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By: Muneer Mohammad
Hard Disk: An Introduction
Hard Disks are used to store information. All information on computers are stored in files. Hard disks store the majority of information on today’s modern computer. Hard disk drives (HDDs) can be critically damaged by static electricity, shock, and other factors, often resulting in failure or the loss of valuable data. In many cases it may become necessary to recover information from your hard drive. Such retrieval is quite possible.
Hard Disk Failure
*Physical Failures
Physical failure occurs from sudden switch off, power failure, sliding them off desks and cheap components. As for data loss, data is only magnetic impulses on the surface of a hard disk. And ridiculously small bits of magnetism at that! When the magnetic impulse fades, or changes position, trouble starts.
Drive Alignment Drift is another cause of problems. Mechanical devices are subject to wear and tear, heat and cold, loosening tolerances etc.
The small changes in the read/write heads wouldn’t matter usually, as data still gets written in the same place as it will be read later. However, there is some data that hardly ever gets re-written, and that is the Sector ID Headers.
*Logical Failures
Master Boot Record Failure
Technically, when the Master Boot Record is working correctly, the master boot code scans the partition table for the active partition, finds the starting sector, loads a copy of the boot sector from the active partition into memory and then transfers control to the executable code in the boot sector. If the master boot code cannot complete these functions, the system displays a message similar to the MBR error.
*Boot Sector Failure
The boot sector is a region of a hard disk, floppy disk, and other similar data storage device. It is loaded to memory and executed as a part of the bootstrap sequence. The boot sector contains a small computer program that is loaded on the operating system into memory and transfers the control.
Most boot sector failure occurs by the defection of boot sector virus. Boot sector viruses are usually spread by infected floppy disks. In the past, these were usually bootable disks, but this is no longer the case. A floppy disk does not need to be bootable to transmit a boot virus. Any disk can cause infection if it is in the drive when the computer boots up or shuts down.
*Accidentally Deleted Data
Some time some how you may delete a file thinking we don?t need it any more, but in a week or or two you may realize that it is a needed one. It happens to the best of us, but fortunately there are ways to get these lost files back.
When it comes to data on your computer, it is almost impossible to accidentally remove it beyond recoverability. Even if you are intentionally trying to completely wipe a file from your hard drive it is exceedingly difficult.
*Cross Linked Files
A file system error that corrupts the contents of an existing file by writing data from another file into the same cluster. Running Scandisk or a similar program cleans up the problem, but one of the files is no longer usable.
*Bad Sectors
It is a portion of the Hard disk that cannot be used any more. If a part of the disk get bad sector which contains data then those data is to be recovered before use. When you format a disk, the OS will mark all the unusable sector as bad sector, however, this does not affect the overall performance of the disk as the damaged space is considered unusable.
Hard Disk Data Recovery
*Replace the (Circuit Board) PCB
Upon a Hard Drive circuit board failure, it is possible to get back the data by carefully replacing the PCB of the hard drive.
*Replace the Firmware
Hard disk firmware is the information that is used by the computer that allows it to correctly interact with the hard disk. It may be replaced or updated by the matching firmware.
*Replace the Head Stack
There are common situation that may be due to head failures. There is a small chip located in the head stack that is called PREAMPLIFIER. Working with preamplifiers always includes some difficulties, because, practically, they can not withstand static discharges. If re-soldering is needed, one should follow a number of rules to protect a preamplifier from static damage caused by careless finger touching. Although this task is very risky and it should be done in a high secured lab specially created for this task.
*Move the disk to another Drive
In some cases complete functionality of the Hard drive may be disabled while only the internal disk plate is without any damages or errors. In those situations, it is possible to move the disk to another drive.
*Spin-Stand Testers
Hard drive manufactures and their head media; preamplifier and read channel suppliers do have very accurate, very expensive “magic machines” called Spin-Stands. These are used for testing and experimenting with heads and disks. They are used mostly by researcher and development departments.
*Magnetic Force Microscopes (MFM)
Magnetic force microscopy is a powerful tool for high-resolution magnetic imaging of most data storage media. As the density of magnetic media is higher, the bit becomes smaller than the wavelength of light, so optical techniques can not resolve it. General MFM is capable of imaging the magnetic domain of several tens of nanometers. Also, MFM is almost simultaneous with measuring the surface characteristics of topography and roughness of the same area with sub-angstrom vertical resolution.
Recovery Softwares
*SpinRite 6.0
SpinRite is a stand-alone DOS program designed to refurbish hard drives, floppy disks and recover data from marginally or completely unreadable hard drives and floppy disks and from partitions and folders which have become unreadable.
