Recovery

Reboot, Recovery and Relief with Rollback Rx
by: Jacob Henderson

Fixing computer problems is generally regarded as a delicate task that involves the risk of making things worse, or deleting data accidentally. With RollBack Rx system restore software the process of repairing computer problems is so easy that even someone who has basic knowledge of computers can maintain his or her pc. They will no longer have to depend on outside help to show them how to reconfigure their computers, perform a pc restore or reinstall the operating system, which is a tedious process.

Installing application or device drivers is something only trained technicians are expected to do, because if there is a situation where one of the installations go wrong, the entire process might have to be repeated, wasting time, money and worse still, increased downtime. That is about continuity of work. During this procedure, if data happens to be deleted then the user must work extra to recreate the whole thing, adding to the frustration.

Restore, Rollback And Retrieve

Imagine being able to fix computer problems with one keystroke! This is exactly what you can do with RollBack Rx system restore software. It protects and restores computer settings to whichever point in time you choose. The scheduled snapshot feature, which is the heart of Rollback Rx ensures that each and every PC can be updated, so that they function without any down time. You never have to wait for professional help to tweak a setting that appears simple enough. To repair computer issues, you need not reinstall operating systems with the fear that something might go wrong or that you might waste a lot of time. Instead, with the confidence that Rollback Rx is protecting your system, you can manage your time better towards other priorities related to your work. Additionally, you have the advantage of being able to control computers that are in remote locations, which means you don’t have to physically be present in front of the PC to fix computer problems. A problematic software upgrade, a virus, spyware can all be eliminated by rolling your pc back to a safe point where it functioned normally.

Easy To Maintain

Depending on the kind of work you use your computer for, Rollback Rx is available in different versions with additional features to suit different computing environments. Maintaining your PC has never been easier, since Rollback Rx lets you restore your computer as quickly as you can restart your computer. Whether it is a stand-alone computer or part of a network, fix computer problems with the click of a mouse, while retaining all the data you were working on right up to the moment the problem occurred!

UPS

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS), uninterruptible power source or sometimes called a battery backup is a device which maintains a continuous supply of electric power to connected equipment by supplying power from a separate source when utility power is not available.

A UPS is inserted between the source of power (typically commercial utility power) and the load it is protecting. When a power failure or abnormality occurs, the UPS will effectively switch from utility power to its own power source almost instantaneously.

While not limited to safeguarding any particular type of equipment, a UPS is typically used to protect computers, telecommunication equipment or other electrical equipment where an unexpected power disruption could cause injuries, fatalities, serious business disruption or data loss. UPS units come in sizes ranging from units which will back up a single computer without monitor (around 200 VA) to units which will power entire data centers or buildings (several megawatts). Larger UPS units typically work in conjunction with generators.

Historically, UPSs were very expensive and were most likely to be used on expensive computer systems and in areas where the power supply is interrupted frequently. However, as prices have fallen, UPS units have become an essential piece of equipment for data centers and business computers, but are also used for personal computers, entertainment systems and more.

In certain countries, where the electrical grid is under strain, providers struggle to ensure supply during times of peak demand (such as summer, during which air-conditioning usage increases). In order to prevent unplanned blackouts, electrical utilities will sometimes use a process called rolling blackouts or load shedding, which involves cutting the power to large groups of customers for short periods of time. Several major blackouts occurred in 2003, most notably the 2003 North America blackout in the north-eastern US and eastern Canada and the 2003 Italy blackout, both of which affected over 50 million people, and brought attention to the need for UPS power backup units.

A UPS should not be confused with a standby generator, which does not provide protection from a momentary power interruption and may result in an interruption when it is switched into service, whether manually or automatically. However, such generators are typically placed before the UPS to provide cover for lengthy outages.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org

External Hard Drive

External hard drive, gives you more easier to manage your data. External hard drive is useful and simple to attach to your personal computer or notebook. Once you can plug it in your PC or you can unplug it when you finish you're work.
Data which is very important to protect from crash and malfunction is save in your external hard drive.

ATA

Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) sometime called as IDE, is a standard interface for connecting storage devices such as hard disks and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers. But, recently the newest standard is call SATA (Serial ATA) comes with better specifications.

Lost the data and try to recover it

I read someone wrote how he was lost the data:

When a file is deleted (removed from the recycle bin within Windows), both file systems simply mark the file as deleted. The data is not actually removed from the drive, but rather the space it takes up on the disk is now considered to be free. Consequently, if you delete a file accidentally, you have an excellent chance of being able to restore it provided you do not write more information to the disk.

In my situation, I had two NTFS partitions on the effected disk. When I ran FDISK, it wrote garbage information over certain areas of this disk, including areas of both partitions. As a result, the first partition (the one with my article on it) had lost its partition boot sector, meaning it could not be accessed normally by an operating system. The second partition had merely had crucial system files overwritten, and was unbootable, but still fully accessible once I transferred the disk to another computer.

Thankfully there is a way to fix all of this, and get the data back!

