Review Iomega StorCenter Pro NAS 150d (2TB)

+ The Iomega StorCenter Pro 150d network-attached storage drive has a generous capacity;
+ a built-in print server;
+ Gigabit Ethernet;
+ four USB ports for printers or hard drives;
+ backup software included;
+ capable of RAID 0+1 and RAID 5;
+ hot-swappable drive;
+ decent speeds;
+ generous support.

- But no media server features presented.

= The Iomega StorCenter Pro 150d is a network-attached storage drive squarely targeted at the smal l- and home office user. With Gigabit Ethernet, USB port, and generous capacity for a fair price, this NAS drive should satisfy those users.

The Iomega Storcenter Pro 150d is an appreciably large NAS server targeted for small- or home office use. Above-average performance and considerable storage space make this device a great solution for data archiving and backing up PCs in your office. The four built-in USB ports let you expand storage with additional USB hard drives or share a printer across the network (the drive has a built-in print server). For those who are not technically inclined, setup is straightforward and easy. At $800, the 1TB option is priced fairly when considering price versus performance and capacity. We recommend it if you're not tied to ultrahigh performance. If you're looking for media-serving capabilities, consider some home-oriented NAS drives such as the HP Media Vault MV2020 or the Buffalo TeraStation Home Server.

Drive type: network-attached storage drive
Capacities: 1TB, 2TB
Capacity of test unit: 1TB
Number of drives/bays: four drives, installed
Max capacity: N/A
Hot swap/cold swap: hot-swappable drive
Drive speed: 7,200rpm
Cache: 16MB per drive
Dimension: 10.35x7.08x11.54 inches (HWD)
Notable design features: none
Connection options: Gigabit Ethernet
Operating systems supported: MS Windows 2000/XP/XPx64/Vista; Mac OS X (10.3.9 or later); Linux (Red Hat 9, Mandrake 10, Debian 3.0, Gentoo, Fedora Core 3)
Software included: Iomega Discovery Tool Pro, EMC Retrospect Express (includes two client licenses)
RAID implementations: Software RAID 0 and 0+1; hardware RAID 5; JBOD
Any additional features: Two front-mounted USB port and two rear-mounted USB ports for connecting hard drives or printer; built-in print server; TCP/IP; Network File Protocols include FTP, Microsoft CIFS/SMB, Linux/UNIX NFS, and Apple AFP; Network and File Security include ACLs, Kerberos v5.0, and Microsoft AD/NT Domain Controller
Service/support: Two-year standard warranty (up to three-years with $179 extended service plan); 24-7 toll-free phone support while under warranty (after warranty expires, toll-free phone support is available on weekdays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. MT); site offers driver/software downloads, live chat with tech support, live user forums, software how-to videos, and FAQs.

CNET Labs throughput tests revealed great write/read speeds. Overall, its performance fell directly between average- and top-performing devices. Writing a 5GB folder of mixed files took 13 minutes, 59 seconds; reading back the same folder took 15 minutes, 22 seconds. The similarly priced Buffalo TeraStation Home Server completed the same tasks in 24 minutes, 56 seconds and in 15 minutes, respectively. Note that if you experience slow read speeds, try a firmware upgrade. We noticed the same problem, and the upgrade fixed it.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Iomega_StorCenter_Pro_NAS_150d_2TB/4505-3190_7-32308210.html?tag=pdtl-list

Internal Hard Drive Buying Guide

What is an internal hard drive?
The internal hard drive is a data storage device installed and used in desktop PCs, workstations, and servers, as well as certain consumer electronic products (these mainly use small form factor internal hard drives) such as digital cameras and digital audio/video players. Internal hard drives provide massive storage capacities for all types of data including images, documents, movies, music, games. This means more fun for you and greater functionality for your computer and devices!

Technical Information
This type of storage device is non-volatile, i.e. it does not require constant power to maintain data. Inside the internal hard drive, there are one or several platters for data storage and read/write heads used to access or record data. A set of components drives the platters and the heads perform data operations on the platters as they spin. The internal hard drive uses a mechanical design, which is very different from that other white hot permanent storage solution - Flash Memory.

Applications overview


Personal storage
Nearly all storage applications on the desktop PC can be classified as personal storage. Personal storage applications do not require the hard drive to work non-stop, meaning they make fewer read/write operations. Most personal storage applications don’t require extreme performance, but high reliability is still a very desirable trait.

