Archive for the ‘data storage’ Category
Technology has certainly come a long way in the past few decades. Gone are the huge contraptions that used to characterize computers. Nowadays, you can easily purchase a notebook computer that weighs in at less than 6 pounds. However, one thing hasn’t changed. Hard drives still occasionally crash and frustrated users are left trying to figure out just how to do hard drive data recovery on their own.
Hard drives aren’t perfect, although they’re amazing examples of mechanical engineering. Physical damage can easily occur since these disks are spinning at such high speeds. The smallest interference while in use can cause damage in certain areas. Various features have been put into place to reduce the likelihood of a critical hard drive failure, but these are not 100% effective. Sadly, physical damage isn’t the only reason why you may need to attempt hard drive data recovery. Many people accidentally wipe out their hard drives because they’re not sure what they’re doing.
If you do know a good deal about computers, and are not the one who messed up the hard drive in the first place, it may be possible for you to do your own hard drive data recovery. Keep in mind that to do this, you may need to fix your master boot record, or retrieve data from a physically damaged disk. If you can’t do this, then you’ll need to employ the services of a hard drive data recovery expert. Actually, if your system crashes and you don’t actually recover data for a living, I’d suggest you go straight to a hard drive data recovery expert. One thing though…they’re expensive. Come on, these guys are specialized in what they do. You didn’t really expect that any hard drive data recovery expert would do it for free, did you?
You know what can really help you save money if your hard drive does crash? Backing up your data. It seems like such a sensible thing to do, doesn’t it? Some users partition their hard drive. This makes it easy for you to do your hard drive data recovery because chances are only one partition will fail. If you’ve backed up your files, you can continue working or, better yet, you can save them to an external source and get a new hard drive. You should definitely invest in an external back up. Yes, it’s an inconvenience to remember to back up important files, but at least you won’t have to pay for a
Companies must account and deal for new legislation governing how information is stored on IT systems.
The EU is shortly to adopt many of the recommendations on corporate governance set out by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, UK firms are to be expected to deal with and manage explicit guidelines on how to store email and other documents on their IT systems. IT managers should consider the necessary procedures and technologies needed for compliance now, in order ensure technology is able to deal with the new legislation.
Regulations regarding data storage at the moment are fairly lax, but there will be a huge increase in the amount of data than must be held over the next 18 months to two years.
Email archiving, the increased use of expencive write-once read-many media, information lifecycle management and content-aware storage as a few of the technologies which firms should consider for the future, though in some cases companies will simply need to improve the way they manage existing systems.
It is anticipated that new legislations will demand that an organizations’ archiving solutions must guarantee that the information they hold has not been changed, and keep it for a specific period of time before automatically deleting it.
A survey of 493 companies in the UK has shown that compliance with regulations has a high or fairly significant impact on the data storage strategies of 87% of the organisations surveyed. Back-up and recovery was also very important to the data protection strategy of 93% of organisations.
78% of organisations future storage strategy is set to include Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape technology. This may be due to the highly affordable and flexible nature of this new technology. For example, recent deployments of disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) solutions by various companies have, on average, reduced the backup window by more than 70%, from fifteen hours to less than four, yielding significant time and cost savings in tape management.
Interestingly, product features were far more important than the brand of the product, with 82% of organisations making a decision based on product features. When it came to the decision of choosing a specialist storage supplier or a general IT provider for storage solutions there was a very slight preference for specialised storage suppliers (51%) over general IT providers (49%).
This survey shows that compliance with regulations is a key driver in companies’ storage security policy and that we are likely to see more companies deploying Disk to Disk to Tape technology in the future.
All the above is fine if you are a corporate, you have an annual IT budget of £500,000 and numerous members of staff who can plan and complete such a system. Is it very easy to talk about SANs, NAS’s Virtual Tape Libaries. Organisations of this nature already have a very stable and flexible infrastructure, where it is comparably easier to implement such a system.
What about the 1000’s of smaller companies such as solicitors, accountants, medical practices and manufactures etc, which may have only 2 servers on site, but still have the same reliance on data and have to adhere to the same legislations? Backup to tape is an option, however, there is an upfront cost and a requirement for a trusted member of staff to take the tapes off site every night and store in a safe place. Can you guarantee your backup has worked, and do you really trust your long term data on magnetic media? Another option is to archive your data onto optical devices, however the cost is even more prohibitive than tape and you still need to take the disk offsite.