*Ontrack data recovery software
Ontrack Data Recovery offers the industry’s highest quality and cost-effective do-it-yourself data recovery software solutions for almost any data loss situation covering servers, desktops or laptops for all media, operating systems and file types. Ontrack’s EasyRecoveryTM family of products is unmatched in its ability to recover/repair from all causes of lost data.
*Recover My Files
Recover My Files data recovery software will easily recover deleted files emptied from the Windows Recycle Bin, or lost due to the format or corruption of a hard drive, virus or Trojan infection, and unexpected system shutdown or software failure.
For more Data recovery topics http://www.pc4safe.com
About The Author
Admin & Publisher
PC4safe http://www.pc4safe.com
by: Robert Hart
Hundreds of millions are affected each day with little or no control of their destiny.
Today’s high-tech world is drowning in data but is starved for knowledge. Data mining is the search for significant patterns and trends. It’s also been called the poor stepchild to statistcial analysis.
To give you an example you go to your local supermarket to buy food and you use your store card for discounts and fast checkout. It give the store a record of how often you shop, what foods you like and at what prices in this case it’s a win-win situation. This continues thoughout your day as you bank go to the mall, gas station, and so on.
However information is increasingly collected without your knowledge or consent. “Black Boxes” the size of cigarette packs have been installed in 40 million vehicles to monitor speed, seat belt use, and more. Only 5 states at the present time require that the buyer be made aware of this fact.
The trade-off is somone has a record of when and where you drive,what you eat, what over the counter medications you buy,whether you smoke or not,where you fly and with whom, what you like to read and watch and spend money on.
Any one item is not invasive but when birth certificates, credit histories, real estate deeds, military records, and insurance claims are pulled together it paints a very intimate picture. Add to the mix that the average person is seen by surveillence cameras 75X a day.
In the past decade an explosion of technology has taken place and the insatiable appetite of marketers for information about consumers has made data collection less voulutary and more worrisome.
Data mining is big business. Companies vacuum up data from public and private records, aggragate it analyze it and sell it to buyers ranging from private companies to the CIA. If an error exists there is no knowledge on your part thus it can’t be fixed.
Data thefts are on the rise included are banks, credit card companies, and the biggest of the data brokers Choicepoint. When their records were breach they left millions of people vunerable to identity theft.
In closing technology is here to stay and we love convience but we must be aware and remain vigilant. Also it’s time for Congress to step up and do their job to create a basic bill of rights for all information. This will provide us with much needed protection.
About the author:
Robert Hart – Affiliate marketer, webinar moderator, author
Dataminer Freebies
by: Jeremy Maddock
Data encryption is the process of coding digital data in such a way that it cannot be read if intercepted by a third party. A user must have a special password in order to gain access to encrypted information. Encryption is used in a variety of internet communication processes, including VoIP conversations. Encryption is especially important for content that is of a sensitive or private matter, such as in the cases of financial transactions and medical prescriptions.
About the author:Jeremy Maddock is the owner of a quickly growing telecommunications news website – http://www.teleclick.ca/
by: Andrew Karasev
If your company has regional and worldwide operations, you might already realized that it is very hard to get decent internet connection in your remote locations. In this small article we will try to give you highlights on how to implement Microsoft Business Solutions CRM for worldwide operations with restricted internet connection.
• Outlook Client. This was very bright idea from Microsoft side to have outlook client as a presentation for Microsoft CRM data. Outlook has such nice features as synchronization and then working offline. If you have outlook client for CRM – you can download your customers, leads, contacts, and event properly programmed custom features, then work with them and finally synchronize them back to MS CRM database
• MS CRM Integration. As the task itself it is not difficult or challenging one. You can deploy MS SQL Server linked server to show your third party or even heterogeneous data on MS CRM screens. However, when we are talking about enabling working offline – we should get different approach. Your third party system should feed data into MS CRM database – through MS CRM SDK custom utility. In CRM itself you should stick to MS CRM user defined fields. If you take this direction – MS CRM custom features will be taken by Outlook client and synchronized with local machine. Your third party data could reside as it was mentioned in heterogeneous platforms: Oracle, DB 2, Sybase, Lotus Notes Domino, SAP, Pervasive SQL 2000, Ctree or any ODBC compliant database.