Consumer electronics

The consumer electronics domain is an exciting new playing ground for internal hard drives because digital cameras, digital audio/video players are constantly throwing up new requirements regarding capacity and cost, which are exactly what the internal hard drive does best. Since most consumer electronic devices try to be as small as possible, fitting the standard 3.5” hard drive has proven unfeasible. Manufacturers have opted to use the much smaller “Microdrive” instead.

Enterprise storage
Enterprise applications are closely related to workstations and servers, for example, CAD/CAM, digital video editing and production, as well as database. Enterprise storage applications have higher performance and reliability requirements than other applications, and the hard drive workload is very heavy. Server hard drives are expected to run normally without the slightest interruption 24/7.

Understanding Hard Drive Specifications

Form factor
There are several form factors to ensure the compatibility of the internal hard drive with a variety of different devices.

3.5-inch
The 3.5 inch hard drive is the mainstream form factor for the desktop PC and workstation/server hard drives. Though the size of such hard drives is relatively big, they provide the largest data storage capacities. Moreover, desktop PCs and workstations/servers chassis provide more than enough space to install these hard drives.





2.5-inch
Notebook users should be familiar with the 2.5-inch hard drive. You can find more detailed information about the 2.5-inch hard drive in our notebook hard drive buying guide. (link to Notebook hard drive guide). Currently, the 2.5-inch drive is also used as enterprise storage as it offers usable space savings, reduces power consumption and heat, and increased reliability as well.



1.0-inch
1.0-inch hard drives (called the Microdrive by Hitachi) are designed for small consumer electronics such as MP3 players, digital cameras and PDAs. Due to its diminutive size current capacities are only in the several of GBs, but this already represents a significant amount of storage for handheld consumer electronics products.



Capacity
Data storage capacity is very important with internal hard drives because it determines how much data you will be able to store. Currently, the Operating System, 3D games and high definition videos each require several GBs of storage. 3.5-inch internal hard drives can provide over 500GB. Even the tiny 1.0-inch hard drive has reached the amazing capacity of 8GB. We can expect capacities to keep climbing in the future, too.

RPM
Car owners are no strangers to the term RPM (rotations per minute). It is an index used to measure the rotational speed of engines. The spindle speed or the RPM in a hard drive are closely to its performance. A higher RPM results in less time being spent accessing stored data for a higher level of performance. Performance-sensitive enterprise storage applications generally utilize 10,000~15,000 RPM internal hard drives, while personal applications are well-served by 7200RPM products.

Cache
The cache refers to high-speed RAM (random access memory) integrated on the PCB of a hard drive. Cache is used as buffer among the CPU, memory and hard drive. Drives with more cache generally perform at a higher level than drives with less. Cache sizes of 2MB, 8MB and 16MB are currently standard options for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch internal hard drives, while 1.0-inch products may only be equipped with 128KB.

Interface
The interface is used to connect the hard drive with the computer. Here we list the most commonly used interfaces.

PATA (IDE)

ATA is the acronym for Advanced Technology Attachment. It has been an industry standard hard drive interface for 15 years. ATA uses a 16-bit parallel connection to make the link between storage devices and motherboards, and is also called PATA to distinguish it from the newer SATA standard. In additional, ATA is also known as IDE or EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics).

Currently the two most popular standards for ATA hard drives are the ATA-6 (which is also known as Ultra ATA 100 or Ultra DMA 100) and ATA 133. The maximum bandwidth for the former is 100MB/s, and 133 MB/s for the latter. Most of today’s optical drives utilize the IDE/PATA interface.

SATA

The newer SATA interface is also an industry standard for connecting hard drives to computer systems, and is based on serial signaling technology. The advantages over PATA include longer, thinner cables for more efficient airflow within a computer chassis, fewer pin conductors for reduced electromagnetic interference, and lower signal voltage to minimize noise margin. The bandwidth of SATA is also far improved over PATA - the SATA 1.0 can reach a maximum of 1.5Gb/s (150MB/s), while the latest SATA 2.5 standard can support up to 3Gb/s (300MB/s). The latter also sports additional features such as NCQ (Native Command Queuing), port multiplier and port selector, although certain non-SATA 2.5 devices may also provide some of these features. As a result of so many advantages, the SATA interface is gradually replacing PATA as the mainstream hard drive interface in the personal storage market.

