PC Data Rescue

Western Digital Corp. today launched a new 3.5-in. Caviar hard disk drive than can store 640GB of data on two platters, twice the capacity of the previous high-end offering.

The desktop-oriented SE16 line currently runs to 750GB, the top-of-the-line drive being a model with three 250GB platters. So it surely won’t be long before WD has a 960GB unit out that packs in three 320GB platters.

The new platform was designed for cool and quieter computing. Western Digital is rolling out the new technology across its product lines, including desktop, enterprise, and external hard drives. The drives are targeted toward users of data-intensive applications, thanks to “performance with their extreme areal density, 3GB-per-second transfer rate, and Native Command Queuing (NCQ),” according to the company.

“The 640GB capacity point will be an important one for our desktop customers, and WD is leading high-volume shipments to the channel and OEM customers. Two-platter hard drives have always been the perfect balance of value, capacity and performance for many of our customers. Today’s common two-platter drives are limited to 500GB, but we are expanding capacity by 28% on the same design with WD’s leading technology heads and disks,” said Don Bennett, general manager and vice president of WD’s desktop business unit.

The 640 GB SE16 drives are available now from resellers Western Digital’s online store at a suggested retail price of $139.99.

A lot of important data is being stored on laptops today. Laptop use has increased significantly in recent years. Increased demands for portability and convenience have been envisioned in this mobile technology. Demand for laptops has gone up in part due to the spread of telecommuting in businesses today. Businesses often allow employees to work on laptops at home and bring them to work.

Data loss in a laptop can end up costing the company a lot of employee hours worked. Even people who use their laptops for personal use are not pleased if they lose any important data. Carrying around a laptop all day can cause stress on the machine and increase the chances of data loss. There are many companies that can help you with the laptop data recovery process. After you contact a company, first you will likely go through an evaluation process to evaluate the extent of damage done.

A lot of companies will offer a free evaluation and a quote if they feel they can successfully perform recovery operations. It may be a good idea to shop around for services to make sure you are getting the best deal. Each company may offer a different price. Some companies even have fixed pricing. If you are panicking over a blank laptop screen or a hard drive crash, you will be happy to learn that a high percentage of the requests data recovery companies get are successful completed.

However you still need to be prepared that some of the data may never be recovered. The only way to find out is get proactive and contact representatives from data recovery firms.

Several data recovery companies have specialized departments for performing data recovery operations on laptops. You can get a lot of your data recovered and receive it in a readable format, even from badly damaged storage devices.

Laptop systems are more fragile and therefore highly susceptible to damage to their hard drives. There are many companies online that can offer you internet-based laptop data recovery. This allows you to ship of your laptop to company headquarters and have it shipped back to you after the data has been recovered.

Some problems you may experience with your laptop are a dead screen, hard drive crash, etc. There are different types of laptop data recovery operations you can perform. Laptop data recovery can allow you to recover files after such events and after technical malfunctions. You may also be able to recover MS Word, Excel or Power Point files that you may have accidentally deleted.

Laptops can receive a lot of abuse and their hard drives can get damaged. You may need laptop data recovery supports if:

• You dropped your notebook and it no longer turns on.
• An unsolicited e-mail has downloaded a Trojan or virus on your laptop.
• The laptop’s hard drive crashes.
• You accidentally deleted some important company files and you want them retrieved in a hurry before your boss finds out.

If you have lost important company data and your boss just says to go and recover it, rapid data recovery can be a solution. Often companies can perform emergency operations to recover lost data and get you on your way in only 24-48 hours.

However be prepared to pay up for these services. The services will be worthwhile depending on how important the lost data is to you or your business.

If you are involved in the management of a company, you may want to keep the contact information of a reliable data recovery specialist near your desk. You never know when you may need one.

San Diego-based data storage firm Iomega said Tuesday that the firm has upped the capacity of the firm’s REV removable hard drives to 120GB. The firm said that the new drives are expected to be available in April.

The new drive will be available from next month in external USB 2.0 form, or as an internal SATA drive, with an ATAPI-based model promised for later in the year.

“Compared to entry-level tape products like LTO-1 and DAT160 format tape drives, the new REV 120GB Backup Drive offers more native capacity, near instantaneous random access to files, faster backups and restores, and ruggedized cartridges - all at a much better drive price,” the company’s chief operating officer Tom Kampfer said.

REV drives offer a multimedia enthusiast a storage package for libraries of content, with each 120GB REV disk holding approximately 48,000 photos, 2,000 hours of music or 12 hours of high-definition video, Kampfer said.

The company hasn’t announced pricing for the new drive or disks, but it should be close to that being asked of the current range to remain competitive. A five-pack of 70GB REV disks can be had for around $380.

