You Lost Your Data… Don’t Panic!

You Lost Your Data… Don’t Panic!

by: Emanuele Allenti

Inability to access your data stored on the data storage device could be caused by many reasons, from those that are easy to fix to those which are completely impossible to fix. If the damage is irreversible then data loss will occur. The causes of the failure of your hard drive or CDROM drive could vary from a bad connection due to a loose wire (which is easily recoverable) to damage to the media itself, which could still be recoverable in many cases.

As in the medical profession, the first principle of data recovery is: กdo not harmก.

If you are facing a data loss situation, what not to do is very important!

Do not power up a device that has obvious physical damage.

Do not power up a device that has shown symptoms of physical failure. For example, disks that make กobvious mechanical fault noisesก such as ticking or grinding, should not be repeatedly powered on and tested as it just makes them worse.

Activate the writeprotect switch or tab on any problem removable media such as tape cartridges and floppies. (Many good backups are overwritten during a crisis.)

Do not use free software. This is very important. Free data recovery software can be extremely dangerous and ruin your chances for a successful data recovery. Many companies offer free data recovery software also called DoItYourself (DIY) data recovery software available for download on their website.

Even the best programs only work in very specific situations. While these free tools that are available may help, they usually only help if you are encountering one of a very few specific data loss situations.

Some programs may cause further or permanent data loss. While these programs are provided with good intention, even when carefully used these utilities may cause recoverable data to be permanently lost and may cause the loss of additional data.

Anyway, there is something you CAN do; if you are having data access problems and your media has no symptoms of physical failure or damage, try and check some obvious issues before deciding if you need data recovery:

Are the power and disk cables properly connected?

Is configuration or disk information correct?

Try the defective unit with a different adapter/controller interface or on a different computer.

Is there an experienced technician at a local store or the company help desk that you can consult, if these steps are beyond your capabilities? (Make sure whoever is in contact with your data loss situation is fully aware that they should do nothing during their troubleshooting that will risk hurting your data.)

Doesn’t work? Don’t panic; if the damage occurred to the driveกs electronics, it most likely could be fixed. If the damage occurred to the, for example, system areas of the disk, leaving the data zone intact, those data could be theoretically, and (in some cases) practically, recovered by a professional.

Look on the Net for data recovery companies, ask them questions, explain them your situation. In most cases they will be able to understand your problem and fix it for a fair price.

About The Author

Emanuele Allenti is the owner of http://www.harddiskdatabackuprecovery.com a website containing tips and useful information written by experts for those interested in backup and data recovery

This article was posted on September 27, 2004

by Emanuele Allenti

Data Backup Prevention Is Better Than Cure

Data Backup Prevention Is Better Than Cure

by: Justin Koh

Imagine that you have been working on a file for the entire day and there was a power surge that caused your computer to กblack outก. It would have been a frustrating experience for us as we had put in a lot of time and effort into it. I am sure that many of us would have experienced data loss in some form or another and have learnt to be wiser to backup our data to avoid any form of data loss.

Have you ever thought of a worst case scenario where a fire broke up and destroy your computer or where your laptop got stolen? Should that happen, the first thing that comes into your mind is the thousands of dollars that you spend on your computer or laptop and you would feel very upset about it. However, when you thought for a second moment, you started to realize that what is really valuable are the amount of data that you have built up over the years in it. Though hardware can always be replaced, even at no cost to you if you have insurance, but lost data is gone forever.

Lost data such as the thousands of mp3 and movies that you have downloaded from the Internet, thousands of digital photographs that are impossible to replace are lost in an instant. This form of data loss hits home especially hard when the laptop holds the lifeblood to your business. Imagine all your business contacts documents and contracts that you have painfully built up over the years would be vanished just like that. Your business would be wipe out overnight.

Do not wait for the worst to happen before you start to consider about data backup.

About The Author

Justin Koh is the original contributor of this article for http://www.backupcenter.info.

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 20

by Justin Koh

Data Backup for Beginners

Data Backup for Beginners

by: Niall Roche

Itกs 10pm. Do you know where your data is?

