Posts Tagged ‘Lison’

Do-It-Yourself Diagnostic Tips for Hard Drive Recovery

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Lison Joseph is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular tool for personal online backup — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/do-it-yourself-diagnostic-tips-for-hard-drive-recovery.html

Read on if Hard Drive Recovery sets you sweating!

The first thing that you should know about hard drive recovery is that not all hard disk crashes are fatal and in most cases, recovery of data is possible with fairly good data accuracy rates. However, you will be able to decide on recovery options only if you know what exactly is wrong with the disk.

So, if ever you are that unfortunate computer user to face a hard drive recovery scenario, here are a few tips that might come in handy before you start knocking on the doors of a hard drive recovery expert.

There are a few things you can do which would give you a fair idea about the nature of the hard disk problem and more importantly, these will put you in a position to bargain with the data recovery expert, if you are forced to go to him!

Get into the hard drive recovery expert’s shoes!

Ask yourself what is the problem. It could be a logical problem, meaning there is something wrong with the boot sector of the hard drive rendering it un-bootable. In worse scenarios, it could be an electrical problem where the circuit board on the hard disk has been damaged due to a higher than allowed electrical current passing through it. In the worst scenario, it could be a physical problem where the head that reads the data stored on the different platters arranged inside a hard drive has been damaged or the alignment of the platters themselves could have been affected.

Depending on whether it is a logical, electrical or mechanical problem, you will be able to make a realistic assessment about the success chances of a paid hard drive recovery effort.

Do these yourself before you go begging to a hard drive recovery expert

Boot from a floppy and do a read only scan of the disk. This would tell you if it is a logical error. Therefore, you will be able to decide on an appropriate strategy for fixing the master boot record. If the boot sector is lost then you should be able to decide how to go about recovering the data. If there are bad sectors in the master boot record, then attach the hard drive to another working computer as a secondary hard drive and try to recover data using data recovery software.

Open up your system’s ATX cabinet box, take out your hard drive, and closely examine the circuit board under the hard drive. Do not touch the board as static discharge can damage the disk’s head. If there are tell-tale signs of a burnt circuit board or burnt components, then you can decide for sure that its a board problem. Now that you know its a board problem, you must consult your hardware supplier or service agent to decide what to do about it.

The sure sign of a mechanical problem is the clicking sound that you will hear from the hard drive when it is trying to spin up or spin down. If this click sound is coming, then the problem is related to mechanical trouble inside the hard disk platter assembly. This, more often than not is beyond repair. If a hard drive recovery expert claims it can be repaired, then make sure that is a “no data, no pay” agreement!

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Always Keep a Boot Floppy Handy for Hard Drive Recovery

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

Lison Joseph is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the best online backup tool — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/always-keep-a-boot-floppy-handy-for-hard-drive-recovery.html

Expect the unexpected, as far as hard drive recovery is concerned

Well you have absolutely no idea when you might need a hard drive recovery because of a belligerent hard disk going south on you! One fine morning when you boot up, your BIOS might just refuse to detect the hard drive. These things happen for no apparent reason and the only thing you as a computer user can do is to be prepared. This does not mean that all users should prepare against all the permutations and combination of ways in which their system can hang up.

However, there are a few basic things that every user can and ideally should do. One such is to have a clean bootable floppy ready, always.

Bootable floppy in the context of hard drive recovery

Well, In the first place, if you do not know what a bootable floppy is, then it is high time you learnt more about what is the process of booting and what are the different ways in which it can be done. For starters, booting is the process of detecting all the hardware and loading all the required operating system files when the computer is first powered up.

There are several ways of booting, like from the hard drive (as is usually done) or from a CD or even from a floppy drive. Booting from devices other than a hard drive is usually necessitated by a non-functioning primary boot device (read hard drive). So a bootable floppy is the first thing you are going to need if you want to get into your system and take a peek at the hard disk to determine what is ailing your storage device and then decide on your hard drive recovery strategy.

You might be wondering how a system knows where to boot from when the power is switched on. It is here, the BIOS comes into picture. The BIOS has information about boot procedure and you can manually configure this to set a boot procedure of your choice. For example, you can set it first, seek the hard drive and if it fails, then try to boot from the CD drive and if that too fails, then seek the floppy drive. So even to start contemplating hard drive recovery, you should be comfortable finding your way around various SETUP options in BIOS.

So how do you make a bootable floppy, the first step towards hard drive recovery!

Frankly, it is quite simple. In most windows versions you can do a search in Windows Help with string, “boot floppy” or “startup disk” and you will get the exact procedure for making an MS DOS start up disk. If you are well versed with DOS, then all you need to do is insert the floppy disk and use the format command on the floppy drive. Do not forget to use the “/s” switch so that the required system files are copied after a quick format.

Now that you have a boot floppy is ready, you are better prepared to face a hard drive recovery scenario!

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Simple Rules on What to Backup and How

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Lison Joseph is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service — Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/simple-rules-on-what-to-backup-and-how.html

Need for Backup

You need to backup simply because the data which you blindly believe to be safe can be lost, anytime. All it takes is a power outage, or a virus attack. So never, ever live in the misunderstanding that your data is safe, until you backup. Now if you are convinced about the need for backup then the next thing that should pop in your mind is what qualifies for backup. Even though some of the popular software available in the market have ready made backup options, you might want to know what is important, just for knowledge’s sake!

What to backup

Now if you think you are not working with anything that is really important, then you are badly mistaken again! In case of a system crash, would you like everything to be the way it was when you boot up again or would you rather have it as a clean fresh system with just the operating system to greet you? If you want everything, the hardware configuration, the system drivers, your custom configured media player or your saved game in that favorite strategy game, then you need to backup the files that matter!