You might not even know that memory stick repair facilities and data recovery facilities exist. Unaware of such a facility you might decide to abandon the valuable pictures that are on your memory stick. This can happen when you repeatedly receive a “Card not found” or Needs Formatting or similar error message when you try to retrieve the pictures from the memory stick.

You check that you have inserted the memory stick correctly, and try again, with the same result. Finally, you give up assuming that the pictures are permanently lost.

They might not actually be lost forever, unless you have made them completely irrecoverable during the repeated attempts. Each attempt sends electrical power into the device, changing the flash memory. And soon, the original image on the memory can become drastically changed, making your pictures unrecoverable.

So the one thing you should do when you begin to receive such error messages is to switch off the camera, phone, ipod,etc and remove the memory stick. Store it in the special static-free plastic case it came in. This single precaution can make memory stick repairs a practical option to recover your thesis pictures music or voice files.

What Causes the Memory Stick Error Messages?

Memory sticks and cards can become corrupted in different ways. They might also suffer physical damage when the sticks circuitry or vital component is damaged. It is when such file corruption or physical damage happens that the flash drive or memory stick becomes unrecognised.

If the problem is physical damage, it is still possible to repair it and recover the pictures but should be done by a data recovery company who have the tools and facilities needed. The repair attempt itself can damage the image further. Be aware that strong magnetic fields (e.g found near speakers) can affect the flash memory .

Mostly memory stick problems arise from software problems or user errors. Examples of user errors include:

• Formatting the memory stick before all pictures have been transferred to the computer
• Accidental deletion of pictures before they are transferred
• Ejecting the card whilst it is still being written to
• Taking pictures or transferring files when your camera, phone, ipod or laptop battery is low in power

Pictures stored on the card / stick can usually be recovered in these kinds of eventualities.

The software controlling the memory stick can become corrupted when you use the same memory stick in more than one camera, or if you do any read/write operations when the stick is in a card reader. Airport scanners can also damage the files and software.

Memory stick repairs can usually remedy such software-related problems, and recover your pictures.

Memory Stick Repairs Procedure

As mentioned earlier, if your storage media begins to display error messages, don’t make repeated attempts to access it. Also don’t try to carry out any repairs yourself.

The kinds of procedures needed to recover the pictures will differ depending on what caused the problem. A professional analysis can reveal the cause and the present status. With this information, an experienced repairer and data recovery expert might be able to recover the pictures for you.

Repairers usually offer the preliminary analysis free. You might be charged only if they are able to recover the pictures.

Click here to download a Repair Tool

Huge companies around the world have lost expensive information due to corrupt hard drives, viruses and Trojans, and due to those circumstances these companies have lost huge amounts of money - and a few of them watched as their businesses came plummeting to the ground for something as small and fragile as a hard drive.

Data recovery software performs a deep scan, a quick scan, a file scan or a scan over your entire hard drive. The best part is that it does not take up a lot of system resources, so you can still use you computer while the scan is running. So now there is no need to leave your desk for a long back up process, however data recovery does not replace the need to do a system back up on regular intervals.

Majority of the people believes that when they delete a file from the computer it gets removed forever. However, this is not right. When you delete a file from windows it does not get removed forever, instead they will remain in your system as hidden files, which can be easily retrieved with the help of any of the many data recovery software programs available out there. So in reality, just simply deleting your personal information and important work data is not good enough.

The data shredder software will shred folders, files and will empty your recycle bin properly, without the option to recover anything on a later date. One of the major advantages of using a data shredder software is that it also removes Internet clutter, junk mail and broken shortcuts, as well as information like Internet history.

So, no one will ever be able to see your files or even find out the previous name or file size once they have been shredded, that’s why you have to make sure you are shredding the correct file and that you use data shredder on a regular basis.

It is only after you do a few scans on the computer, and look at all the files that you thought were eliminated from the computer are still accessible through the computer, will you realize the importance and benefit of having a data shredder and data recovery software in the computer.

Symantec has unveiled Backup Exec 12 for Windows Servers offering server-to-desktop Windows data protection.

The first is Symantec Online Backup, which is a stand-alone service for backing up data to a secure remote location over the Internet, said Jeff Hausman, vice president and general manager of the Symantec Protection Network.

The second is Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec, an on-line data protection service integrated with Backup Exec 12, a new version of that application. Customers can manage their on-line storage directly from Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec using a single interface, Hausman said.

Integration of Backup Exec System Recovery 8 with the Altiris management platform enables administrators to control backup tasks from a familiar interface and database framework. In addition, Backup Exec System Recovery 8 can now intelligently and uniquely communicate to external USB drives and run backup jobs to the given device, even if Windows changes the drive letter for the device.

Zmanda, a company commercializing the open-source Amanda backup software, announced a partnership by which customers can store their data at Amazon.com’s S3–the online Simple Storage Service.

