So much of Computer Forensic work is associated with data recovery from hard disk drives, USB pens and other common data storage media. Even on the television data is generally seen only to be stored on a limited range of media.
Posts Tagged ‘Storage Media’
Computer Forensics – Don’t Let the Tape Evidence Evidence Escape You
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009Microsoft’s View of Window 2000 Backup
Sunday, June 7th, 2009Kalb is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup solution — Back2zip. This article is also at http://free-backup.info/microsofts-view-of-window-2000-backup.html
What Microsoft Says about Window 2000 Backup
Window 2000 backup is a topic that Microsoft discussed thoroughly on their Technet website. The deployment of Window 2000 systems and the backup of those systems is discussed as well as restore processes connected to those backup plans. Backup is the number one focus for most data centers and any data rich environment. Why? Because data is king and business revolves around the data it generates and the data it collects.
Data sells and the selling it needs to be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This requirement pushes the envelope of Window 2000 systems as much as any other operating systems. Detailed planning and effective process design are at the core of great data backup and restore plans.
The Need for Window 2000 Backup
An organization’s operations can generate huge amounts of data to be stored electronically. Trends show this to increase continuously and to require more and more storage media and planning to contain the flow of data. Finding ways to protect this data effectively and not destroy the processes needed to acquire the data in the first place is a huge challenge. Regulations and insurance requirements call for the retention and archiving of much of this data.
These requirements stretch the capabilities of a data center system. Window 2000 addresses these issues with products to assist in the backup process.
The Challenge for a Window 2000 Backup
Traditional backup and recovery plans are not able to respond to the new challenges that require uninterrupted application access and no downtime for backup. To add an extra challenge, more and more data centers are being geographically dispersed creating a headache when it comes time to centralize the backup.
The frequent backup needed in order to protect data requires a juggling of needs and processes and brings even more challenges. How do you make sure your backup is in real time? And how do you get those files to backup when the application has them open at backup time? And how do you make sure only the latest updated files are being backed up and not the files that are already archived, shouldn’t they be removed and stored?
And is everyone on the same page across the board or is someone harboring data that was removed from the current backup two months ago? Window 2000 backup suggestions are outlined on the Technet website with questions and backup outline to use as a skeleton beginning for a backup plan.
Assessing Window 2000 Backup
Assessing your own organization is the place to start. Consider all kinds of failure when you design your backup plan. Any system architecture you choose should be based on defined system requirements. Microsoft suggests that in a Window 2000 system this architecture should take into consideration the configuration and contents of every server and the capability each has. It should define very clearly what technologies are required for the successful use of the backup and restore plan created.
Data Recovery and Importance of Disk Images
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009Lison Joseph is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular tool for online backup and recovery — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/data-recovery-and-importance-of-disk-images.html
Data Recovery and Disk Imaging
Knowledge of disk imaging is needed for all those grappling with various aspect of data recovery. A regular computer user should be well aware of the fact that data stored on hard disks are vulnerable and can be lost due to several reasons, most of which may not be in your control.
So the best policy is to backup the important data on your hard drive so that, you are not left with the costly and time consuming option of data recovery in case of damage to storage media. Many a time, you can save yourself the trouble of data recovery if you bothered to create a disk image, from which you can actually re create the entire storage media as it was when you imaged it.
Disk Imaging is one of the common and popular ways of backing up your important data. Other ways of backing up the data include, offsite back up, network backup, online backup, CD back up, DVD back up and the like.
What is Disk Imaging and how does it help in data recovery?
Disk Imaging is a specialized process of creating an exact image of the disk at a particular point in time. One can even compare a disk image to a photograph. The disk image is capable of being recreated (read data recovery) into the actual disk contents in the same way a photograph can be used to recreate a particular scene in a particular point of time in the past.
This way even if you lose your data, you can safely recreate the hard disk to the way it was with the help of the disk image, making data recovery a child’s play. Disk image in fact, makes an exact copy of the partition tables and the file system. There is also something called the Ghost Image, in which even the nitty gritty of the operating system, the system settings and device drivers will also be incorporated into the image.
Thus after you do a data recovery with the help of a ghost image, you can actually boot up to a desktop and system configuration that is exactly the same as your crashed disk!
How to make disk image and use it for data recovery?
Disk image is made with the help of special software. Several such ready-made softwares are easily available and can be downloaded from the Internet. Apart from a few freeware and shareware, limited edition trialware are also available on the web. The most popular and professional imaging software called The Norton Ghost, is made by the Symantec Corporation.
The disk image should not be stored on the same disk, which you want to protect from data loss. The disk image is normally a heavy file running into several mega bytes of data depending on the size of the disk you are imaging. This disk image, made using special software made especially for the purpose, should be ideally stored on a removable storage media like CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R or DVD-RW.
Data recovery using the disk image can normally be done with the help of the same software you used for making the image. In most cases, you can find all the data recovery instructions from the manuals of the help files of the disk imaging software.
Remote Backup for a Picture Perfect Disaster Recovery
Sunday, May 17th, 2009Lison 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.
Basic Tips and Advice For Computer Forensic Beginners
Saturday, May 16th, 2009Being a hardware intensive job, being a computer forensics expert would require you to have a solid foundation of computer hardware, architecture and storage media. Being an expert grows in confidence and possesses high skill levels with the amount of experience gained. As a beginner, there are a few things you have to keep a check on, with the purpose of ensuring that you do not falter at a later stage in the operation.
