Posts Tagged ‘Backup’

Devising plan to back up files on computer is important

May 10th, 2011

Everyone knows that backing up computer files is important and most of us will face a computer crisis sooner or later. But simple laziness, or perhaps a lack of information and belief that backups are too costly or time-consuming, cause business owners to put it off. That can have disastrous consequences.

Damaged or lost data files have cost many small- or home-based businesses weeks, months or even years of work. It can happen in an instant, for many reasons. Suddenly your hard drive starts making loud grinding noises and stops working. Your laptop might be stolen or maybe you simply push a wrong button. Computer viruses also can make files vanish.

Technological dangers are common and you must be prepared to avoid them. Having backup files available in the event of trouble could be the difference between staying open or having to shut down.

There are several ways to back up your business files. One simple method is to copy or ”burn” your files to CDs. This works if you don’t have large amounts of data to protect. You also can keep a secondary computer or external hard drive around to serve as your backup center.

Another option is to use a service that lets you back up your data over the Internet. Depending on the amount and type of data you need to save, you can use any one method or a combination. The key is to make certain at least one set of files is kept in another secure location.

It helps to have a specific plan in place to protect your files. First, decide which files are critical to keeping your

business operating. Choose a backup method and perform a full backup at least once a week.

Back up any critical data daily to a removable device. To make sure the backup systems really work, test your backup files at least quarterly. Keep a full backup on site for convenience, but be sure to store one set far enough away so a disaster won’t strike both locations.

Imation is a top supplier of backup hardware, also called ”removable data storage media,” and has one of the broadest product lines in the field.

The firm’s website at http://www.imation.com has a section devoted to ”Small & Medium Business” with helpful tips, advice and product information to get you started. HP.com and Symantec at http://smallbiz.symantec.com also offer backup solutions designed for small business.

Diana Bennett is the chair of the Akron SCORE chapter. If you would like more information on this or other business-related subjects, contact Akron SCORE via the Internet at http://akronscore.org or by calling 330-379-3163. Services are free and confidential. SCORE is a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Source:http://www.ohio.com/business/121483213.html

Data Backup Before a Computer Crash – Data Recovery After a Computer Crash

November 15th, 2010

If you are running any computer system and value the data and information that is contained in your computer system, then you need to backup your data against permanent loss. If you have never ever backup your data before, there will be one fine day that you will encounter a devastating data loss from your computer system arising from say a hard disk failure, or a virus attack, or simply a physical accident that may cause some data loss.

Now, if you are running an internet business, or running a part of your business using a computer system, whether online or intranet, then you will know how devastating a loss of a full day’s use of your computer system can be. Even worst is that the data loss that causes the downtime of a single day can easily blow up into days, and into weeks and months when you are trying to recover the data or to simply to re-create the database to recover your computer system.

Data Loss can mean the end of a viable business, or it can even set you back from profitability into a serious prolonged loss.

Even if you are not running a business from your computer system, but if you have important files, you will need to practise a healthy backup of your files periodically. You will need to know how to recover your files and data as well.

Gone are the days that data backup facilities are only available to the big institutions and companies. Today, you can avail yourself to peace of mind and data security by having the most reliable and proven remote backup services for as low as ten dollars per month, depending on the backup storage space required. While there are several free online storage space for files, these are mainly file sharing sites where your files are open to public viewing and downloads. These free storage space open your files to hacking, to peer to peer downloads and are highly unsuitable as backup storage space for your important computer information and files. In contrast, specialised data backup service providers enable easy 5 minute installs and backups of your files and data, and can be operated by remote from any computer around the world, and enable the highest level of data security and protection for a low cost.

There is hardly any more reason for anyone who uses computer data and information not to have a robust and reliable data backup service for his files and data. Backing up your computer information via a proven backup service is part and parcel of a protection plan against sudden unexpected data loss which may result in tremendous financial loss, especially if you are running an online business. It pays to be protected against sudden data loss and computer failure by using a remote backup data system.