• Typical Industries. The most popular industry to deploy MS CRM as we saw so far is Transportation & Logistics, where MS CRM is usually integrated with Cargo/Shipment tracking database. Other industries, deploying CRM are: Education, Recruitment & placement, publishing & advertising. MS CRM is getting market in such industries as aerospace & defense, wholesale & retail, pharmaceutical, oil & gas, biotechnology, medicine/hospitals, non-profit
• Customization Tools. Visual Studio.Net is the first to mention, where you can create web application for MS CRM in VB.Net or C#.Net. Then you should use Crystal Reports Enterprise to expand reporting functionality. You use MS SQL Server scripting to pull the data from third party system (but not to update data in the CRM – you should use MS CRM SDK for this purpose
• Self Implementation. This was surprising discovery for us about 3 years ago. Microsoft CRM deploys all the spectrum of Microsoft technologies: MS Exchange, Active Directory, full-text search, BizTalk, XML streams, .Net – and we see that Microsoft-oriented IT departments take an initiative and implement MS CRM with minimal outside help You can always appeal to our expertise to help you implement Microsoft CRM for your company. Give us a call: 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com
About the author:Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, Australia, UK, Canada, Continental Europe, Russia and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com/), he is Dexterity, SQL, C##.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
by: Jeremy Maddock
Wireless broadband is a general term that applies to any kind of technology, which allows users to download data at high speeds without using a physical wire to connect to the internet. The most popular and advanced wireless broadband technology currently available is WiMAX, which allows for fast download speeds over a long range. Wi-Fi is another popular wireless data technology, but it isn’t as fast, and doesn’t work outside of hotspots that are within a Local Area Network.
About the author:Jeremy Maddock is the owner of a quickly growing telecommunications news website – http://www.teleclick.ca/
by: Noel Matthew
Data recovery is something we hope that we will never need. Whether you simply make the mistake of deleting important software or you lose it all in a computer crash, that valuable asset of information may seem like it is lost forever. But, if you have complete and quality data-recovery software on your computer or through your system, you can be confident that it has a backup and it is there even though these things will happen to you. This can be so important when it comes to safeguarding your business or your personal information.
What people do not realize is that there are a number of ways that things can go wrong on their computers. Whether you are responsible for the computers of a large corporation, a small business or even just your own personal computer, having a way to restore information when things go wrong is quite important. Here are some things that could happen to you, well, anytime, even right now. Your computer could be running slowly or be loaded with powerful spyware that can destroy files, transmit personal data or, even worse, cause the computer to crash. All of a sudden, it’s gone. Or, you could be working along nicely without a care in the world and bam! A power surge, an electric storm or something else electrical happens and it’s all gone.
There are many more ways in which you can lose all of the personal data that is stored on your computer. You don’t even have to have the programs running to lose it. Nevertheless, many people mistakenly believe this will not happen to them and therefore do not do anything to prevent this total loss. Data recovery is necessary for this not to happen. The strange thing is, it takes only minutes to install and use and it virtually and it takes care of itself. It is not overly costly either. So, why don’t more people use data recovery? They just don’t realize its importance. And that is one mistake we don’t want to make. Data recovery is a need all computer users have.
About the author:For more information please see http://www.data-recovery-help.co.uk/
by: Jeremy Maddock
DSL is a type of broadband technology that allows for digital data to be sent at high speeds along already-existing copper telephone lines, while allowing for the transmission of analog (voice) data at the same time. Some of the most common variations on DSL include ADSL, HDSL, SDSL, and VDSL, all of which are considerably faster than an ordinary dialup internet connection.
About the author:Jeremy Maddock is the owner of a quickly growing telecommunications news website – http://www.teleclick.ca/
by: Jeff Walters
Right now you probably in a lot of mental pain, and all you’re concerned about is recovering your data as quickly as possible – so we’ll refrain from comments on the wisdom of regular back ups. The time for preventative measures has gone – the issue at hand is data recovery.
First – a simple tip could save you a lot of money. Take out your rolodex and get hold of your tech-savvy friends. If you’re in luck, they’ll offer to help, and if you’re really lucky, they might even have some disk recovery software.
If you’re out of luck, then get out your wallet or purse out now… because this is going to cost you. Also, be prepared for a lot of time being wasted – data recovery can take a long time.
The first thing to establish is what exactly is wrong with your hard disk:
* Either your computer won’t boot up, or
* Your computer boots up OK but you can’t see one of your other drives.
Let’s see if we can eliminate the worst scenario. Listen closely to your hard drive – is it making any sort of weird noise, such as scratching, scraping, ticking etc?
If so, then your drive is physically damaged and the only hope that you have is to take it to a data recovery service where experts might be able to get your data off for you. These services are expensive and time consuming – so you need to make a judgement call as to the value of data on the disk:
If it’s only your saved game data or downloaded music files you would like back, you’re probably better off kicking yourself for not backing up, and accepting the data loss.
If, on the other hand, it’s a book or other type of information product that you’ve been working on for years, then send it to a data recovery service for an evaluation and quote – it usually costs nothing.
If your hard disk sounds OK, then you stand a decent chance of recovering data yourself.
First you’ll need to download some software to help you out.
Unfortunately, the better software utilities are not free, but the good news is that many allow you to try them out to see if they can access the data. There are some freeware products available but generally speaking these are not easy to use – no user interface / little documentation, or they are not very effective.
