Why You Should Be Backing Up

Many people worry about viruses, freezes, hackers and other problems with their computers. The one thing that they should worry about the most is backing up. We're not talking about backing up into a parking space, but the need to back up your data in the event of a hard drive failure. For most people this isn't something they think about on a daily basis. You cannot trust that everything will be just fine and your files are safe and secure because you have some sort of virus program on your machine.

There are many ways a computer can fail - lightning being one of them. Many people discount the fact that a lightning storm can hit their computer and basically fry it. How do I know this? It happened to me and not just once but twice. You may be saying " but I have a power surge protector on my computer". The power surge protector will take the lightning hit once and then burn out. The warranty on most power surge protectors won't fix a computer that just got fried by the lightning, or it's hard drive wiped clean by it. You will be told by the manufacturer that it did it's job by taking the power hit.

In the event that you have someone else doing your web hosting for your web site, there is an even greater chance that their server can be hit by many different things - from viruses to hacker attacks. Your information and website could be wiped out if your web hosting service doesn't back up your files. It is not an automatic, nor an assumption that any web hosting service will back up your files.

There are many ways of backing up your files today. You could use an external hard drive, CD's or DVD's and with some companies you can back up to their servers. Most computers come with backup programs that can be set automatically by the user but many do not know how to use them.

You won't realize how important backups are until you lose your folders. Think about losing your calendar, your address books and all the important documents and software you have painstakingly created and installed on your computer. One failure and all is lost. I suggest getting over to Direct Horizon and getting educated about the proper protection and use of your computer while it's still in prime running shape. It takes very little time and effort to back up your computer versus countless hours and expense trying to recreate your files.

If you find your computer is slowing down or glitching it would be wise to take it to a repair shop and have them migrate your files to another hard drive while they still can. Recovering lost files is expensive and sometimes impossible. You don't realize what you have until you lose it. Backing up is the most important thing you can do on your computer - do it today!

Direct Horizon Business Development Group has over 50 years of technical experience behind it's business practices. Whether it's web design, content creation, content distribution, point of sale systems, traffic and conversion tracking, ppc or custom software, Direct Horizon Business Development Group is the one you want to call.

Data Backup Reporting in a Nutshell

Data backup reporting is an initiative undertaken by many companies today. Most businesses depend on mission-critical information which can have an impact on their operation's success. As a consequence, these companies make use of special protection measures to safeguard this vital information. Backup systems help these companies prevent the risk of losing track of their data. They also monitor, analyze, and improve capacity planning.

Keeping track of valued information is part and parcel of a company's comprehensive data management system, especially for businesses that employ multiple data storage and protection schemes. The specially designed technical systems can augment the capabilities of backup software, which focuses on backing up entire pools or information or a specified portion of it. The system works to consolidate reports from multiple backup processes, platforms, devices, and other systems a company might use to protect its valued information.

As a business organization grows, so does its data storage requirements. Users often store important digital information on shared network drives. Corporate databases, applications, and even email can span multiple storage systems across the enterprise. However, the sheer volume of files and systems can make it difficult for IT managers to properly manage and maximize the company's existing data storage resources.

Data storage management tools collect information and stores it in a database in order to facilitate its access, analysis, and usage. Backup managers and other IT administrators make use of the information generated by data backup reporting software in order to gain a top-level view of the company's information-protection and management schemes. Attaining this perspective can help managers and administrators pinpoint potential problem areas and recommend solutions that can improve a company's data-management processes, policies and procedures.

How to Recovery LVM Partitions in Linux

Do you need to add a new disk to LVM volume for expanding it? Or, are you trying to add a new disk on LVM with zero redundancy? You must create complete backup of your precious data before trying out any of the above things. Adding a new disk to LVM volume and then expanding it may cause catastrophic data loss, if any of these drives fails. In case, the backup is not available, Linux Data Recovery is the only way to go.

The LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) metadata structures are stored on original drive in Linux volume group. The journaling file system, like Ext4, move around it, as the disk space is employed or occupied.

Although the process of expanding the LVM drive is risky, it is not impossible. You can moderate the method for Ext4, LUKS, and LVM without losing your precious data. To do this, you need at least 4 storage devices, if you are expanding two hard drives.

Go through the underwritten steps to perform mitigation for the spanned LVM without losing data and requiring Linux Recovery solutions:

First of all, create the Physical Volumes.

After that, create a volume group.