Data. Small bits of information clustered together to make Word files, documents,pictures, MP3s, HTML etc. We work on our computers every single day never sparing a thought for all those millions of chunks of data spread all over our hard disks. The data is there and it does itกs job.

Until of course the data is not there anymore.

72 hours ago I suffered from massive data loss. There were no hackers involved. No power surges or lightning strikes. Just wear and tear on my hard disk. 20 Gigabytes of business and personal information gone forever. Passwords, HTML files, ebooks all gone. I didn’t lose any sleep though. Why? Simply because this was my secondary hard disk that was only used as a backup drive. All my critically important data is safely stored elsewhere.

Picture this scenario. You sit at your computer, turn it on and nothing. Dead. Youกve just lost everything youกve worked on for the last 12 months. All your Adwords campaigns, website templates, ebooks, Excel files. Everything. How do you feel? How do you go about recovering?

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70% of companies who suffer serious data loss go out of business within 12 months.

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The truth is that most people never recover from losing all their data.

What can you do to prevent this happening to you? Backup.Backup. Backup. Use a backup system.

How do I backup my data?

You could use a zip drive, a CDR/DVD writer, a USB drive or an secure online storage service. Using any of the above is far better than using nothing at all and hoping for the best.

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Data loss cost US businesses in excess of 18 billion dollars in 2003.

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How often should I backup my data?

You should backup all important data on your PC at least once a week. An easy way to do this is to use a rotating backup system. Get 4 blank disks . Label these disks Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4. At the start of the month make a fresh copy of all your critical data on the Week 1 disk and continue this process on Week 2, 3 and 4. Following this procedure ensures that no matter what happens your stored data will never be more than 1 week old and youกll also have 3 other copies of your data stored away that are less than a month old. Simple. Effective.

What software do I need?

Microsoft Windows has its own backup software included. Apple Mac users can take advantage of Apples Backup software and iDisk backup service.

How soon should I do this?

Now. Even using floppy disks start the process of backing up your data today. The sooner you start the safer your data is.

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Human error and hardware failure account for 76% of all data loss.

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The cost of recovering from a major hardware failure such as a hard disk crash can be massively reduced by keeping a backup of your data.

You’re worked hard to build up your business. Don’t throw all that hard work away by not taking the proper steps to safeguard your critical information.

For more information on keeping your data safe visit visit the Data Backup Guide on AffiliateAdvocate.com.

About The Author

Niall Roche is the content author and owner of http://www.affiliateadvocate.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 10, 2004

by Niall Roche

What Is Data Recovery?

What Is Data Recovery?

by: Jakob Jelling

Data recovery is the retrieval of inaccessible or contaminated data from media that has been damaged in some way. Data recovery is being increasingly used and is an important process nowadays.

There has been a lot of progress in increasing the memory capacity of data storage devices. Therefore data loss from any one incident also tends to be very high. The relevance of lost data can vary greatly. Maybe you have had the experience of storing a homework assignment on a floppy disk only to have it missing on the day the assignment in due.

Consider the fact that a large amount of businesses nowadays have vital organizational related data stored on machines. Also hospitals store data on patients on computers. Large amounts of websites nowadays use databases technology to enhance their websites and make them more dynamic. Php and MySql use has been on the rise on the Internet. Database failure is not uncommon and so it is not a fail proof method of storing information.

Companies have high reliance on computer technology to write and store data relevant to their business operations. Thus the data being stored can have a great deal of impact on personal lives and operations of companies.

There can be several causes of data loss.

Data loss can occur from unexpected incidences including national tragedies such as floods and earthquakes.

Often power failure can cause loss of data from hard drives. Sudden power surges can also cause a lot of damage to a computer’s hard drive.

Accidentally deleting a file or formatting a hard drive or floppy disk is a common reason for data loss.

If you have accidentally lost any important documents there are several steps you can take. Remember that if you have accidentally erased a file, it may not have vanished from your computer. It may have left an imprint in a different format on the computer’s hard drive or other storage devices. Recovering the data involves locating it and transforming it into human readable form.

Not all data may be recoverable.

You can either hire professional service to help you solve your problem or attempt a recovery on your own.