Source:http://www.bestarticle.org/computer/data-backup-before-a-computer-crash-data-recovery-after-a-computer-crash/

Top 10 laptop maintenance and repair tips

October 3rd, 2010

Laptop has been the hottest gadget being used by all kinds of people regardless of ages. It is a revolutionary technology in the world of computing. For those who are familiar in working with a personal computer, this looks quite simple and as easy as that. But the fact is, laptops are prone to many technical glitches when compared to desktop computers. The better you take care of your laptop, the longer it will last and stay productive with less downtime.

Read the below guidelines to keep your laptop safe against many kinds of problems.

(1) Keep away from dust particles – Dust is one of the bad omens for the laptops. It is advisable to clean your laptops regularly with a soft cloth and not any rough material. Make sure you turn off your laptop for safety measures before cleaning carefully. Do not touch it if your hand is dirty. Avoid chemicals or acids to clean your laptop. You can use a small-tipped vacuum or a can of compressed air to clean it. Always cover your laptop in its bag during non-usage hours to get rid of environmental dusts. Do not forget the saying, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”.

(2) Keep away from liquid and food – Do not eat near any food your laptop notebook. The food particles could occupy the spaces in the keyboard and invite bugs along with its families. This would lead to the worst and frustrating situation. Also the liquids will produce short circuit issues and destroy your laptop.

(3) Keep away from abnormal temperature and weather – Laptops generate more amounts of heat and are capable of adequate thermal tolerances. To take care of it, keep it out of direct sunlight or a bad weather. Do not use laptops in the kitchen. Cover it with the tight laptop bag based on its size while transporting. Do not operate your laptop near any magnetic devices such as microwave oven as this could damage the hard disk.

Overheating is a big issue for all kinds of laptops. To get rid of it and to have the longer run, the above facts have to be incorporated carefully.

(4) Keep a track on manufacturer’s manual, guide or their official website – The manufacturer will update all the relevant drivers and you can find all the details such as version number, file size, any patches, defect fixes, troubleshooting etc on their official website. Check the warranty period and preserve all the necessary paper documents to replace or repair if the product is found containing defects.

(5) Defrag the hard disk – Defragging your hard drive is one of the efficient mechanisms in the operating system as the files will usually be fragmented in the hard disk. It will ensure your laptop to run effectively by removing and reducing the unwanted spaces and make the programs run quickly. It is advisable to do this operation on a monthly basis. In Windows XP, you can find the defragmenter tool in the below path: START-> All Programs-> Accessories-> System Tools-> Disk Defragmenter.

(6) Clean the temporary and corrupt files – It is obvious that the internet files will be downloaded to a temporary location and over the period of time, the space consumption of these files rule over the hard disk. It is highly necessary to remove the temp files. To do so, go to (a) RUN-> type TEMP and hit enter. (b) Also try, %TEMP%, RECENT Delete all the files. One or few may not be deleted, not to worry though, as some system files will be in-progress. The sad news is that, there could also be some viruses in this case!

Also use CCleaner, a freeware that works great in deleting the temporary files, internet cache files, cookies and other unwanted or corrupted files in the registry.

(7) Protect against malicious programs – Malware programs are too dangerous that will eat away your data and capture sensitive information such as username, password and send it to the creator. The hall of shame is none other than the hacker or any intruder. Some of the types of malwares are viruses, spyware, adware, trojan, worm, rootkit, keylogger, botnet, backdoor. All are unique and special in its own job of hijacking user’s data, playing as a spy and record your activities and much more vulnerable that what you think! These are indeed still the challenging area for all organizations. To protect against these, you should grab a copy of popular anti-virus such as Symantec. Also it is advisable to use Spyware Doctor or Anti Spyware tool to fight against spyware, adware etc. Do not forget to turn on your windows firewall. Update your products such as software, OS regularly to stay up-to-date.

(8) Full Backup – Taking full backups is highly recommended to be on the safer side of the journey. Data is really precious to all. Though other protection measures are taken, data backup is considered as an inevitable task. Try using Norton Ghost to backup the complete data in your hard drive. It would be beneficial if the System Restore option is turned on to revert back to earlier stage in the case of any issues.