The partnership spotlights the growing influence of Amazon’s S3, which provides customers with online storage whose costs are tied to the amount of storage needed. It’s one of several online services Amazon offers.

Armed with Zmanda’s security and support Amazon S3 comes as a complete data backup and disaster recovery solution for all businesses.

“The combination of Zmanda’s affordable open source back-up software and Amazon’s online storage solution will fundamentally change the way businesses backup and archive corporate data,” said Chander Kant, Zmanda CEO. “With Zmanda and Amazon S3, virtually any business can afford the luxury of remote Internet storage that is immediately available, infinitely scalable, and secure.”

Just two days after Intuit Inc. said it had finally come up with a permanent patch for a bug in QuickBooks on the Mac that erased files from users’ hard drives, the company acknowledged it has not completely fixed the flaw.

Users who apply the patch — available for manual download since Monday and scheduled to be automatically downloaded to all machines running QuickBooks 2006 for Mac starting Thursday morning — are still at risk if they run the accounting software while in range of a wireless hot spot, said Ian Vacin, offering leader for Intuit’s Mac finance line, in a posting to the product’s support forum Monday afternoon.

“We have determined that the prior bug re-manifests itself when QuickBooks Pro 2006 for Mac is initiated at public Internet hotspots and a redirection error occurs (for instance, when you are at a cafe that requires you to pay to use its services),” said Ian Vacin, offering leader of Intuit’s Mac financial software in a posting to QuickBooks Web site discussion board.

Vacin explained that an upcoming “R5″ patch, expended to be released today, fixes the problem completely by entirely disabling the product upgrade mechanism that caused the desktop file deletion in the first place.

Accountancy software company Intuit has created a waiting list for users affected by a flawed update to its QuickBooks Pro application.

The update erased QuickBooks data from the hard drives of many users last weekend, Intuit acknowledged. It affected the Mac OS X QuickBooks software, versions 2006 and 2007.

Users reported that applying the automatic updater sometimes deleted their Desktop folders, which could result in the loss of gigabytes of data. The data loss occurred after the updater displayed various fallacious error messages, such as warnings about there being insufficient disk space or a lack of network connection, according to several posts Dec. 15 and 16 on Intuit and Apple support forums.

“A percentage of user files had been shoved into the Trash, while others were marked as deleted when they shouldn’t have been,” said Drew Janssen, owner of DriveRescue, a Baltimore-area data recovery service. “It’s worse than we first thought.

The phone’s been ringing pretty steadily since Monday morning, from all over the country. Something in the updater process in the QuickBooks update was deleting the Desktop and some other files.”

The main reason for this problem seems to be the working process of the OS X which does not place the deleted files in the Trash. This might have caused some users to put the files back in their respective folders. So, these files are invisible to the user and the computer is signaled that these files are available for overwriting.

The company suggests that the users who are affected by this bug should stop all the work. Also, the QuickBooks updater requires users to type in the administrative password for the computer.

Although this is one of the strengths of QuickBooks in protecting the users against viruses, this acted as a drawback as the administrative password allowed the updater to do whatever it wanted to do.

Hard disk is a permanent storage device for storing electronic data on a magnetic surface. Hard disk was invented by Reynold Johnson which was capable of storing five million characters. Now-a-days hard disk capacity has increased tremendously with storage capacity of 1 Terabytes. As storage capacity has increased so chances of losing such a huge amount of data form the hard disk.

Hard disk failure can when there is a break down of the hard drive (termed as physical failure of the hard disk) and data stored on the disk cannot be accessed. There are various kind of failure which our hard disk suffer the most common is Head Crash.

Head of the drive is an important component which is used to read and write the information from the hard disk. Head just moves over platter only at a distance of micrometer. Any sort of collision results in severe data loss. If we try to do the recovery by our own can result in further damage of the data.

There are numerous factors which causes hard disk failure. The most common are power surges, voltage fluctuations, electronic malfunction, physical shock, wear and tear, corrosion, exposure to high magnetic waves, sharp impact, high temperature exposure etc

Hard disk failure is increasing higher, as to increase the speed or read/write operation we are rotating the hard drive with great speed. If any thing goes wrong with the normal operation of hard disk causes severe damage.

There are several techniques used by data recovery experts to recover the data from the failed hard disk. It is done by moving the hard disk to working system. Hard disk is open to replace the parts like head of the drive, arm and chips and sometimes change of platter is also done to make it working such that data recovery can be done on failed hard disk.

Apart from the physical failure of the drive, if our hard disk has suffered a logical crash then in this case data recovery software is helpful. Logical crash can be termed as inability to access the data from hard drive or data lost due to accidental format, viruses or software malfunction or even sabotage.

In case of recovery of data from severely damaged hard disk you should consult data Recovery Company for saving your important data which is trapped inside the failed hard disk.