Create LUKS volume on the top of Logical Volume Manager.

Create a File System and external journal.

Close all the windows and backup your hard drive data.

Note- Although, the above methods work in various situations, there is no guarantee of reliability. It is only a conscription method and can not replace complete backups.

The major advantage of the above method is that when any physical drive fails, journal is external and thus you can mount volume as read-only to backup data. This method also protects your system against metadata corruption or loss, as you should create regular backup of primary physical drive and can clone the drive.

However, if any disk fails on your system in this configuration, you encounter serious data loss situations. At this point, you need to perform Data Recovery Linux to get your mission-critical data recovered.

The recovery is best possible with the help of powerful professional Ext4 Recovery software. They are powerful enough to systematically scan the entire hard drive and extract all lost, missing, and inaccessible data from it. With simple graphical user interface and read-only conduct, they are totally easy and safe to use.

Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery is the most prominent tool that ensures perfect recovery in most of the data loss scenarios. It recovers lost data from Ext4, Ext3, Ext2, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32 file system volumes. The software is compatible with all major Linux distributions, including SUSE, RedHat, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Mandriva.

Recover Lost Data With the Help of Data Recovery Technicians

Many hardware and software are available for data recovery. A data recovery center can send technicians to your home or office to help in recovering the data. These centers offer efficient service by providing hardware and software necessary and trained technicians to recover data you had assumed to be lost or inaccessible, but it is always advisable to take a back up of your important data and files.

With the revolution of the digital age in most parts of the world, data is being manipulated and managed only with the help of the computer and computer networks. Hence the security and safety of the data is of great concern. But there are many possibilities to lose all the important data stored in the computer. It could be lost during data transfer, or it could be accidentally erased during power cuts or any other situation that makes the system shut down suddenly. It could even be lost during a computer crash or could have been deleted by mistake. It is a general notion that the data once lost can never be recovered back by any means. Data recovery is the technique to recover corrupt or inaccessible data from the system, which has been damaged in some way. Any sudden loss of data could be easily retrieved back by this technique.

There are many software available to recover lost or corrupted data. Some of these software may even be available free of cost. Some situations demand for special hardware for the purpose of data recovery, but it is possible to recover any kind of data that is lost. A recovery center helps to recover the data in a very efficient way. They offer prompt and professional service and trained technicians to recover the data. All software and hardware that is necessary for data recovery would be provided by these centers.

Moreover, they help in recovering data from various storage media such as hard disk drives, tape drives, DVDs, and thumb drives. Most frequently data loss is mainly due to operating system failure. In such cases, a recovery center copies all files to another drive and reinstalls the operating system, which may not be provided by most computer servicemen and service companies. Also these centers would not allow one to install partitions in order to save the data from any future problems. Another popular failure of data accessibility and loss is due to disk partition. This can also be easily tackled by these centers. Even data that is deliberately or accidentally deleted by the system could easily be obtained back.

One of the best ways to prevent loss is to store the data in an alternate medium. It is always advisable to take a back up of the important data. Data backup process involves moving the data from the hard drive to some separate location. A data recovery center helps in choosing and setting up the efficient data backup. A recovery center also helps in explaining the various methods available to take a backup. This helps in preventing loss of money and time for data recovery.

It is advisable to take a copy of the corrupted data that is to be handled by the data recovery software. Also no data recovery center must be allowed to attempt the backup data that was taken previously. It is always advisable to make a duplicate copy of all the critical data.

Creating a Win7RescuePE

This tutorial is a guide to create a Win7RescuePE, bootable as either a CD/DVD or as a UFD (USB Flash Drive). Win7RescuePE is a project that can be downloaded and run within the WinBuilder utility to create boot disks based on WinPE 3.0, while also providing a user-friendly Windows environment to work from.
Requirements:

Build source: Building a Win7RescuePE boot disk will require a Microsoft Windows7 DVD (32 bit only). 64 bit Windows7 DVDs are currently not supported.

You can use free available Windows7-RC1.
Installed Windows Advanced Installation Kit (Windows AIK).
Windows AIK is available from Microsoft for free, and can be downloaded, burned to a DVD, and then installed in Windows from the DVD. It is available for download when you type "WAIK" on Google.

Build environment: A Windows XP or later operating system (32 or 64 bit) is recommended.