(9) Security measures – Have a safety lock for your laptop. Try to use advanced login facilities such as face recognition, thumb impression recognizer such that if the laptop goes to the enemy or wrong user, the data can be preserved.

(10) Other safety measures – If you are not comfortable with touchpad, opt for a separate optical/wireless mouse. Keyboards are too fragile when compared with personal computer’s keyboard and hence use gently.

What’s more? Smoking is not only injurious to health but also for its surroundings! These chemicals accumulate more and more in the meager areas and affect the health of the laptop.

In desktop computers, every possible problem can be seen by uncovering it. In the case of laptops, it is too risky to uncover it as the spare parts are sensitive and fragile when compared to the pc. You have to hire the professionals to solve hardware issues, LCD screen, motherboard, power problems, RAM memory, hard disk, OS up-gradation etc.

Sandiego pc help is a computer firm who offers services such as virus removal, notebook laptop repair, data recovery at the best flat rate. They are certified technicians who repair ALL Toshiba, IBM / Lenovo, Sony, HP, Compaq, Panasonic & Dell laptops and notebooks as well as most other brands. They have fixed over 10,000 computers since 1999, more than half of which are laptops. They can troubleshoot and fix your laptop for less!

Source:http://www.booshnews.com/2010/10/04/top-10-laptop-maintenance-and-repair-tips/

Top 7 reasons to use online data backup services

August 11th, 2010

Increasingly, consumers are storing more information on desktop and laptop computers. Pictures, important documents, expensive software, music, movies and TV shows are now all computerized.

A lot of information can now be stored in a very small space, however that same information is now vulnerable to things like computer viruses, damaged hardware and otherwise corrupted systems. Individuals and companies alike should consider the option of investing in an automatic PC backup program.

The best way to protect your information against loss or corruption is to back it up with a duplicate copy. This usually means copying all of the information you want to save and saving it to an external device that is separate from your computer.

In the even that you lose or damage something, your information can be taken off the device and put back onto your computer or another one. External hard drives are use for these purposes. They generally retail for between 70 and 150 dollars and can be found online or in most consumer electronics stores.

Setup and laptop backup software is usually included along with the device or installed on it. Of course, there are other alternatives such as saving music to CD’s or another computer. Automatic PC backup is also built into many consumer hard drives.

As long as the device is connected, a computer will be prompted in pre-set time intervals to create a backup of the entire system or selected portions.

While these methods are most time sufficient for consumer backups of limited amounts of information, they are not efficient enough for large amounts of data that can be accumulated by consumers or more often businesses.

Systems like these are commonly backed up and maintained by third party servers with much more power and capabilities than cheap consumer products or software. Online companies such as Druva provide inSync automatic PC backup software as well as remote PC backup for business solutions.

Data can be corrupted in a variety of unforeseen ways causing lost time, money and crucial business. Consumers are more aware than ever of the dangers their personal information can be exposed to at the hands of an unprepared company, which is why a PC backup solution must be in place. Computer hackers routinely target companies large and small to try to obtain credit card or social security numbers and other customer data.

Hackers often use software that contains malicious code and often damage the systems they attack. Losing customer data can be the kiss of death for a company, which makes frequent and fast automatic PC backup of information crucial to overall success.

Other unforeseen events such as natural disasters or fire can also cause information to be lost. Without a backup, a company may not be able to function anymore. While a small fire within a building may only damage a portion of hardware, water from sprinkler systems or the fire department can cause much more damage than there would have otherwise been.

Earthquakes, floods, power surges or a tornado can all destroy servers on which information is stored. Having an automatic PC backup of a system will ensure that the most possible amount of information can be recovered.

Records, documents, personal pictures and music are all being stored much differently in the computer age.

Although it is much easier to store large amounts of information in a small place, new vulnerabilities have emerged concerning computer systems.

