguard everything on your
PC—and to look really good doing it.
Highlights
• Conveniently store all your photos, music, videos and documents in one place thanks to
large storage capaciti es of 500 GB, 640 GB, 1 TB and 1.5 TB.
• Enjoy a sleek, modern design that off ers the choice of horizontal or vertical orientation
to complement your desktop environment.
• Easily protect your data with automatic backup software.
• Keep your important files and folders private with powerful soft ware encryption
technology.
• Sync content between your FreeAgent Desk drive and other portable drives so you’ll
always have your current fi le versions wherever you are.
• Experience fast data transfer with a USB 2.0 interface.
• Get started quickly with pre-loaded soft ware. No CDs!
• Save energy with an environmentally smart uti lity that can put your drive in sleep mode
once it has been idle for 15 minutes.
• Enjoy peace of mind with a 5-year limited warranty from the worldwide leader in
storage solutions.

200 Ways on how to revive your Hardrive

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:36:00 +0000

Here is a free pdf file of 1 of 200 ways on how you would revive a dead or failing harddrive from a no point of return to a return to working order, for a final data recovery.

I had to laugh when I saw this easy fix, and it does work. We were able to bring back a failed drive in an
older HP server running NetWare 4.11. First step is to remove the drive from the machine. Second, hold
the drive flat in your palms. Third, shake the drive a few times in an up-and-down motion, like you're trying
to hammer a nail. Don't let the drive hit the floor though. I've used this technique on numerous occasions,
works every time.

DOWNLOAD HERE

RAID HARDRDDRIVES

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:28:00 +0000

The capacity of hard drives continues to increase you can now hold 1TB of data on single drive, which is great news for digital media pack rats and video editors. But though you don’t have to compromise on the drives size, you still have a few choices to make when picking a hard disk.

Is RAID the right choice?

This has nothing to do with keeping bugs out of your PC. RAID, which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, lets you use multiple hard drives to boost disk speed or to keep a mirrored backup of you data in case a drive fails. Either setup requires multiple identical drives, or configuring those calls for a little mental gymnastics. An increasing number of systems use a configuration called RAID 0, which can significantly increase system speeds for data reading and writing. If you would like to try it, first select a pair of drives that match the storage capacity you want. With 120GB hard drives available for under $100 and with RAID support included on most new motherboards, RAID can be great value. The storage company AC&NC offers a guide to RAID setups.

Should I go with Serial ATA?

If you’re building your own PC from scratch, the answer is simple yes, even bargain-priced motherboards now include SATA support, and going with a SATA drive will make your system easier to setup and your drive simpler to move a future PC when the time comes. If you’re looking to boost the storage capacity of an older PC. The answer gets more complex: use a SATA drive; you must use a SATA controller card. Is it worth it? Well if you do a great many task that involves a lot of disk access (such as video editing), it can be. But other wise, just add a second parallel ATA.

What is Seagates Seatools?

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:42:00 +0000

After testing, a large percentage of the drives returned to Seagate for warranty replacement are perfectly
Good drives with "No Problem Found" (NPF). Returning a drive for warranty service means system downtime and inconvenience for you in packing and returning your drive product. Before you send in a drive, it is in your best interest to determine if a replacement drive is really necessary. This hard disc diagnostic utility will help you make that determination and possibly save you time and money and preserve your data.
Some typical reasons for No Problem Found are:
* File System Corruption
* Driver Corruption
* Broken Master Boot Record
* Virus and Trojan Attack
* Spyware, Adware and Keystroke loggers
* Hardware Conflicts
The Seagate SeaTools software is simple to use. The following instructions will help you get the most out of
this new software tool.

Click here to go to that site

SCSI Controller Error Message

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:03:00 +0000

Dell Poweredge 750 Server
"Error message controller Kernel stopped running" press any key to continue"
Fatal Error message - Controller monitor failed, controller not started

Solutions:

1)After careful consideration the only way to fix this is to replace the SCSI controller card
2) Take out the SCSI harddisk drive and install it on a similar machine and boot up,
3) Finally take out the SCSI sata harddrive and use it as a slave on a known working pc and then salvage the data.

TESTDISK - A Free Software recovery tool

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 10:41:00 +0000

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

TestDisk can

Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery.

