Throw the tapes away – disk backup is here

Posted by Mark on Oct 29, 2008

Data backup can be a nightmare, balancing the demands for instant access against the equally important need for security and reliance. Essentially there are Business Continuity demands that are competing with the requirement to be able to perform a Disaster Recovery.

The same people that patted you on the back because they could get their files back quickly from an online storage system might be the first in the queue to stick a metaphorical knife between your shoulder blades when the disk based backup system is off with the data recovery company, and you don’t have a good old fashioned solid and reliable tape backup.

So are tape backup systems better than disk based virtualized backup systems, do on-line backup systems trump all others? What is best?
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Solid state media – a tough nut to crack?

Posted by Mark on Oct 19, 2008

USB pens are part of everyday life. Small and portable with a high capacity, most of us can get most of our important data onto one, they are trusted, sometimes even as a backup. They have no moving parts, so they cannot crash like a hard disk, so they must be pretty robust, right? I’ll never need a data recovery from one will I?

Wrong!
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RAID away

Posted by Mark on Oct 16, 2008

Interesting day for RAID recovery work, though emotions were divided with one happy customer and one greatly saddened one.

Like the old London bus joke about “none for ages then three come at once” RAID data recovery is not an everyday requirement but two turned up this morning within ½ and hour of one another. Both were 12 disk DELL units, one reported that 3 drives had failed, the other that two were offline.

Could we recover the data?
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Another one bites the dust

Posted by Mark on Oct 10, 2008

So it looks as though Fujitsu are about to handover their hard disk reins to Western Digital, or so the rumours abound. With IBM out of the picture, Maxtor having gone the say of Seagate how long before we are left with only one supplier for disk storage? Wonder who that will be.
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Does Hard Disk erasure work?

Posted by Mark on Sep 23, 2008

Data being lost stories crop up with too great a frequency, and with them a renewed debate about data security, data erasure and whether data can ever be completely eradicated from a hard drive.

Whatever the data you do not want it falling into the wrong hands, and just keeping it away HM Revenue and Customs or the MOD is no guarantee of its safety.
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Once you are in a hole it is time to stop digging

Posted by Mark on Sep 23, 2008

“There is just one more thing we want to try” has sometimes been the sentence that I have heard from the other end of the phone immediately prior to some data being lost to this world forever.

This is not a plug for using data recovery companies, I work for one and don’t believe that it is always the best option, but it is a good idea to emulate the calm and measured approach that a professional would take.
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How to avoid Data Recovery

Posted by Mark on Sep 23, 2008

We often get asked “what could I have done differently” when data has been lost, especially when a recovery could not be made or the cost of the data recovery work was rather high.

The simple answer is often “made sure you had another copy of the data”. A hard disk crashing might result in annoyance, the cost of a replacement disk, the time to re-install the operating system and all of the applications, but this is nothing compared with the time that has been spent working to create spreadsheets and to write letters or other documents. Worse still is when the data is a record of an event that simply cannot be repeated, it is not possible to travel in time and go back over your children’s early years, and holding that wedding again is not usually an option.
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RAID data recovery leaps forward

Posted by Mark on Sep 23, 2008

Failure of a RAID system can seem like the end of the world for the stressed out people trying to find out what is wrong whilst fending off the attentions of the accounts department, members of the board of directors and probably people from every department who have data stored on the RAID and want to access is “now – thank you very much”.

Traditionally RAID data recovery has been a protracted process because of the greater complexity and the lack of flexibility in those recovery tools that are publicly available. A faster service could sometimes be achieved only by increasing risk by not securing data before starting work.

Now this has changed with Altirium’s latest RAID recovery software the process can be completed within a few hours.
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