You can carry out data recovery operations on your own computer if you know what you are doing. There is data recovery software widely available that can assist you in the process.

Data recovery can become complicated if you overwrite on the storage device that has the lost data. Therefore if you do not know what you are doing, it is advisable to contact a professional service firm.

Data recovery professionals are experts in recovering data from all sorts of media and from a variety of damages done. There are many specialists out there who have years of experience in the IT field. The kind of data recovery operation to use will depend a great deal on the storage device and other variables such as the amount of damage done or the operation system used such as Macintosh, Windows or Linux.

There are some cases where it may be impossible to recover any data. However do not fret as the odds lie in your favor since a high percentage of data recovery operations are successful.

Preventing data loss

Of course the best way is to prevent data loss in the first place.

Data backup allows for restoring data if data loss occurs. Even ordinary pc users can set up their computer to carry out regularly scheduled backup operations. In the event of a hard drive crash or an unwise change in settings by an uninformed user, the restore tool can be used to retrieve deleted data or to restore the computer’s settings from an earlier time.

For the back up process to be useful it should involve several reliable backup systems and performing drills to make sure the data is being stored correctly. Additional protection methods from data loss include making sure that the hard drive is protected from damages from the external environment. This includes protection from sunlight and temperature extremes.

Also plugging in your pc into a surge protector rather than an ordinary outlet can give your computer a protection layer from electricity fluctuations. Keep your virus protection up to date. Also remember to keep your backup data separate from your computer.

Nevertheless a lot of companies will go through a disaster and experience data loss. The best thing to do is not to panic and also not to ignore the situation. The quicker you rectify the situation the better. Counting on data loss will help you be prepared for any such event.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on February 12

by Jakob Jelling

AOL Gives Up The Ghost

AOL Gives Up The Ghost

by: Halstatt Pires

The company that dominated dialup Internet use is coming to grip with the future. As broadband use increases dramatically, AOL has watched subscriptions decline and advertising dollars move to Google, Yahoo and MSN. Facing approaching irrelevance, AOL has decided to act.

AOL Reinvents

In an effort to compete, AOL is reinventing itself as an open use portal. To date, AOL has always restricted use of its portal to subscribers. No longer. AOL is beta testing a portal that makes services and content available to everyone. If all goes well, the company will launch the service this month.

AOL’s Motivation

The growth of broadband use has correlated to the decline of AOL. It is estimated that as many as 20 percent of subscribers have left the service in the last three years. This loss, of course, correlates to a loss of revenues. As a publicly traded company, AOL must act or face a shareholder revolt.

Catch 22?

AOL is playing a dangerous game with the free portal. The company is risking losing more subscribers that have stuck with the company simply because they like the AOL portal. If ขYou’ve Got Mailข is now free, why would anyone pay for it? AOL is soon going to provide an answer.

Further complicating matters, AOL faces an extremely difficult transformation. There is a cliché – If it walk like a duck, quacks like a duck and smells like a duck, it’s a duck.ข At its heart, AOL is a dialup connection company. How likely is it that AOL will smoothly convert into Yahoo, MSN or Google? Time will tell, but one can expect AOL to learn some hard lessons in the transformation.

What It Means For ECommerce

The AOL development has little direct impact on ecommerce. As time passes, however, the new strategy could significantly impact Google. Google currently supplies search results to AOL and places Google Adwords on the system. As subscribers decrease, you can expect AOL to develop solutions to replace Google. Much like Yahoo did, Google will eventually be booted from the AOL platform. The loss of 20 million AOL users must be causing Google some consternation.

The Internet is a dynamic, evolving platform. The AOL transformation is just another step in the process. Only time will tell if AOL can adapt in the evolutionary process.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is with http://www.marketingtitan.com a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company.

This article was posted on August 05

by Halstatt Pires

Do Not Build A Website Until You Have Researched Y

Do Not Build A Website Until You Have Researched Your Keywords

by: Kusuma Widjaja

Imagine that you have a $25,000 marketing budget for your online weight loss herbal supplement business. Should you invest it in trying to build a site to rank #1 in Google for กweight loss?ก NO.