Click Here to Download Test disk

Restore data from Corrupted Hard Disk Drive

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:26:00 +0000

Hard disk drive consist of mainly three items, which are: Platters: These are coated with a magnetic substance. They spin at high speed under hard disks actuator arm. Actuator Arm: It moves backwards and forwards over the surface of each platter. Copper Wire: On the end of this actuator arm, a small copper wire is present.
The computing machine send a pulse through this copper wire which changes the state of the magnetic surface of a platter as it passes underneath. In this way the files that are stored on the computer are encoded into the magnetic substance.
Hard Disk Failures can occur due to various natural or artificial reasons; you can also browse through Data Recovery tips to get some information on hard disk preventive measures.
An attempt to write the hard disk or formatting the partitions in order to avoid data loss or data corruption can prove to be harmful, too. As, it may also mean that infected or corrupted files may get executed that can cause further damage to a corrupted drive. Creating backups of data at regular intervals is always vital even before scanning for viruses on a corrupt drive.
Hard Disk Drive Recovery can vary for different operating systems or file systems, since their making and manufacturing standards are different. As well as, the file systems are also different for each operating system

Quick Restoring Data Steps

Install Windows (or any other operating system) on another hard drive
Run Scandisk / CHKDSK utilities from other operating system on bad drive (Never use same OS disk repairing utilities)
Virus scan bad drive (create a backup first)
Backup critical files over to temp drive
Boot from clean floppy, FDISK bad drive, reboot
Boot from clean floppy, format bad drive
Reinstall Windows on corrected drive
Restore backup files to corrected drive
Keep temporary backup drive incase bad drive has hardware failure

If still the problem persists, contact your local Data Recovery Services Provider.

Restoring Data from Hard Disks with Bad Sectors:

Bad sectors are basically portions of Hard Disk Drives that cannot be used due to flaws on hard drive. When a disk is formatted, the operating system identifies any bad sectors on the disk and marks them so as to avoid their usage.

But, if a sector containing data becomes damaged, special Data Recovery techniques are needed to recover the data. It's not very rare that any hard disk is void of damaged or bad sectors during the disk manufacturing process; however, the overall disk performance is not affected as damaged space is considered unusable.

It may become possible that the drive appear to run and perform very slowly with constant halting, or even the software access may become extremely slow. In some cases, certain portions of the hard disk become inaccessible and in severe cases, the entire disk becomes inaccessible.

The main causes for such disastrous incidents can be the bad sectors being developed or even operating environment of the hard disk may become very severe, as high temperatures, less fanning, vibration etc. These harsher conditions also prove to be vital in developing bad sectors more rapidly.

Hard Disk Restore Tip:

Under any circumstances, DO NOT RUN ANY REPAIR UTILITY such as ScanDisk or Chkdsk from the same operating system. They may remain unable to repair the hard disk and a high chance is the files you want to recover may become un-recoverable.

TIPS - How to Diagnosis for a Faulty Harddrive?

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:03:00 +0000

Opening the Drive
Diagnosing before opening!
What does the drive feels like?
Is it spinning?
Does it click?
Does the head seek and park, then the drive spin down?
Is the drive HOT?
Look at the PCB board and look for burns and hot spots.
Documenting!
Take pictures of the drive.
Put an O on the PCB Board for Original on the label.
Xerox the label upon receiving it.
Label everything.
Use Organized Screw containers.
Get yellow sticky post it notes and write things down.
Keep tape handy.
What to look at after opening?
Look at the platter and the heads and their location.
Look at the air filter and see if there is silver dust in the case.
Look at the physical head for damage?
Look for brackets in the platters?
Spin the motor and look for bearing problems.

Disk failure takes family to the brink of disaster and back.

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:00:00 +0000

To whom it may concern: My daughter is unable to complete her assignment today because, on Saturday night, we suffered a catastrophic disk crash. Unfortunately, Monika has not made a backup of her work. I have taken the comatose disk to the data recovery people, but it doesn't look good ... "

This modern take on "the dog ate my homework" may sound like a creative excuse, but sadly it was true. The NCEA photography assignment wasn't the only loss. Digital photos, music, documents, interviews - vast swathes of our family's digital life was now in suspended animation, caught in a twilight zone somewhere inside a sliver disk platter that steadfastly refused to spin.

Fortunately, some of our digital life had been backed-up - wisely copied to CD and DVD. But quite a lot wasn't. I had become lazy, some would say reckless, lulled into a false sense of security by having a new computer. Backup was something I was meaning to get around to, but had kept putting off for another day - for about 18 months.

How could I be so stupid? And how could I have ignored the imminent disk failure signs? What monstrous denial had possessed me to believe the strange humming sound and erratic behaviour of the PC was just a noisy fan? But as the sound got louder and the disk fell silent with a sickening graunch, the chilling reality settled. Disk kaput.