No doubt your data is growing quickly; recently enforced legislations makes sure of this, so why not employ a backup and archival solution which has no upfront cost, is fully automated, secure and regardless of disaster will ensure your data is always available, Offsite Backup.
Flash memory gets its name due to its microchip arrangement in such a way, that its section of memory cells gets erased in a single action or “Flash”.
Both NOR and NAND Flash memory were invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka from Toshiba in 1984.The name ‘Flash’ was suggested because the erasure process of the memory contents reminds a flash of a camera, and it’s name was coined to express how much faster it could be erased “in a flash”. Dr. Masuoka presented the invention at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Jose, California in 1984 and Intel recognizes the potentiality of the invention and introduced the first commercial NOR type flash chip in 1988, with long erase and write times.
Flash memory is a form of non-volatile memory that can be electrically erased and rewrite, which means that it does not need power to maintain the data stored in the chip. In addition, flash memory offers fast read access times and better shock resistance than hard disks. These characteristics explain the popularity of flash memory for applications such as storage on battery-powered devices.
Flash memory is advance from of EEPROM (Electrically-Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) that allows multiple memory locations to be erased or written in one programming operation. Unlike an EPROM (Electrically Programmable Read-Only Memory) an EEPROM can be programmed and erased multiple times electrically. Normal EEPROM only allows one location at a time to be erased or written, meaning that flash can operate at higher effective speeds when the systems using; it read and write to different locations at the same time.
Referring to the type of logic gate used in each storage cell, Flash memory is built in two varieties and named as, NOR flash and NAND flash.
Flash memory stores one bit of information in an array of transistors, called “cells”, however recent flash memory devices referred as multi-level cell devices, can store more than 1 bit per cell depending on amount of electrons placed on the Floating Gate of a cell. NOR flash cell looks similar to semiconductor device like transistors, but it has two gates. First one is the control gate (CG) and the second one is a floating gate (FG) that is shield or insulated all around by an oxide layer. Because the FG is secluded by its shield oxide layer, electrons placed on it get trapped and data is stored within. On the other hand NAND Flash uses tunnel injection for writing and tunnel release for erasing.
NOR flash that was developed by Intel in 1988 with unique feature of long erase and write times and its endurance of erase cycles ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 makes it suitable for storage of program code that needs to be infrequently updated, like in digital camera and PDAs. Though, later cards demand moved towards the cheaper NAND flash; NOR-based flash is hitherto the source of all the removable media.
Followed in 1989 Samsung and Toshiba form NAND flash with higher density, lower cost per bit then NOR Flash with faster erase and write times, but it only allows sequence data access, not random like NOR Flash, which makes NAND Flash suitable for mass storage device such as memory cards. SmartMedia was first NAND-based removable media and numerous others are behind like MMC, Secure Digital, xD-Picture Cards and Memory Stick. Flash memory is frequently used to hold control code such as the basic input/output system (BIOS) in a computer. When BIOS needs to be changed (rewritten), the flash memory can be written to in block rather than byte sizes, making it simple to update.
On the other hand, flash memory is not practical to random access memory (RAM) as RAM needs to be addressable at the byte (not the block) level. Thus, it is used more as a hard drive than as a RAM. Because of this particular uniqueness, it is utilized with specifically-designed file systems which extend writes over the media and deal with the long erase times of NOR flash blocks. JFFS was the first file systems, outdated by JFFS2. Then YAFFS was released in 2003, dealing specifically with NAND flash, and JFFS2 was updated to support NAND flash too. Still, in practice most follows old FAT file system for compatibility purposes.
Although it can be read or write a byte at a time in a random access fashion, limitation of flash memory is, it must be erased a “block” at a time. Starting with a freshly erased block, any byte within that block can be programmed. However, once a byte has been programmed, it cannot be changed again until the entire block is erased. In other words, flash memory (specifically NOR flash) offers random-access read and programming operations, but cannot offer random-access rewrite or erase operations.
This effect is partially offset by some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping the blocks in order to spread the write operations between the sectors, or by write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure.
Due to wear and tear on the insulating oxide layer around the charge storage mechanism, all types of flash memory erode after a certain number of erase functions ranging from 100,000 to 1,000,000, but it can be read an unlimited number of times. Flash Card is easily rewritable memory and overwrites without warning with a high probability of data being overwritten and hence lost.
In spite of all these clear advantages, worse may occur due to system failure, battery failure, accidental erasure, re-format, power surges, faulty electronics and corruption caused by hardware breakdown or software malfunctions; as a result your data could be lost and damaged.