Build utility: WinBuilder is the program that actually builds the boot disk. From within WinBuilder, Win7RescuePE itself can be downloaded. It is necessary that you use WinBuilder 077 RC 2 or above. The WinBuilder download page can be found by typing "WinBuilder" at Google as well.

Hard drive space: Approximately 2 GB of free space is required during the Win7RescuePE build process. Installing Windows AIK requires up to 1.5 GB of free space.

Memory (RAM): The target system requires a minimum of 256 MB, with 512 MB or more recommended.

As a further clarification, the Win7RescuePE boot disk can be built from a Windows 64 bit OS, but it cannot be built using a 64 bit Windows7 DVD as the source.

The remainder of this tutorial covers the steps required to create a bootable Win7RescuePE CD/DVD or UFD. The procedure was written while using WinBuilder 077 RC 2 and Win7RescuePE, and was tested on both Windows XP SP3 and Windows7-RC1 as the build environment.
Step 1: Download and install WinBuilder
Download WinBuilder from the link below. Version (077 RC 2 as of this writing) is recommended.

The WinBuilder download page will look similar to the the screenshot below:

The WinBuilder download will be in the form of a zip file containing one file (WinBuilder.exe). Extract this file to the folder where you want to run WinBuilder from. It is recommended that you create a new folder in the root of a drive, such as C:\WinBuilder, D:\WinBuilder, etc., and extract WinBuilder.exe there. It is also recommended that the path to the folder and folder name itself do NOT contain any spaces, as this can cause problems under some circumstances.

Step 2: Start WinBuilder and download Win7RescuePE
Start WinBuilder by executing WinBuilder.exe. If running from Windows Windows7, WinBuilder will need to be run as administrator by right clicking WinBuilder.exe and choosing Run As Administrator.

Since no projects yet exist in the WinBuilder folder, it should go immediately to the Download Center screen as shown below.

Since Win7RescuePE is a new project, you must add the download server to WinBuilder.
You can do that by selecting a available project, and then pressing the Add a new web server button. Name of new web server is: rescue.w07.net/Projects

See screenshot below.

Select updates.boot-land.net and rescue.w07.net/Projects in the bottom-right section. For the first try, it is recommended that you leave "Recommended" selected in the drop down list, and leave all other items as they are by default. Select the Download button to start downloading Win7RescuePE. The screenshot below shows the download in progress:

If you get one or more messages stating that a file cannot be found or downloaded, acknowledge the message and let the download complete with the missing file(s). Then select Download from the main WinBuilder screen, and choose Download again on the Download Center screen. Doing this should cause WinBuilder to download just the missing file(s) so that you now have a complete Win7RescuePE installation.

If you want to start the Win7RescuePE download over again from the beginning, close WinBuilder, delete everything in the WinBuilder folder except WinBuilder.exe, and then run WinBuilder again to start over.

When finished with the Win7RescuePE download, the main WinBuilder screen will look as shown below:

Step 3: Install Windows AIK
Windows AIK will be required to build the Win7RescuePE boot disk.

Windows AIK can be downloaded from the Microsoft web page.

The file downloaded from Microsoft will be an ISO file, approximately 1.3 GB in size. Once downloaded, burn the ISO file to a DVD with a utility such as BurnCDCC. This utility can be downloaded from Terabyte Unlimited.

To start the install, insert the DVD and wait for the Windows AIK welcome screen to appear. If the DVD doesn't autorun when inserted, you can open the DVD drive in an Explorer window, and the double click startcd.exe. Be sure to note the installation requirements on the welcome screen, which specify which versions of Windows (and Service Pack levels) are supported by Windows AIK.

Select Windows AIK Setup from the welcome screen menu. After some initialization and the license agreement screen, the following dialog will come up:

The defaults shown above will work fine with Win7RescuePE. Be sure to check the required disk space before proceeding by using the Disk Cost button. Clicking Next will start the install. At completion, the following screen will appear:

Windows AIK requires both the.NET Framework and MSXML 6.0 to be installed. If they are not already installed on the system, Windows AIK Setup will detect this, and request that you install either/both of these items first. Both are available to install from the same DVD, and appear on the welcome screen menu as.NET Framework Setup and MSXML 6.0 Setup.

Step 4: Configure Win7RescuePE before building the boot disk
Start up WinBuilder to the initial screen, which should show the Win7RescuePE project available. Note again that if running from Windows Windows7, WinBuilder needs to be run as administrator by right clicking WinBuilder.exe and choosing Run As Administrator.