So began a week of hell. Wharf IT's Sacha Stevens eased the pain by replacing the dead drive and getting my PC going again - on a Sunday no less. I took the inert disk to IT Sales and Services' Mike Sanders. He works on a "no charge if I can't recover it" basis. A day later he had more bad news - my disk was one of the two or three a year that he can't coax to spin again.

Who do you call in the darkest depths of disk despair? Computer Forensics run by PC industry stalwart Brian Eardley-Wilmot. But there's a catch. To perform miracles - bringing data back from the dead - costs ... a lot. In my case $90 just to look at the thing and then $843 to recover what they could.

It's the sort of quote that prompts a reassessment of priorities. Perhaps we could regard the disk crash as a fresh start, a spring clean, a welcome release from the tyranny of data that controls our lives.

Tempting as the idea was, the tyranny won. The NCEA assignment wasn't easily redone. Then there was the swag of photos with sentimental value. Plus some documents and interviews that would have been difficult to do without.

Computer Forensics said our disk crash was so bad "the magnets had fused to the spindle." Whatever that meant, it couldn't be good. Opened up in the clean room and spun again, the disk made dreadful death throes screeching. Even the technicians were afraid.

The platter was also ringed, which is when the reading head digs a deep furrow in one of the disk tracks over which no data may pass. We did get most of our data back. The email was unrecoverable and, as Eardley-Wilmot so eloquently put it, about 30 per cent of our photos were "poked" - there, but corrupt.

My digital recordings in Panasonic's VM1 format were a nightmare. Bizarrely the format doesn't allow copying - resolved eventually by converting the cloned files to WAV format.

Just when it seemed normal service was resuming, I found several of my back-up CDs were unreadable. Disk failure, plus backup failure. What had I done to offend the gods of computing so much? Fortunately I was able to read the disks using a couple of nifty utilities - BadCopy Pro and CD Roller.

I remain mystified as to why disks, even newish ones, fail - something to do with mass production of ever bigger, faster, cheaper models I suspect. But the PC industry's Achilles heel - its epic vulnerability with fatal consequences has new meaning for me.

I now back up obsessively - via an automatic schedule using SyncToy to copy files to a newly acquired 600GB external drive.

But I trust nothing, neurotically checking to make sure the backup works. When you've been to brink of disaster and back, digital life is never quite the same again.

Recover my files software

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:36:00 +0000

This is one of the best file recovery software that pretty much does the basic day to day stuff in terms of File software recovery

It Recovers
Deleted or Lost files from your recycle bin
Lost files from formatting a Harddrive
Files that had been affected by a Virus or a Trojan
Files that been lost or unsaved due to a system shut down or failure. the lists goes on
It is simple to use, and overall FREE!

FREE DOWNLOAD 7.6MB

Two Types of Recovery & Phases of Data Recovery?

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:17:00 +0000

Data recovery is necessary when source material fails and where no good backup
exists, either Physical or Logical. There are two types of data recovery in the
standard basic sense. One type of data recovery is when there is damage to the
media and the pre-existing data need to be retrieved. This will usually require the
media to be repaired.
The second form of data recovery is when files were purposely or accidently deleted.
When this type of data recovery is necessary there is usually no damage to the
media and standard software can be used to recover the data. This is the process
that most software performs. Very few software programs understand damaged
media. Because most software relies on calls and functions from the operating
system for its input, it has no control itself over error correction or any functions that
the operating system performs on the drive. I believe there a four phases to any
data recovery.
Four Phases of Data Recovery
1. Repair the Hard Drive so it is running in some form, usually requiring hardware or
special equipment.
2. Image, Copy or recover the physical drive and sectors primarily by bitstream
imaging. If the drive is functioning, it is possible to do this with software, however
there are some hardware solutions that work very well; i.e. DeepSpar Disk Imager.
there are some hardware solutions that work very well; i.e. DeepSpar Disk Imager.
This is a situation where some software is better than others, such as dd_rescue
(use with dd_rhelp script) on a Linux system has a special feature that allow it to
image backward (understanding why you need to image backwards is very
important in data recovery).
3. Perform Logical Recovery of files, partition structures, or necessary items; usually
this is by software and is the most common type of application sold.
4. Repair of files that might have existed in damaged space or sectors to recover what
is possible. This is usually the requirement in Forensics to be able to re-assemble
data to display what was there, if whole or not. This is also applied in data recovery
for corrupt Word and Excel documents.

