Repair Hard Drive? The Answer May Shock You!

August 28, 2009

Backup Your Hard Drive Before it's too Late!

It’s happened to us all - we’ve been working away on a document or project and then a sudden computer crash erases all record of our effort.In more serious cases, a hard drive crash could potentially mean that you lose access to everything you've ever saved.It is because of this it can be a good idea to back up your entire computer.  There are specialist online data backup companies but you can also back up your data manually.

You should start by deciding where you will be backing up the computer's data to.Ideally you should really use an external hard drive that has enough disk space to store copies of everything on your current hard drive.In order to find out how large your external device needs to be, on your windows PC click the right mouse button on the hard drive in 'My Computer' then select the 'Properties' item in the menu.  This will tell you the size of your current hard drive. 

Once you have purchased a suitably sized external drive, you should get some suitable backup software.  You have several options, however Norton Ghost is perfectly suited to the task.

Plug in the USB drive and by following the manufacturers instructions you should load up the backup software.  Once it has loaded, you must then create and run the backup.  This can take some time, depending on the size of the hard drive being copied so be prepared to wait a while.Once all the data has been copied, check all the files and folders on your USB drive to make sure that all the important files have been copies and that you haven't overlooked anything.

If this seems like a complicated process then do bear in mind there are lots of online data backup companies that you can make the process much easier for you.

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August 5, 2009

Where Is The Best Place To Go For Online Data Backup Services

There are quite a few different methods that you can choose if you are looking for effective data backup but the online data backup method is by far one of the most popular of all. With the right online data backup service you will have all the data backup protection that you are ever going to need and it also makes it much more convenient for you as well.

If you are interested in getting online data backup services, here are a few of the top picks for companies that are offering such services.

The Best Data Protection

The Data Protection Company is one that even the largest corporate business can rely on for online data backup. They are a privately held company that was founded over two decades ago, and which is focused solely on data backup and storage for business clients. They have designed an easily managed and affordable solution that is well known.

For online data backup services they are certainly one that can be easily trusted, and their service enables businesses which are subject to certain regulations to easily comply with the data backup and storage requirements of HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC, NASD, and Graham-Leach-Bailey.

Mozy

Mozy is another name that you are going to want to become more familiar with if you are looking for online data backup services of the highest quality. This is a simple and safe way to back up all of the important data that you have on one or more computers, and this service makes it easy for you to get online backup for your data, an affordable and secure solution that is easy to use.

Even if you have little to no computer experience you will be able to navigate through this software and get the security that you are looking for.

Storage Pipe

Or perhaps you would like to try out the Storage Pipe Company online data backup services, their online backup and recovery service is one that is complete and operates over a secure connection to a remote data center.

Their service provides you with an offsite corporate data protection solution that is totally secure and reliable, so you will never have to worry about losing important computer data again.

These are just a few ideas to get you started, and although these three are certainly some of the good options when it comes to online data backup and recovery services, there are various others that you can choose from as well.

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July 3, 2009

How do I Back up my Files? - 12 Top Tips

It used to be that you would backup everything on your computer by using floppy disks.Today, when one sound or graphics file can easily be larger than the capacity of a disk, it would be impractical to back up even you documents by using floppies, let alone your applications.  Luckily there are better options including Zip disks, CD writers, tape drives, external hard drives and even online backup services.You can also compress your backed up files so that they will take up less space.  Follow the below pointers and you will be able to find the media that is best suited to your needs.

1) Next, determine the quantity and file sizes you will be backing up.

2) Figure out the quantity and file sizes of any documents or applications you want to archive permanantly to a backup device or removable media.

3) Plan for that amount of information to grow in the future.

4) you should calculate your budget for a backup storage device and removable media to use with it.

5) Consider if you plan to archive photographs or scanned files, need portability of the media or the drive itself, wish to record music for playback on some other equipment, or require ease of use.Weigh each of these these factors along with your need to back up your files.

6) Work out the total cost per MB of media for each drive that you are considering.zip drives themselves are relatively cheap however the disks aren't.

7) You may want to consider buying a 100MB zip drive if you need limited storage capability (less than 1GB).An external parallel port or USB Zip drive will provide the most versatility and portability.Consider buying a 250MB Zip drive if your storage needs are moderate (a few GB). 

8) Buy an internal zip drive if you will only use the drive for backup and you are able to install it yourself (installation fees add up).

9) Consider buying a CD-RW drive if your storage needs are more moderate and you will regularly back up more than 500MB of data.

10) Consider buying a Jaz drive or perhaps even a tape backup drive if you will be backing up large amounts of data regularly.

11) Buy an external hard disk if you will need a lot of space, wont be keeping the old backups and dont need portability.

12)  If you require additional security, data protection and the ability to recover your data quickly then online data backup should be a serious consideration.

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May 8, 2009

Why do I Need to Back up my Data?

Imagine you have spent hours writing a report or another very important piece of work that has to be submitted tomorrow.All of a sudden, your hard disk crashes and all of the hours that you have put into writing that vital document have just gone up in smoke.  Don’t be tempted to join the naive many who say “it will never happen to me!” as probability will dictate that if you don’t take action soon, one day it inevitably will.  So how can you prevent such a catastrophe occurring?  This is precisely what data backup is all about.

Data is often the most important part of computer usage as it can often take months or years to accumulate relevant information.As technology becomes more reliable, the risk of losing information has been significantly reduced however it would be needless to lose documents due to lengths that you could have taken to prevent such an occurence. 

There are several different formats of media that will allow your data to be backed up.  Commonly used devices are external hard drives, CDs, DVDs, USB drives and for more sensitive information there are companies and services which will provide you with secure online data backup.  Whenever you backup data to an external device, said device should be stored in a different location from the original computer in case a fire or local electrical surge should damage the data backup hardware.

Data backup is useful only if done at constant intervals and within reason.  For example if you are working on a lengthy document, you should not wait a significant amount of time before saving your work.You should consider the effort that it would take to redo the work since the last save in the case of a crash and make a sensible judgement call as to how often you save your work.

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