SCSI

SCSI, or Small Computer System Interface has the outstanding ability to compartmentalize diverse operations, making SCSI very suitable for multitasking operating environments. In addition, SCSI enhances critical performance in situations where more than one hard drive is used, such as in workstation/server or RAID environments. SCSI hard drives are typically available with less seek times, lower latencies and much higher transfer rates than an equivalent-capacity ATA drive. Before serial signaling technology was applied to the SCSI field, all SCSI interface standards used parallel technology to transfer data.

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)

Utilizing serial signaling technology, SAS is earmarked as the next-generation enterprise storage interface for its high bandwidth and high throughput performance for enterprise applications. Thanks to SAS’ compatibility with serial ATA, it may also be the interface of choice for future high performance desktop storage.

CF (Compact Flash) Compatible
Originally used as a flash storage card interface, it has been applied to the 1.0-inch hard drive to give it compatibility with consumer electronic products utilizing the CF slot. There are two types of CF card: CF Type I and CF Type II. The main difference between them is the greater thickness of the CF Type II. Microdrives typically use the CF Type II.


How do I choose the right internal hard drive?

Filter by Application and Interface
As we found out in the Applications Overview section, there are three types of internal hard drive application: Enterprise storage, Personal storage, and Consumer electronics. Based on the obvious differences between the applications, you can easily decide what type of interface you need for your internal hard drive.


If you are building a brand new system, it is recommended that you choose either SAS for Enterprise storage or SATA for Personal storage as a means of future-proofing your new system for the foreseeable future. If you are simply adding new hard drive(s) to your current system, please check the type of interface provided by your motherboard.

Moving on to Performance
Spindle speed or RPM is the main factor related to the performance of a hard drive. Though there are many speed options, there is actually some relation between RPM and the interface.


The above table lists the mainstream relationship between interface and RPM. Higher RPMs can significantly improve the performance of a hard drive and is one of the areas in which internal hard drives will develop. 10,000 RPM hard drives using the SATA interface have already begun to appear in the market for personal storage applications, but tend to cost more than their 7200RPM counterparts. Unfortunately, spindle speeds are an area of development that is quite slow.

Capacity
Although higher capacities tend to sound appealing, it can sometimes result in per unit storage cost increases instead.

Example:
1. Hard drive A is priced at $103, and offers 250GB storage. The cost per GB storage of this hard drive is $0.412/GB ($103/250GB).
2. Hard drive B is priced at $330, and offers 500GB storage. The cost per GB storage of hard drive B is $0.66/GB.

Cost per GB may be helpful if you are having problems deciding between several hard drives that differ only in terms of storage capacity. It is less useful when comparing hard drives with different interfaces, RPMs or cache sizes.

Cache Size
Like RPM, a larger cache size is better for performance. Currently, 8MB and 16MB cache is mainstream configuration for 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch internal hard drives, while 128KB is more common on 1.0-inch internal hard drives. A larger cache tends to cost more, however.

launcheHitachi announced new 160HB Travelstar 5K160 Mobile Hard Drives

Hitachi has launched a new mobile hard drives based on perpendicular recording technolog. Company has today announced its new 2.5″, 5400RPM Travelstar 5K160 series hard drives.



hitachi-5K160The drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) tech and is aimed at the notebook market, but it will be used in next generation 1.8-inch drives, ready in the second half of this year.
Capacities of  the new Travelstar drives: 40GB, 60GB, 80GB, 120GB and 160GB. The drives feature a 11ms seek time, 8MB of cache and are available with either an IDE or SATA interface.

The perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) term refers to the fact that the drives can store data vertically on their media rather than on a horizontal flat plane, which increases the amount of storage.


Hitachi in its press release claimed extra robustness and reliability of their new mobile Travelstar 5K160 hard drives which they claim is made with an alloy combination and layer-deposition process to resist corrosion, a new PMR write head to reduce error rates and write data bits with greater fidelity, and an iridium-manganese-chromium (IrMnCr) alloy read-head to offer twice the field reliability of competing drives.

“What we’ve achieved with the Travelstar 5K160 is a credit to our technical teams’ methodical, single-minded approach to excellence, which we adopted from the start of the PMR development process,” said Hiroaki Nakanishi, CEO, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “Our mission was to deliver PMR technology when it’s of the highest value to our customers, which is when the transition from longitudinal recording would be seamless in all regards, including reliability, performance, volume ramp and cost. By all measures, that time is now.”

Hitachi’s upcoming 1.8-inch drive will also spin the drive at 3,600 RPM rather than 4,200 RPM, using the improvements in performance from the areal density to offset the slower spindle speed.