A FREE Full PDF Class Lab outline of Scott Moulton Data Recovery Session DOWNLOAD HERE

How to Recover a Faulty Hardrive Series - Part 1 of 7

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:26:00 +0000

Watch and Learn some of the steps of recovering a Hardrive from 1 of the 7 part series on "How to Recovery a Hardrive Part 1"

How to remove a Harddrive from a Laptop

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:43:00 +0000

Step 1:

The hard disk in most modern laptop systems is a 2.5-inch form factor unit that is normally 9.5mm thick. To remove the drive, take out the drive cover retainer screw locking the drive cover, as shown below

Step 2:

Now grasp the cover and slide the drive and cover out of the system together. Then you can disengage the cover from the drive by bending the cover latches sideways and pulling the cover away from the drive.

How to Protect your Data on your Laptop PC?

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:25:00 +0000

The best way to protect your data on your laptop is to backup on to a external hardrive, the size of data that you have on your laptop determines on how how much you can afford on buying an external hardrive, they all come in different size capacity, ranging from 100gb to 1Tb these days, they also come in different shapes to, from a 2.5inch (laptop size) which can be a bit pricey, to a 3.5 common pc harddisk drive, your best bet after buying it is to format and insert into a harddisk external caddie, like the one shown on picture, there are also other ways on protecting and backing your data that is via CD, DVD Media, usb or online storage - such as google's 1gb free storage space, an online storage is when you upload any data you may need ot want to the internet backend servers, which companys host for a small fee and if not better free, there is always plenty of room for you to backup those music files you wanted.

RAID Harddrive Data Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:33:00 +0000

The typical service of today's harddrive means they will out last the usefulness of the computers in which they are installed, but harddrives have internal parts spinning at thousands of revolutions per minute separated by less than the width of a human hair. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes hard drives fail before their time. Recovering from a hard drives premature demise means buying and installing a new drive, reinstalling and reconfiguring all of your software and reloading your data from backups. This can entail hours, if not days, of downtime. And if you didn't back up your data...well, we won't even go there. But with just a little work, you'll never have to worry about a dead drive. For years, mission-critical servers have been protected from the consequences of hard-drive failure by RAID, or redundant array of independent disks. RAID spreads data across several hard drives and makes all the drives appear as a single drive to the operating system. More sophisticated RAID systems allow you to replace a failed drive without turning off the system, the data is re-created automatically with no interruption to you. RAID technology comes in many flavors, called levels, numbered 0 to 7, plus 10,30,50,53 and 0 1. Each level provides different combinations of redundancy and performance. RAID levels 3 and up are in the realm of IT network professionals, they require a minimum of three hard drives and expensive controller cards. But levels 0 and 1 are affordable and easy enough to be implemented for single PCs and small networks. To add RAID to you computer, you need a second hand drive and a PCI RAID controller card that supports RAID levels 0 and 1, as well as the combination mode 0 1. RAID level 0 distributes data across two drives via striping which writes one bit of data to one drive, the next bit to there other drive, the third bit to the first drive, and so on. Because half as much data is being written to two drives simultaneously, disk performance is almost doubled. But RAID 0 offers no fault-tolerance if either drive fails, all data on both drives id lost. RAID 1, on the other hand, provides hard-drive mirroring that instantly duplicates your primary drive if either drive dies, you can continue working. Some RAID controller cards support hot-swapping(the ability to replace a failed hard drive without having to shut down the PC). Of course, you'll need two housings, one for each time. Be sure to check your motherboard before you rush out and buy a RAID computer card. Some motherboards have built-in RAID controller chips. Check your motherboard manual or look in you PC's Setup program (your screen will tell you which key to press before Windows loads) for RAID options. If you're building a PC or having one built for you, paying a little extra for a motherboard that supports RAID is worth while.

Defragging your Harddrives

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:24:00 +0000

What is Defragmentation - it is a way to scan all lost clusters or files in a harddrive and gather them together for good performance.

Tips on Defragging

You will need at least 15% of Free HDD space in order to defragement your Harddrive
You may need to repeat process twice in order to achieve planned results
Defragment should be done on every volume every 1 to 2 months
Windows Defragmentation works on FAT16, 32, NTFS

To start the defrag utility, click on the Start button, then hover your mouse over all programs, then hover over Accessories, then hover over System Tools, then click on Disk Defragmenter.

RAID 1 & RAID 5

noreply@blogger.com (D Brown) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:34:00 +0000

RAID - stands for Redundant Array Inexpensive disk.

RAID 1 (mirrored disks) uses two (possibly more) disks which each store the same data, so that data is not lost so long as one disk survives. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk.

RAID 5 combines three or more discs in a way that protects data against loss of any one disc; the storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk. The less common RAID 6 can recover from the loss of two disks.