Flash Memory Data Recovery is the process of restoring data from primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Flash memory data recovery is a flash memory file recovery service that restores all corrupted and deleted photographs even if a memory card was re-formatted. This can be due to physical damage or logical damage to the storage device. Data even from damage flash memory can be recovered, and more than 90% of lost data can be restored.
Repairing damaged partitions on is a risky business. Even if you use the best toolkit and are absolutely sure in what you are doing, you are still risking your files shall something go wrong. Changes made to the damaged partition are irreversible; it is just too easy to overwrite an important system structure that holds vital information about your disk, files and data. Bottom line: it’s good to backup before performing data recovery. But is this really the best way to do it?
There is a different approach to do data recovery that is even safer. No need to backup and restore during the recovery. Instead of making a backup copy of corrupted data, you can simply take a binary snapshot of the partition being repaired, and attempt the recovery with different settings as many times as you need on this snapshot instead of the actual disk.
SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor by http://softambulance.com/ is one of a few data recovery tools that allow recovering a virtual image of a damaged hard drive instead of repairing the hard drive directly. The data recovery tool lets you create a binary image of the damaged hard drive, and works with the binary image instead of the real thing. The binary image is a big file stored on another hard disk, CD, DVD or other media. The technology is similar to making an .iso image of a CD or DVD disc, only SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor extends it to partitions or even entire disks.
The hard drive copy may be virtual, but any data you save from it is for real. SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor can recover your files, documents and other data from the binary image and put it on a healthy media. After that, you can attempt fixing the damaged system structures of the corrupted hard drivewithout taking any risk at all. Any modifications will be performed on the virtual image.
Don’t rush the recovery. Don’t take the risk of losing or corrupting your data. Create a virtual snapshot of the hard drive being repaired, and work on that snapshot instead of accessing the corrupted hard drive. This procedure keeps your original data safe, and ensures the highest level of safety during the recovery process.
SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor recovers files from damaged and corrupted disks and partitions and fixes damaged hard drives. The disk recovery product supports all 32-bit versions of Windows, and recovers FAT and NTFS formatted hard disks, memory cards, CD and DVD media, and USB flash drives. The evaluation version is available for free at http://softambulance.com/
You can store your computer data in several different ways. Data can be stored on removable disks, hard drives, CDs, DVDs, and other types of media. Even though there are several ways that you can store your data, at some point in time the electronic or mechanical device is bound to break down, resulting in a loss of data. Even though the device may work good for years, it can always break down when you least expect it, with no way to avoid it.
Hard drives are the most common way to store data, although they are mechanical devices and can break down or crash at any time. When they crash, you’ll normally lose all of your data, which can put you in quite a bind. To be on the safe side and keep yourself protected, you should always have a backup plan, such as an external hard drive.
An external hard drive is very handy to have around. You can store any type of file on it, including music and pictures. Most people use them for videos, as they can store a lot of videos. You can get them in many different sizes, going as high as 500 GB. If you have a lot of video on your computer that is taking up a lot of much needed space, you can easily transfer it to an external hard drive and free up some of your space.
On the data recovery side of things, external hard drives are a great solution. You can back up your entire hard drive on them, even a mirror image. Most external drives are FireWire or USB compatible and will work with most computers. To use an external drive all you need to do is connect it to your computer. Then, using the software that came with the device, you can begin to transfer your data and files.
If you have a big hard drive, you’ll want to get a bigger external hard drive. If you are transferring your entire internal hard drive to the external drive, it may take you a few minutes. You can also add files and such along the way as well, if you get newer files to add. Backing up your entire hard drive to an external drive is a very smart idea, especially if your area gets a lot of electrical storms.
Once you have backed up all of your data to an external hard drive, you can rest assured that your information will be there when you need it. External drives don’t crash, for the simple fact that they aren’t in use until you need them. They will last you many years as well, which makes them great for pictures and other precious files. If you own a business, you may find them to the best way to store your business documents and other files that relate to your company.
All in all, external hard drives are the perfect way to create a back up of your data. Once you have your data backed up, you’ll be ready for anything that happens to your internal hard drive. In the event of a crash, you can use your external hard drive and transfer the data back to your hard drive, and be back up and running in no time at all. External hard drives take all of the guess work out of the data recovery process – and may also save you the trouble of having to send your hard drive off to be repaired.