The TravelStar 5K160 family will range in capacity from 40 to 160 Gbytes and it goes for sale in the U.S. this summer for $270 to OEMs and $300 to consumers with three-year warranty, which is standard of Hetachi. The company also has plans for a still slimmer hard drive measuring 1.8-inch in thickness for consumer electronics for small notebooks utilizing the same technology by latter half of 2006.

Data Recovery For Beginners

By Jeff Walters

Right now you probably concerned about to recovering your data as quickly as possible - so we’ll refrain from comments on the wisdom of regular back ups. There is no  time for preventative measures - the issue at hand is data recovery.
First - a simple tip could save you a lot of money. Take out your rolodex and get hold of your tech-savvy friends. If you’re in luck, they’ll offer to help, and if you’re really lucky, they might even have some disk recovery software. If you’re out of luck, then get out your wallet or purse out now … because this is going to cost you. Also, be prepared for a lot of time being wasted - data recovery can take a long time.
The first thing to establish is what exactly is wrong with your hard disk:
Either your computer won’t boot up, or

Your computer boots up OK but you can’t see one of your other drives.
Let’s see if we can eliminate the worst scenario. Listen closely to your hard drive - is it making any sort of weird noise, such as scratching, scraping, ticking etc?If so, then your drive is physically damaged and the only hope that you have is to take it to a data recovery service where experts might be able to get your data off for you. These services are expensive and time consuming - so you need to make a judgement call as to the value of data on the disk.
If it’s only your saved game data or downloaded music files you would like back, you’re probably better off kicking yourself for not backing up, and accepting the data loss.
If, on the other hand, it’s a book or other type of information product that you’ve been working on for years, then send it to a data recovery service for an evaluation and quote - it usually costs nothing.

If your hard disk sounds OK, then you stand a decent chance of recovering data yourself.
First you’ll need to download some software to help you out. Unfortunately, the better software utilities are not free, but the good news is that many allow you to try them out to see they can access the data. There are some freeware versions available but generally speaking these are not easy to use - no user interface / little documentation, or they are not very effective. There’s a list of recommended software on our site ‘Data Recovery Emergency Room’ - compare the different options then download a few of the trial versions.Your next steps will be based on how your hard drive/s were setup:
If you only have a single hard drive that has not been
partitioned or split into different “logical” drives, you’ll probably need to attach the hard drive to another computer that has enough space to store all your data. This can be quite technical so if you don’t have the skills please get a computer savvy friend to help out. Another option is to purchase an external USB hard drive case. You can then simply slot the hard drive into the case and plug it into another PC using a USB port.
If you have a multiple drive setup and your computer boots up fine, then it will merely be a case of getting the downloaded software to read the files and then copy them to another drive - provided you have a drive with enough space on it. If not, you’ll need to attach the hard drive to another machine with enough spare capacity.

The scenario where you have a multiple drive setup, where the problem drive is the one that contains your operating system files is more tricky. Look for a data recovery software package that has a boot disk option available. What this means is that when you start your computer with the boot disk in it, it will automatically run the data recovery program without trying to start windows. You should be able to see your files and then copy them across to another drive.

Hopefully these tips will enable you to get all your important files back. Once you’ve had some time to recover, please take a look at the various articles on our website - our goal is to make it one of the best resources on data recovery.
http://www.free-articles-zone.com

ST1.3 - One Inch Photo Seagate Hard Drives

Seagate Technology last week announced the Seagate ST1.3 Series 12GB 1-inch photo hard drive especially targeted to pocket music player and digital photo storage market segments.
With a footprint 23% smaller, 50% extra storage capacity, and 30% less power consumption than Seagate’s current 1-inch photo hard drive - the latest Seagate ST1.3 Series offers a new optional drop sensor for increased robustness, delivering the features most requested by handheld device manufacturers.


The ST1.3 Series hard drive is Seagate’s second hard drive with perpendicular recording and the company’s first drive utilizing perpendicular technology in the 1-inch category.


As part of its G-Force Protection feature set enabling skip-free, reliable media storage and playback, Seagate also includes an optional drop sensor. This will increase operational shock resistance 33% up to 2000Gs, enabling the drive to survive a 1.5-meter drop onto hard concrete or ceramic surfaces when properly mounted in a handheld device.

By offering massive 12GB of storage in such a smaller footprint, the ST1.3 Series hard drive is a powerful solution for increasingly sophisticated media devices such as digital audio players, portable media players, and mobile phones.