Semiconductor storage

Semiconductor memory uses semiconductor-based integrated circuits to store information. A semiconductor memory chip may contain millions of tiny transistors orcapacitors. Both volatile and non-volatile forms of semiconductor memory exist. In modern computers, primary storage almost exclusively consists of dynamic volatile semiconductor memory or dynamic random access memory. Since the turn of the century, a type of non-volatile semiconductor memory known as flash memory has steadily gained share as off-line storage for home computers. Non-volatile semiconductor memory is also used for secondary storage in various advanced electronic devices and specialized computers

Magnetic storage

Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetization on a magnetically coated surface to store information. Magnetic storage is non-volatile. The information is accessed using one or more read/write heads. Since the read/write head only covers a part of the surface, magnetic storage is sequential access and must seek, cycle or both. In modern computers, the magnetic surface will take these forms:
- Magnetic disk
-->Floppy disk, used for off-line storage
-->Hard disk, used for secondary storage
--> Magnetic tape data storage, used for tertiary and off-line storage

Back Up Your Data

Recently most computers are equipped with a DVD burner, do creative use it to manage vital data backup. The amount of data you can store on a single DVD is several Giga Byte.

There are many types of backup you can make.

1. Disk image backup.

- Use a disk image backup software and make a complete image backup of the disk on consecutive DVDs.

- Create an emergency rescue CD.

--> If a hard disk crash, use this emergency CD to boot from.

--> Then recreate the data directly back from this backup stored on the DVDs.

2. Full hard disk backup.

Data backup software and create a full backup of the hard disk on consecutive DVD’s.

Computer storage

Computer storage, computer memory, and often casually memory refer to computer components, devices and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time. Computer storage provides one of the core functions of the modern computer, that of information retention. It is one of the fundamental components of all modern computers, and coupled with a central processing unit (CPU), implements the basic Von Neumann computer model used since the 1940s.

In contemporary usage, memory usually refers to a form of solid state storage known as random access memory (RAM) and sometimes other forms of fast but temporary storage. Similarly, storage more commonly refers to mass storage - optical discs, forms of magnetic storage like hard disks, and other types of storage which are slower than RAM, but of a more permanent nature. These contemporary distinctions are helpful, because they are also fundamental to the architecture of computers in general. As well, they reflect an important and significant technical difference between memory and mass storage devices, which has been blurred by the historical usage of the terms "main storage" (and sometimes "primary storage") for random access memory, and "secondary storage" for mass storage devices. This is explained in the following sections, in which the traditional "storage" terms are used as sub-headings for convenience.

RAID LEVELS

To secure your data from damage or crash this is how to setting up storage to meet your need. So, do not loose your data or you should be back here or some sites to find the article about how to recover your data ;))

A quick summary of the most commonly used RAID levels:

• RAID 0: Striped Set (2 disk minimum) without parity: provides improved performance and additional storage but no fault tolerance from disk errors or disk failure.
  
• RAID 1: Mirrored Set (2 disks minimum) without parity: provides fault tolerance from disk errors and single disk failure. Increased read performance occurs when using a multi-threaded operating system that supports split seeks, very small performance reduction when writing. Array continues to operate with one failed drive.
• RAID 3 and RAID 4: Striped Set (3 disk minimum) with Dedicated Parity: Provides improved performance and fault tolerance similar to RAID 5, but with a dedicated parity disk rather than rotated parity stripes. The single disk is a bottle-neck for writing since every write requires updating the parity data. One minor benefit is the dedicated parity disk allows the parity drive to fail and operation will continue without parity or performance penalty.
• RAID 5: Striped Set (3 disk minimum) with Distributed Parity: Distributed parity requires all but one drive to be present to operate; drive failure requires replacement, but the array is not destroyed by a single drive failure. Upon drive failure, any subsequent reads can be calculated from the distributed parity such that the drive failure is masked from the end user. The array will have data loss in the event of a second drive failure and is vulnerable until the data that was on the failed drive is rebuilt onto a replacement drive.
• RAID 6: Striped Set (4 disk minimum) with Dual Distributed Parity: Provides fault tolerance from two drive failures; array continues to operate with up to two failed drives. This makes larger RAID groups more practical. This is becoming a popular choice for SATA drives as they approach 1 Terabyte in size. This is because the single parity RAID levels are vulnerable to data loss until the failed drive is rebuilt. The larger the drive, the longer the rebuild will take. With dual parity, it gives the array time to rebuild onto a large drive with the ability to sustain another drive failure

RAID

RAID (redundant array of inexpensive drives (or disks), refers to a data storage scheme using multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives. The benefit of RAID is to increase data integrity, fault-tolerance, throughput and/or capacity, compared with single drives. In its original implementations, its key advantage was the ability to combine multiple low-cost devices using older technology into an array that offered greater capacity, reliability, speed, or a combination of these things, than was affordably available in a single device using the newest technology.

MTBF

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) is the average time between failure of a system. Well, the system we use should be fail sometime. I'm talking about harddisk now. We use a harddisk as a storage. We put data in it. You can figure this, if you are doing some reports and the harddisk crash. What should we do? Panic! it's normal.

Well we don't want that happened to you.

Here's a few steps to anticipate it.

1. know your system, read the mtbf of your system (or you can ask the seller)
2. back up your data