What would be the point? To get tons of traffic? Maybe. But people searching on กweight lossก could be looking for everything from weight loss diet books… to weight loss prescription drugs… to scientific studies on weight loss in middle aged men… to weight loss as a symptom of a rare blood disease. Do you really care about getting ALL those untargeted visitors to your site? Are they ALL good prospects for your supplements? NO.

So before you spend one single penny or one minute building your web site, find out what the low competition search phrases are for your particular product. It doesn’t matter whether you are an affiliate selling someone elseกs product, or marketing your own proprietary supplements. Do your keyword research BEFORE, not after youกve built your site.

Avoid setting an impossible goal, such as being #1 in Google for a general term like กweight loss.ก Isn’t it wiser and easier on you to invest $1,000 building a site filled with specialized pages, each of which revolves around ONE highly targeted keyword like กover 40 womanกs herbal weight lossก?

As Sean Burns explains in his book, Rankings Revealed, think about the business goals of your site. Strive to be successful with 50 highly focused pages, each of which ranks high for a single phrase. Don’t build 200 pages that are trying to push you to the top for a general term that won’t bring you much real business anyway.

Keyword research and targeted pages are a smarter investment than hundreds of doorway pages that may get banned tomorrow. With the techniques we teach at http://www.whycity.net/dominatesearchengines.html. you can build key wordtargeted pages that are actually useful to your visitors. But you have to know which keywords to focus on FIRST.

There are many free and lowcost tools for finding low competition search phrases. Visit http://www.content.overture.eom/d/USm/ac/index.1html and click กSearch Term Suggestion Toolก. But whatever tool you choose, go for search terms that are highly specific, relevant to your product, and have less competition than the generic terms.

Pinpoint targeting and low competition means higher rankings with less investment of time, effort, and money.

You must also be sure that your targeted search term is included in the right places in the HTML. It should appear in your Title, Description, your HI, H2, your first line of text, once or twice in each paragraph, once in bold, once in italic, and in some of your links. Don’t know what Iกm talking about? Itกs time to learn just like you have to learn to use a saw, screws, nails, drill and glue to build a bookshelf.

Letกs review that again Here are the places your targeted keyword needs to be placed if you ever want a chance at #1 ranking:

The Title of the page

The Description META tag

The Keyword META tag In your headline Use the or tag

Your first line of text Once or Twice in each paragraph

Once in bold

Once in italics

And, finally, in some links…

Amazingly, many people disdain these simple rules as trying to ‘trickก the search engines. But they are wrong. Including your targeted search term in the right places is actually being POLITE to the search engines. It helps the spider decide whether your site is relevant for a given search.

If your page is about กAtkins diet meal plans for women,ก wouldn’t it be logical for those words to be in your Title, your Description, your Headlines, your links, and your text? The only reason they wouldn’t be is if your site is about something else! Thatกs how the spiders think. So should you. Be smarter than your competitors. Simplify your siteกs HTML and use it well.

Finally! Discover Amazing Ways to Dominate The Search Engines…in Less Than 3 Hours With the New System that Guarantee FRE*E Traffic for You! Brought to you by Anik Singal http://www.whycity.net/dse.html

About The Author

Kusuma Widjaja is President of Yahoo Cyber Technology, CV., based in Surabaya. He has over 2 years experience in Internet Marketing Arena, Custom Web Site Design and Graphic Design Services. For more information go to http://www.whycity.net or you can reach us at +628315838474.

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 05

by Kusuma Widjaja

Coping with a Serious Data Loss from your Computer

Coping with a Serious Data Loss from your Computer Hard Drive

by: Darryl Peddle

Data loss is an expensive reality. Itกs a hard fact that it happens more often then users like to admit. A recent study by the accounting firm McGladrey and Pullen estimates that one out of every 500 data centers will experience a severe computer disaster this year. As a result, almost half of those companies will go out of business. At the very least, a data loss disaster can mean lost income and missed business opportunities.

The other side of data loss is the psychological and emotional turmoil it can cause to IT managers and business owners. Despair, panic, and the knowledge that the whole organization might be at risk are involved. In a sense, thatกs only fair, since human error is one of the two largest contributing factors in data loss. Together with mechanical failure, it accounts for almost 75 per cent of all incidents. (Software corruption, computer viruses and physical disasters such as fire and water damage make up the rest.)