Frequent business data backup, especially for companies that hold large amounts of customer information, is essential.

External hard drives and CD’s are adequate for consumers however, large amounts of sensitive data require much more powerful, fast and stream lined services such as those provided Druva, a leader in automatic PC backup and restoration of corporate data.

Source:http://www.booshnews.com/2010/08/11/top-7-reasons-to-use-online-data-backup-services/

Automatic pc backup

August 10th, 2010

MBR, the acronym stands for Master Boot Record. It is also known as the partition sector, that is the first 512-byte boot sector of a partitioned hard disk.

MBR holds the primary partition table of the hard disk and your LINUX system boots only after the BIOS passes the execution of the machine code inside the MBR.

Hence, any problem with the MBR directly affects the booting process of the hard disk, making it inaccessible and the situation demands LINUX recovery techniques to bring back your valuable data.

The Master Boot Record is not reside in partition of the hard disk, it is there in the main boot boot record, ahead of the first partition.

If a hard disk has been partitioned with the MBR partition table scheme, the MBR contains the primary partition entries in its partition table that is all the information required by the OS to boot up.

Where, the first sector stores this, the last end sector stores the information about the bootable partition.

In LINUX, the MBR can be accessed through the command ‘dd’. This functionality usually helps in taking backup of your data, restoration of the data and erasing the partition table.

Hence, the command is very much helpful and give you certain amount of control over these things.

However, these processes may sometimes overwrite or corrupt the MBR and to recover your inaccessible data you wonder for a good LINUX data recovery software.

These cases are a sure possibility in case of the dual boot systems, however, due to human errors, viruses, power fluctuation or any hardware/software malfunction can lead to MBR corruption.

In case of a MBR damage or corruption, you have to take one of the following alternatives:

-Replace the MBR with a Disk Editor.

-Replace the MBR with the Recovery Console.

If the above measures fail, try to copy the MBR from another drive, however it seldom matches to the existing partition scheme of the original MBR.

If all the above measures fail to resolve the MBR corruption issue and you don’t have backup of your data, then, LINUX recovery is the only available alternative.

These LINUX recovery softwares are powerful enough to recover your data from the drive irrespective of the data loss situation and are dam easy to use.

Source:http://www.booshnews.com/2010/08/10/automatic-pc-backup/

Review of Data deposit box online backup

July 17th, 2010

A data backup plan is essential for any individual or organization that works with computer technology and important information. More often than not all it takes is one mishap on the network or your PC to lose all of your information and data. This is the reason most individuals and organizations have a backup plan onsite along with a separate backup offsite.

Backing your data in an offsite location involves preserving data and important information in a location other than on your PC or a peripheral storage device. When you use backup offsite the important data and information is stored on a different network which reduces the chance of data loss in the event of a network failure, user error, or hardware failure. So what are some of the things you should look for when it comes to choosing backup offsite?

Well, first there are several different types of backup offsite that are available for backing up and securing your data:

Network Backup: A network backup is set up to allow you to forward your data and information from your PC to an offsite server via a separate drive that is configured on your PC. Network backup is commonly used on a Local Area Network within a company that provides a separate drive on your PC for backing up data. You simply backup your data by choosing the separate drive on your PC. You can also set your PC to backup at certain times of the day.
FTP or Online Backup: This type of remote data backup provides a way for you to backup important data over the Internet using a process known as File Transfer Protocol or FTP. Online backup is part of the cloud computing movement and allows you to store data on a public or private server that you can access from any computer with an Internet connection. All you do is log on with your password and access your data.
Customized Backup: Customized backup offsite is a solution that is configured by a company that specifically meets the needs of data backup for the company. The company will often use a remote server to transfer and store data and sometimes the services are maintained by a third party provider.
What to Look for in a Backup Offsite Solution

Before you begin looking for a backup offsite solution it is important to assess your company or individual needs so you can choose a solution that meets specific needs. Some of the backup providers offer packages with specific storage limits for each and other providers may offer services by the gigabyte with the opportunity to upgrade as you go along.