According to IDC, the worldwide mobile phone market is expected to grow 7% in 2006 to 857.9 million units. IDC forecasts that the worldwide converged mobile device market will reach 181 million units by the end of 20091 and worldwide portable multimedia player shipments are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 95% between 2005-2009.

The ST1.3 Series hard drive also delivers 30% greater power efficiency than previous models, enabling system designers and manufacturers greater choice in power supplies and system power-on hours.

Some Tips To Solve Common Problems With Hard Disks Crash

By Pinky Mcbanon


First - there are so many reasons why your hard disk may crashed:

(1) It may be caused by mechanical or physical problem such as the spindle motor system failure. This failure is usually caused by over-heating. The activity light flashing that you see on your CPU (central processing unit) indicates that its head moves to different tracks. If this movement fails, it can no longer read or write data. Remember, a hard disk is a hardware component, not a software. It is a magnetic device use to store data, it reads and writes data as it spins.

(2) Failure of logical system (the logical partitioned drives assigned as C, D, E, F, G) may be caused by and not limited to corrupt system files, corrupt firmware, registry components and virus infection. Spywares, adwares & all other malicious files may also cause your hard disk to crash.

HINTS:

(1) If you see the activity light flashing but the computer does not boot, the case may be, your files is still intact on the hard drive but becomes inaccessible -- this may be because of logical system failure. Try booting through a floppy disk or use the start-up disk that came with the system.

(2) If you don’t see any activity light flashing on the CPU and that the system can not start up (ofcourse after checking all power cables are “on”) then it is likely of mechanical problem. And notice that if the system BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) can no longer recognize the hard drive, then it is the physical/mechanical system that failed.

The good news is, usually, in today’s technology on hard disks, if this problem occurs it normally will alarm you and warn you before it will totally fails, so you could get that chance to immediately back up your files. And there are also many data recovery tools available in the market today. But at times, it is cheaper to replace the hard drive than to fix it (unfortunately).

TIPS & TRICKS TO AVOID THIS DISASTER TO HAPPEN:

1. Keep your hard drive healthy by performing defragmentation at least once a week (others prefers once every two weeks)

2. Run your anti-virus program everyday! Run spyware/adware removal tool at least once every week (there are many available free to download). Keep updates with all these tools and programs too! Turn on your firewall & pop-up blocker, it protects you from intruders!

3. Remove all unknown emails, clear your bulk and spam emails immediately.

4. Delete all internet temporary files (including all offline files)

5. Install all necessary updates on your computer

6. Be very careful in downloading files from different sites (firmware usually fails because of this)

7. The last but not the list – take “backing-up” your hard drive on a removable disk or tape as a serious task for you to do at least everyday or once a week especially if you are using it for business purposes!

http://www.free-articles-zone.com

New Seagate 750GB Hard Drive, The Barracuda 7200.10

Desktop and workstation hard drive capacity takes another giant stride, as Seagate has announced its brand new 750 GB hard disk drive. Called the Barracuda 7200.10, with its 750 GB capacity, the sleak unit represents one of the largest disk drive capacity ever from previous record of 500 GB.
PC World took it for a spin recently and says "it leads the 7200-rpm pack in overall performance". Those of you who don’t do video or host servers, what the heck you going to load this thing up with?

Seagate's new Barracuda 7200.10 is a Serial ATA drive and comes with either 8MB or 16MB on-board cache. As is the case with all of Seagate's hard disk drives, the 7200.10 monster too comes with a 5-year limited warranty. Suggested retail price is widely believed to be US$559 and the drives are already shippping across to distributors.

Having first launched the new hard disk drive for PC market, Seagate plans to introduce a custom versions for other consumer electronics, such as digital video recorders that are growing in popularity as standalone set-top-boxes or part of cable and satellite television receivers.

The big capacity leap stems from "perpendicular recording" technology that allows drive makers like Seagate and its rivals boost the density of a disk by aligning bits of data vertically rather than conventional horizontally on a circular platter. This enables much higher transfer speeds without increasing the speed of the drive’s spindle. At the same time, fewer moving components are needed in the drives making the access much faster in addition to substantially enhancing durability.

Analysts say a 750-gigabyte drive could hold roughly 375 hours of standard-definition television programming, about 75 hours of high-definition video, or more than 10,000 music CDs converted to the MP3 digital audio format.

Tips To Help With Hard Disk Recovering

By: Gregg Hall

IMPORTANT: Before attempting any recovery, make sure you have a viable back up copy of the information on your computer. It is essential to do a back up at least once a month, though every week is better in some cases. If you own a business, you need to have back ups.