Disk drives today are typically reliable. Human beings, it turns out, are not. A Strategic Research Corp. study done in 2000 found that approximately 15 per cent of all unplanned downtime occurred due to human error. A significant proportion of that happened because users failed to implement adequate backup procedures, either having trouble with their backups, or having no backup at all.

How does it happen that skilled, highlevel users put their systems and their businesses at such risk?

In many cases, the problem starts long before the precipitating system error is made, that is, when users place their faith in outofbox solutions that may not, in fact, fit their organizationกs needs. Instead of assessing their business and technology requirements, then going to an appropriate engineered solution, even experienced IT professionals at large corporations will often simply buy what they’re sold. In this case, faith in technology can be an vice instead of a virtue.

But human intervention itself can sometimes be the straw that breaks the technologyกs back. When the office of a Venezuelan civil engineering firm was devastated by floods, its owners sent 17 soaked, mudcoated disks from three RAID arrays to us in plastic bags. A tough enough salvage job was made even more complex by the fact that someone had frozen the drives before shipping them. As the disks thawed, yet more damage was done. (After eight weeks of painstaking directorybydirectory recovery, all the data from the remaining fifteen disks was retrieved.)

Sometimes, the underlying cause of a data loss event is simply shoddy housekeeping. The more arduous the required backup routine, the less likely it will be done on a regular basis. A state ambulance monitoring system suffered a serious disk failure, only to discover that its automated backup hadn’t run for fourteen months. A tape had jammed in the drive, but noone had noticed.

When disaster strikes, the normal human reaction is panic. Because the loss of data signifies critical consequences, even the most competent IT staff can jump to conclusions, and take inappropriate action. A blank screen at a critical time can lead to a series of naive decisions, each one compounding the preceding error. Wrong buttons get pushed, and the disaster only gets worse. Sometimes the pressure to correct the system failure speedily can result in an attempt to reconfigure an entire RAID array. IT specialists are typically not equipped to deal with crisis modes or data recovery techniques. Just as a good physician is trained to prolong life, the skilled IT specialist is trained to keep the system running. When a patient dies, the physician turns to others, such as nurses or counselors to manage the situation. When significant data loss occurs, the IT specialist turns to the data recovery professional.

Data recovery specialists are innovative problem solvers. Often, the application of basic common sense, when noone else is in any condition to apply it, is the beginning of the journey towards data recovery. The data recovery specialist draws on a wealth of experience, married to a กnever say dieก attitude, and a comprehensive tool kit of problemsolving procedures. Successful recovery outcomes hinge on a combination of innovative logistics, applied problemsolving, and ‘technology triage,ก the process of stabilizing an affected system quickly, analyzing and treating its wounds, and preparing it for surgery. The triage process sets priorities, such as targeting which files are needed first or which are absolutely vital to the functioning of the business, and establishes whether files might be recovered in less structured formats (such as textonly), which may be desirable when time is crucial.

The art and science of professional data recovery can spell the difference between a businessก success or its failure. Before that level of intervention is required, though, users can take steps to ensure that the probability of a data loss disaster is minimized.

Basic to any business technology plan is a regular firedrill procedure. Backup routines may be in place, staff may assigned to specific roles, hardware and software may be configured but, if the user isn’t completely sure that everything works the way it should, a data loss event is inevitable. Having adequate, tested, and current backups in place is critical. A hardware breakdown should not be compounded by human error if the malfunctioning drive is critical, the task of dealing with it should go to a data recovery professional.

Just as data loss disasters are rooted in a combination of mechanical failure and human error, so, too, the data recovery solution lies in a creative marriage of the technological and the human. The underlying philosophy of successful data recovery is that technology is something to be used by human beings, not something that uses us.

About The Author

Name: Darryl Peddle

Company: CBL Technologies, Canada

Author description: Darryl Peddle is an Internet Marketing Specialist with CBL Technologies, one of the largest data recovery specialists in the world.

Website: http://www.cbltech.com

This article was posted on August 20, 2004

by Darryl Peddle