With the Win7RescuePE item highlighted in the left pane, click on the Source button at the top. The Paths configuration screen will now be visible as shown below:

The key item on this screen is the Source directory, which tells Win7RescuePE where to find the source for building the boot disk. The Target directory and ISO file items can be left as they are by default.

If using a Windows7 DVD as the source, insert the DVD in a drive, and use the browse button in the Source directory dialog to select the drive letter for the Vista DVD. In the screenshot above, the F:\ drive is the Windows7 DVD. For convenience and a somewhat faster build, you can also copy the contents of the Windows7 DVD to a drive/folder of your choice on the hard drive, and then specify that location in the Source directory dialog. For example, if you copy the contents of the DVD to the folder D:\Windows7, then that location should be specified in the Source directory dialog.

Next, select the Script button at the top, and then select Configuration in the left pane. This brings up the Configuration screen for Win7RescuePE as shown below:

The settings shown above are recommended for the first build.
Next, expand the Build section in the left pane, and highlight the 0 - PreConfig item.
If you installed Windows AIK to a location other than the default of "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK", then use the browse button to select the folder where it is installed. The screenshot below reflects the default installation location.

Step 5: Build the Win7RescuePE boot disk (the ISO file)
This step will build the boot disk and create the Win7RescuePE ISO file, which will be created (by default) in the ISO folder under WinBuilder, and will be named Win7RescuePE.iso. Please note that creating Win7RescuePE on a USB flash drive will require some additional steps after this one. Those steps will be covered in Step 8 below.

Highlight the Win7RescuePE item at the top of the left pane, and select the Play button at the top-right of the screen to start the build. The Win7RescuePE main screen is shown below as a reference:

The screenshot below shows the build in progress:

When the build completes, a Build Successful message box will be shown:

Click OK to complete the build. If you are creating a UFD rather than a CD/DVD, you can move on to Step 8 at this point. Otherwise, continue below to create the CD/DVD.

The file Win7RescuePE.iso will be created in the ISO folder as shown below. The actual size of the file will depend on the configuration options chosen, as well as the source (Windows7 DVD).

The ISO file can be burned to CD/DVD by using a CD/DVD burner application capable of burning ISO files.
Step 6 (optional): Create the Win7RescuePE boot disk as a USB Flash Drive (UFD)
Once you have completed Steps 1 through 7 above, you are now ready to create a bootable UFD.

Expand the Finalize section in the left pane, and then highlight the Copy to USB-Device item. On the right, select the Script button, which will bring you to screen shown below:

Plug in the UFD (if not already plugged in) and determine its Windows drive letter. At the bottom of the screen above, use the browse button to select the root directory of the UFD (the example above has it set to G:\).

To go ahead and create the UFD, select the "Make USB boot device" item. After a short time, you will be prompted to format the USB drive. Click OK to continue. The HP USB Storage Format Tool window will come up, as shown in the screenshot below.

In the Device field, carefully select the target UFD device from the drop down list. Double check that you select the correct device since all USB drives on the system will be listed.

In the File system field, select NTFS (recommended), and then select Quick Format under Format options.

Check the settings carefully (especially the Device), and then select Start to format the drive. Before the format actually starts, there will be a confirmation screen where you can cancel the format if necessary:

When the format completes, a summary screen will be displayed as shown below:

Click OK, and then Close the format dialog to continue. If you use Grub4Dos as bootmanger, a screens as shown below will be appear.

After selecting your UFDD, and pressing Install, the process of setting up the UFD to boot, and copying the required files to it will be continued.

During the file copy process, the screen below will be shown (shows file copying in progress):

At completion, there will be an All Done message as shown below:

Click OK to finish. The UFD device is now ready to boot. You will need to set the UFD as the boot device in order to boot from it. Typically this can be done by either by going into the BIOS setup and changing the boot order, or by selecting the UFD device from a menu of boot devices that can be brought up (on some systems) at boot time by pressing a hot key.

The Win7RescuePE Desktop:
Booting and initializing Win7RescuePE will typically take from 1 to a few minutes, depending on the system, how the boot disk was configured, and what type of device it is booting from. A UFD will boot faster than a CD/DVD on most systems.

The Win7RescuePE desktop will look similar to the screenshot below, depending on the options selected in the Win7RescuePE configuration. The PENetwork utility (shown on desktop below) can be used to configure the network and map network drives if needed.

