Thursday, October 7, 2010

Data Recovery and Your Business Disaster Planning


Data Recovery from drives that will not power up can only be performed by trained recovery engineers. These engineers will move your damaged drive(s) into a "clean room", where their equipment can copy a duplicate drive for inspection. This is done to determine where the data is actually corrupt and where it is not. This is almost always a procedure that takes hours or days of continuous work. Recovery technicians are also skilled at rebuilding rare or obsolete equipment.

Requests for Laptop Data Recovery is somewhat more common than for desktop computers. Laptop drives are very small in comparison. Special tooling, equipment and handling procedures are required. However, recovery rates are 90% and higher. Typical problems seen with laptop computers are mechanical or electronic failure, where either the drive does not spin at all, or if it does, then quiet but persistent "ticking" or "crunching" noises can be heard during powering up - this particular problem is mainly due to an internal head amplifier failure or, more seriously, a head crash or misalignment problem - the majority of which are recoverable.

A wide variety of failures can cause physical damage to storage media. CD-ROMs can have their metallic substrate or dye layer scratched off; hard disks can suffer any of several mechanical failures, such as head crashes and failed motors and tapes can simply break. Physical damage always causes at least some data loss, and in many cases the logical structures of the file system are damaged as well. This causes logical damage that must be dealt with before any data recovery is possible.

Computer system data is the livelihood of any business organization. No company can continue business in the event of total loss of data. Disaster recovery planning is a major preventive measure employed by the Government and big business. It is estimated that most large companies spend between 2% and 4% of their IT budget on disaster recovery planning, with the aim of avoiding larger losses in the event that the business cannot continue to function due to data loss. Of companies that had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% close within two years and only 6% will survive long-term.

Data Disaster Planning backup services are now much more sophisticated and reliable than simple tape backups. Data disaster planning clients ran their former backup services on tape for years without ever changing their configurations or experiencing a "disaster". But, it only takes one catastrophe to change your mindset. A major risk of tape systems is that even when all indicators point to successful backups, the restores fail. Secondly, most companies using tape systems don't employ a secondary fail-safe system.

Tape backups are not generally encrypted, not very secure, and not recommended. Almost anyone can read them and gain access to your clients, sales, prospects, notes, billing records, payroll, tax info, and anything else on your computer.

Backup systems usually have redundancy built in. Redundancy is the key to data security, so you can never have too many backups. Mirrored hardware only protects you from a hardware failure. Since 90% of data loss is due to data corruption or user error, mirrored equipment offers no protection as corrupt data gets instantly written to the mirror. The only way to protect your data is by restoring from a backlog of backups.

Businesses that want to disaster proof their data must make sure that it is in a secure off site location and only available to authorized individuals. The popular technique for file system repair is to assume very little about the state of the file system, and simply rebuild the file system from scratch.

Another strategy involves scanning the entire drive and making note of all file system structures and possible file boundaries, then trying to match what was located to the specifications of a working file system. This technique generally does not repair the underlying file system, but merely allows for data to be extracted from it to another storage device.

Notably slower than consistency checking, this method can, however, recover data even when the logical structures are almost completely destroyed.

Data Recovery Tools often use PC-based programs to access special hard drive microcode that is designed to enable Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) system manufacturers and service providers diagnose the proper operation of hard drives.

Many companies, like Drive Fitness Technologies (DFT) use sets of diagnostic tools, such as Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), that provide error logging and self-test capabilities.

Designed to address problem situations where end users suspect hard drive malfunction, recovery programs can be integrated into the system diagnostic package, with system integrators distributed by diskette, CD-ROM, or in a special protected partition on the hard drive. Data recovery experts can then be contacted by the end user, for assistance and direction from the system OEM telephone support staff.

It has been found, in most problem situations, that a suspected hard drive is in fact not malfunctioning at all. In this way, end users can significantly reduce the disruption and the expense associated with hard drive replacement, while receiving help in determining the root cause of the problem.








Computer system data is the livelihood of any business organization. No company can continue business in the event of total loss of data. Visit us for more on disaster proofing your business and secure Data Recovery.



This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

No comments:

Post a Comment