Other considerations should include:

Reliability: If you are considering using a backup provider make sure you do your homework to find out about the reputation and reliability of the provider. Thanks to the Internet it is easy to find reviews or talk to others on social networking sites that have used the service. If you are a company establishing a backup offsite, make sure the configuration is compatible with the Local Area Network hardware and other configurations. If the backup offsite is not compatible with the network hardware, reliability can become a huge issue when backing up data to a remote location.
Usable Interface: If you use a backup offsite for securing your data the interface should be easy to use and understand. The more complicated it is the better the chances are of making a mistake when backing up important data. A usable interface applies both to using an offsite provider or a backup site within the company.
Security: The backup offsite solution that you use should have strategies in place for securing data during transfer and during storage. A quality backup provider will offer encryption and SSL security. If the backup offsite is within the company, you should inquire about their policies for keeping data secure and encryption key distribution.
Hopefully this will provide you with a basic overview of some of the things to consider when choosing data backup offsite. If you search the Internet you will find many more helpful tips on securing and backing up important data.

Greg McKeon is a retired aerospace engineer and a firm believer in online backup solutions. He is also a writer for the popular online backup blog, TechWizBackup where you can read the latest online backup reviews and comparisons like Carbonite vs. Mozy.

Source:http://www.booshnews.com/2010/07/17/review-of-data-deposit-box-online-backup/

Tips against data loss

July 3rd, 2010

Digital photo and video cameras are indispensable for no more suitcases. No matter whether it’s to professional digital SLR cameras or the equipment is compact snapshot: Always with the end result irreplaceable personal memories. Environmental factors, hardware failure or operator error can lead to loss of stored data.

Thus it is not so far, it is sufficient in many cases, some simple rules to comply. The firm Kroll Ontrack, a provider of services and software for data recovery, data erasure, data conversion and computer forensics, has compiled 10 recommendations, the significant contribution to the security of personal photo data should not make one:

1st Turn on the camera or the digital camera off before you remove the memory card. Otherwise it can lead to data loss.

2nd Avoid the memory card or the camera to stay high temperatures, such as a parked car in the sun. Heat is a major cause of data loss. The plastic sheath of a flash card can be forgiven much, and the contacts do not work anymore. In addition, components can dissolve the board. Also hard drives with camcorders have a higher failure rate in the heat.

3rd The safest course is to transfer the data when connecting the camera along with the card to the computer.

4th Transfer the photos and movies at regular intervals on a computer. To avoid that you forget to delete data on the card and possibly accidentally. In addition, you will have a safe backup of your data on external hard drive or laptop. As an interim solution should be at least in pictures quite an online backup.

5th Check the correct display of photographs and films after they were transferred to a computer, and before you delete the images from the memory card. A faulty fuse offers only false security.

6th Always use the Safely Remove Hardware feature when you plug a flash card or camera to the computer. Follow the recommended procedures for the possible deactivation of connected devices. An improper removal of hardware is a major cause of data loss.

7th Format the memory card at regular intervals. Before doing this, always make sure that no important data.

8th Back up hard drives or memory cards already used in read, if multiple cards are used. To limit the risk of confusing the card and format as the wrong card. Lack of data organization is a common cause of accidental deletion or data loss.

9th Keep on memory cards and hard disks in the accompanying envelope, if it is removed from the camera. So your storage media are well protected against environmental influences or contamination by sand or water.

10th Who else uses older camcorder with tape drives as storage media, should always be careful to have adequate play drives. It is appropriate to transfer in time to future-proof video on disk.

Nevertheless, if a data loss is established, possibilities of data recovery is not affected. Let in this case, the memory card or hard disk where the files are unchanged, and take it as soon as possible to a professional data recovery.

Especially in the summer months observed Kroll Ontrack an increase in requests for photo data recovery. The best insurance against data loss should the company photo, digital photo album in order to keep and perform regular backups.

Source:http://docma.info/Tipps-gegen-Datenver.7900.0.html

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