Additional Information: Optimizing For Size
If you would like to reduce the size of the boot disk to achieve a faster boot time, as well as require less RAM, some/all of the following configuration items can be considered:
In the NET section, uncheck all items except PENetwork. If you do not require PENetwork (for mapping network shares), that can also be unchecked.

Uncheck the entire APP section.
Uncheck the entire Tweaks section.
Uncheck the entire Addons section.

Repair MS Access Database File

What could be more disastrous than receiving an error message while attempting to mount your Access database? Unmountability of the access database primarily results into inaccessibility of all its stored records. The most obvious reason for the occurrence of the error message could be corruption of Access file. Damage in the file can be caused due to various reasons, such as improper system shutdown, application malfunction, malicious software, simultaneous modification of same database records. All the hazards created after the error message can be easily surmounted by restoring the records from an updated database backup. However, unavailability of an updated backup does not leaves you with any other option, but to use an advanced Access Database Repair utility.

Consider a practical case, where you receive the below error message while attempting to open an MS Access database file:

"Microsoft Office Access was unable to open the file '|'. The file may not be an Access file, the path or filename specified may be incorrect, or the file can not be opened exclusively. To repair the file manually, on the File menu, point to Manage Database, and then click Compact and Repair Database"

As the file could not be opened, the records stored in it becomes inaccessible. In addition, the error message appears repeatedly every time you attempt to open the Access file.

Cause
Corruption of Access database file.

Resolution
An easy solution (as suggested in the above error message) is to Compact and Repair the database. To do so, follow the underneath steps:

1. Go to Toolbar menu and click 'Tools'
2. In the drop down list, choose 'Database Utilities' and click 'Compact and Repair Database'.
3. Choose Access file that needs to be repaired in 'Database to Compact From'.
4. The compact and repair process can be started by clicking on 'Compact'.
5. Select a destination where you will need to save the database file.
6. Click 'Save'.

The resolution suggested in the error message repairs your database in most cases. However, if the resolution is unable to accomplish the desired results, then you will need to use advanced repair mdb tools to repair your damaged database file. Such third-party Access Repair applications use advanced scanning methods to repair the corrupt database file.

Access Recovery is a reliable mdb repair tool used world-wide by both technical and non-technical users. The tool is easy to understand without any prior technical understanding. It supports Access 2007, 2003, XP (2002), and 2000. The repair tool is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000.

How to Recover Deleted Files on Your Computer

Computer is becoming necessary in our everyday life, not just a toy or accessories anymore. As we put more time on it, sometimes you accidentally delete your important files from your hard drive, but you don't have to panic as it is easy to recover deleted files yourself. You can undo the deletion and restore files for sure as long as you have the best undelete software installed and act immediately once you realize that your files are gone. Here is how to restore deleted files using Windows PCs or Mac OS.

What are the chances of recovery?

A deleted file can be undeleted or recovered right after it has been gone and for some time afterwards, because the operating system will not reuse space from the deleted files immediately. But the chances of perfect data recovery will decrease the longer you leave the situation, as some or all of the space will be reused by the system eventually. The chances of data recovery will also depend on how full the hard drive is. Windows operating system will try to avoid reusing disk space that has been recently freed, in order to give recovery software a better chance of performing its task. But as the drive gets near to its full capacity, there will be better chance of free space gets reused by other files sooner. If you happen to defragment the hard drive since the file was deleted, then this will seriously affect the chances of a file recovery process. The free space left by deleted files will be occupied by current files due to fragmentation process, making it much less likely that undelete software could find anything useful.

Recover deleted files effectively

No operating system will provide any tool to recover deleted files as a standard, so you would need to use 3rd party undelete software.

Undelete software will understand the internals of the operating system that was used to store files on a disk and find exact location of the disk space that was occupied once by a deleted file. As the space won't be reused immediately after the file was deleted, there is still a very good chance of successful data recovery using this software. If you are a Microsoft Windows user, there are third party tools available such as Uneraser and Data Recovery Wizard. They are reported to use thorough search mechanism and the most sophisticated data recovery algorithms to provide best possible recovery rates. It can even restore files from lost or corrupted partitions.

Saving the recovered data

One thing you must remember is that you should not write to the disk that contains the files that you would like to recover, because if you do so the space will be overwritten and the data will be lost. Instead, you should save the files to a separate drive such as external drive, network share or USB memory stick. And always be cautious not to drop or lose it as it might contain your security data that other people can easily get an access to.