There’s a list of recommended software on our site – http://www.recoverdatafiles.com – compare the different options then download a few of the trial versions.
Your next steps will be based on how your hard drive/s were setup:
* If you only have a single hard drive that has not been partitioned or split into different “logical” drives, you’ll probably need to attach the hard drive to another computer that has enough space to store all your data. This can be quite technical so if you don’t have the skills please get a computer savvy friend to help out.
Another option is to purchase an external USB hard drive case. You can then simply slot the hard drive into the case and plug it into another PC using a USB port.
* If you have a multiple drive setup and your computer boots up fine, then it will merely be a case of getting the downloaded software to read the files and then copy them to another drive – provided you have a drive with enough space on it. If not, you’ll need to attach the hard drive to another machine with enough spare capacity.
* The scenario where you have a multiple drive setup, where the problem drive is the one that contains your operating system files is more tricky.
Look for a data recovery software package that has a boot disk option available. What this means is that when you start your computer with the boot disk in it, it will automatically run the data recovery program without trying to start windows. You should be able to see your files and then copy them across to another drive.
Hopefully these tips will enable you to get all your important files back.
Once you’ve had some time to recover, please take a look at the various articles on our website – our goal is to make it one of the best resources on data recovery.
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© 2005 Intellinova (Pty) Ltd. – All Rights Reserved
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About the author:
For the past 20 years, Jeff Walters has developed and processed analytical routines (ABC costing, CRM analytics, customer datamarts) in various data intensive sectors- banking, insurance, gambling, medical, government. Processing millions of records has its consequences – over the years, Jeff has had to recover data from several fried hard disks. Jeff can be contacted at: http://www.intellinova.com,/or http://www.recoverdatafiles.com/
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 ‘black out’. 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/
by: Balaji B
XML Server can be a Web Server that stores the XML files in it and serves them on demand. The XML Server would have processing capabilities with an XML engine and to transform the XML document to other forms. Basically a server which hosts and serves the XML documents is called a XML Server.
There are many commercially available XML Servers in the market. The popular among them are the Tamino Server, the Sonic Server and the FDX XML Server. Though the basic functions of these servers are same the way they are implemented and the features that they support varies.
The Tamino XML Server is from Software AG and is used to publish and exchange all kinds of data especially the XML documents in the native format. It handles open standards. Leveraging on the XML technologies will improve an organizations data access.
Exchange of data between different applications on different platforms is possible using XML technologies. Hence organizations are moving on to store their data in XML format to take advantage of the XML technologies. Storing the data in XML format improves the performance of delivery and scalability of your applications with low operational and administrative costs.
In traditional relational databases, data is stored in rows and columns which can be too complex. But in the case of an XML Server such complexity is avoided and any data can be stored which includes even multimedia files and even relational data. These data can be easily retrieved at lightning speed using a Tamino XML Server.
To retrieve data that is requested by any application, XQuery is used in Tamino XML Server. This server implements the XQuery specification draft. Hence queries on the server can be issued using the internet and data can be returned in any format by using XSL style sheets. Thus the customers can manipulate the format of presentation of the data that is presented using style sheets. High speed retrieval of data is possible in XML Server.
The Tamino XML Server is robust, reliable, and scalable. It is used in mission critical environments and there is almost no failure and loss of data. It is reliable in the sense it supports backup of data that can be stored in external devices or remote devices and used in clustered environments. The number of users can be increased and the load on the server can also be increased.
The document structure can take additional elements without changing the entire structure of the data store. These characteristics of the XML Server help it to be used in mission critical environments. Developers can develop XML applications very faster by using Tamino XML Server. It can be easily integrated with application servers.
FDX XML Server is another XML Server available in the market. This product is created by Snapbridge. This server is also used to create and deploy sophisticated XML applications. XSL, XSLT and scripts are supported in this server so that data can be transformed to any format requested by the user or any other application.
Sonic XML Server is another product from Sonic software which is built upon the native XML processing engine. This helps in pipelined processing of XML documents which eliminates the need for generating intermediate xml text file for processing. This improves the speed of the transaction dramatically.
This pipelined processing of the document helps in very large and complex processing tasks to improve the speed of those tasks. The in-built engine in the Sonic XML Server enables a user to store any size of XML document in it and to query, retrieve and update that data.
We have seen that an XML Server is any server that gives an XML document as an output so that the other applications can use it for processing. The document can be delivered in any format using XSL and XSLT engines. It is possible for us to write some code in ASP which will serve an XML document to the user when they view that ASP page. We can store this code in a web server and this code can be said to be a very simple XML Server since it serves the user with an XML document.
About the author:Want to stay current with the latest technology developments realted to XML. Visit http://www.xml-training-guide.com/ to get your FREE subscription now!
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