Coming to the files that matter, here are some things to ponder about. Registry is the place where system keeps all the important information about system configuration. So registry backup is a good place to start! Now, if you spent a good amount of time searching and downloading your device drivers, then you are better advised to have a safe backup all your hardware device drivers, including your modem drivers and video card drivers.

Another simple rule to follow is: backup the installation/setup files of all the software that you like and want to continue using, even after a possible system crash. You might also want to backup the “save/d game” folder of all your favorite games!

Now, for all those software that you purchased, you might have a product key/serial number/registration code that gives you ownership rights on the software, so backup files related to all that information.

How to Backup

Well, you can pick up the files that you want to backup and copy them on to a removable media, like CD, Floppy or memory sticks or anything that you consider to be safe from common threats. Well if you are still not sure as to which files are important, then download a backup software from the internet and let the tool do the job for you. There are several backup options available like online backup, network backup, server backup and so on.

The trick is to pick the right one that matches your needs and your resources. If you have lots of time at hand, then you can even consider the option of creating a disk image and then storing it on a removable storage media. The good thing about disk images are that they let your virtually rebuild your system to the exact state it was when you imaged it.

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Remote Backup for a Picture Perfect Disaster Recovery

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

Lison Joseph is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service — Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/remote-backup-for-a-picture-perfect-disaster-recovery.html

Location of backup storage media is important in disaster recovery

Many a time, thoughtful companies keep a disaster recovery on their active agenda and even backup all critical data. A common mistake that many often unknowingly commit is to keep the backup data in close physical proximity to the site they are trying to protect against a disaster. An example would be to keep the backup DVDs in a safe locker inside the same company premise that they are supposedly protecting against a disaster. So, in the event of a fire, the backup media is also charred beyond recognition along with the computer terminals and the entire office.

This mistake is due to the flawed definition of the term disaster. The company executives in charge of formulating disaster recovery strategies often tend to give a narrow definition to ‘disaster’, which often does not go beyond a virus attack or a network failure or a potential hacker threat. This is a cardinal mistake, as has often been proved in case of accidental fires.

A disaster recovery can be called fool proof if and only if there is absolutely no loss of critical data.

How do you overcome this and achieve a viable disaster recovery?

Naturally, the sensible thing to do would be to store the backup disks at a location that is physically distant from the actual company/firm, which is being protected against. There are different ways of doing this in terms of how the backup process itself is done, rather than the physical storage of the backup storage media.

The cheapest means of achieving a remote backup of sorts would be to do the actual backup process at the company location and then transport the backup storage media to a different location like to the company warehouse located a few of miles away. So even in the case of an unlucky fire at the company premises, the storage media containing the backup of all critical data would be untouched. This would make a recovery possible but cannot do away with an inevitable downtime, the time required for populating a new network using the backup data.

Frankly, this would actually not constitute a true remote backup but can be termed as remote storage of backup media.

So, what is a real remote backup, the best disaster recovery plan possible!

Actual remote backup is regular backup of critical data on storage device that is located at a different site over a dedicated cable or network. This involves putting in place a network with required bandwidth and scheduling the backup without interfering with the day-to-day activities of the company. The backup data would be written on to storage media located in a different building in a different location, often several miles away, can initiate the backup process sitting in the company premises.

So in the event of a disaster, all the backups would be waiting to be retrieved! A picture perfect recovery, is it not? A recovery that involves absolutely no critical data loss and the least amount of recovery time.

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Test the Disaster Recovery Plan

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Lison Joseph is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service — Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/test-the-disaster-recovery-plan.html

Having a disaster recovery plan is only the beginning.

So you have read up all about data loss, logical and natural disaster, data security, storage modes, backup strategies and have even come up with a disaster recovery plan that fits the business model of your enterprise. You can certainly pat yourself on your back for having thought about one of the important aspect of information security in the modern day enterprises where loss of critical data can very well spell doom for the company.

BUT, know that merely having a disaster recovery plan does not make things as safe as you actually would like them to be. Consider it to be only a tentative positive step in the right direction but something that is far from solving the real concerns regarding potential threats to data security.

Failing disaster recovery plans are not a rarity

The reason for saying, a disaster recovery plan is not the end of the story is that there have been several instances of high profile companies suffering from irrecoverable data loss despite having an apparently fool-proof disaster recovery plan in place. The reason: the officials concerned were contend with the existence of a plan and never bothered to have a trial run of their disaster recovery plan to see if it really stands up to the test of reality check.

The data security officials need to ascertain that what is envisaged in theory would actually work out in practice in a simulated disaster situation.

To say the least, testing a disaster recovery plan is as much or even more important than simply formulating a disaster recovery plan and leaving it at that. There are several aspects that can go wrong in an actual disaster situation, several unforeseen factors that could crop up rendering the whole plan useless or inadequate beyond imagination.

To avoid such a tragic failure of the disaster recovery plan, everyone involved in the business of securing critical data should realize the urgent need to test run the plans and ensure that they work like we want it to be in the time of crisis. If this is not done, then we run the obvious risk of a possibly failed disaster recovery plan which would mean that all the money and man hours spent on formulating such a plan is a dead loss. Mind you, such a dead loss is over and above the possible loss of critical data which could well mean the end of company.

So how do you test a disaster recovery plan?

On a system that closely resembles the actual environment where the critical data is stored, simulate all the typical situations that can be called a disaster.

A disaster need not always be a fire or a flood. It can also be an unexpected hard disk failure or a power failure or even a hard disk failure or an unexpected partition damage, or a virus attack. Needless to say during the trial run of the plan, you would come across several circumstances that you forgot to account for while formulating the plan. Make careful note of all such factors and reformulate the plan with due consideration for the new factors.

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