Back up your data on disks, tapes, or sometimes on another computer and then transfer information. It is best to have a back up on a permanent disk or tape, however. Not having a back up can destroy your business.

Obviously, it is easier to manage a hard disk drive recovery on a personal computer over a business computer. Businesses demand access to their former records and programs in order to function. If you are a business, you should rely on daily or weekly back ups.

On a personal computer, items like favorite web pages, email addresses, financial records, and other documents risk destruction in a hard drive failure. These are items that you will want back ups.

Businesses are a little trickier. Software, financial documents, business databases, personnel records, customer records, and tax information are commonly stored on a hard drive. If one employee's computer crashes it is a manageable event. If the entire server crashes, it can take hours, possibly days for a computer system to be up and running again. This can be costly to any business.

Hard disk recoveries require your system to be erased and then items are reinstalled one by one. All programs have to be reinstalled. Information is added back in. It is a time consuming process that any computer expert dreads.

There is a way to eliminate a good deal of the hassle involved with a hard drive recovery. Instead of relying on your own back ups, there are companies who charge a minimal fee to go in and perform back ups for you. They keep these back ups stored in their location. If a system restore is necessary, they can then have you link to their website and transfer all your information to the correct folders and files.

To perform a hard disk recovery, you usually run a software program that restores it for you. There are online programs that will keep your data stored safely offsite with their company. Using one of these programs can save time and money. Instead of having to restore items one by one, you can retrieve pertinent information from their company.

Instead of dealing with the incredible stress and excruciating headaches that a hard drive failure can cause, why not have a solid back up available? A world of pressure can be removed from your shoulders by relying in a firm specializing in system back ups.

Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com

All You Need To Know About Data Recovery

Sometimes, every computer user will experience the trials and tribulations of hard drive failure. The reasons behind it vary, and could include everything from a human error to damages resulting from flood or water. Viruses can play a role as well, along with many, many other factors. For many years, the need to recover data that has been lost or destroyed has made data recovery such a very valuable asset.

Today almost all hard drives can be recovered. Normally, if the drive is making a ticking or a scratching noise, you can use certain software programs to recover the data. Sometimes, due to age or bad parts, the aperture arm in the hard drive can fail, or the platters can become damaged and lose the data that they hold. If you can’t recover the information with software, you’ll need to send the hard drive off and have it either rebuilt or have technicians recover your data.

Data recovery is always an option, from hard drives that are 1 GB in size to the largest of over 600 GB or more of data. No matter what size hard drive you have, the data can generally be recovered. Keep in mind that if you’ve had a computer crash, you’ll need to send the hard drive off to have the data recovered by technicians.

One of the key benefits of data recovery is the fact that information can also be retrieved from the recycle bin as well. Partition recovery, and even information that has been lost somewhere on the disk can be retrieved as well. Even though it may seem like your data is gone forever - the technicians that specialize in data recovery can retrieve it.

From Windows to Mac, everything can be recovered. There are different filing structures and formats, including NTFS and FAT32. These are common Windows filing structures, and hold all of the information for your hard.

Those of you who have multiple hard drives in your computer, can rest assured that RAID configurations can also be recovered. If a single hard drive on the RAID configuration fails, the RAID setup will absorb the blow and there won’t be a loss of data. On the other hand, if the entire RAID configuration crashes, it will crash big time. Whenever this happens, you’ll need to send it off and have technicians restore both the RAID hardware and software.

Anytime your hard drive happens to crash or malfunction, data recovery is there to help you get back your files. Whether they are personally files or very important files that are need for business - you can put your trust in data recovery and know that you’ll get everything the back the way it was.

By: ArtL

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Best way to prevent data loss.

Author: Vitali Priadkine

How can we protect ourselves from a sudden hard drive crash? One of the ways is through SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) by predicting future failures.


Many computer users take hard drive reliability for granted, not even thinking about minimal possibility of drive crash. They suppose that hard disk drive manufacturers have done a great improvement to their products towards disk reliability. And they have, but the reality is that all disks die eventually. Even if you have a recent backup, sudden disk failure is a minor catastrophe. How can we protect ourselves from a sudden hard drive crash? One of the ways is through SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) by predicting future failures.

The essential moment is that the user should understand how drives fail and why. There are two classes of failures the hard disk can suffer: unpredictable and predictable.
Unpredictable failures happen suddenly, without warning and can be caused by catastrophic events, handling damage, static electricity or an electronic component burning out, and there is nothing that can be done to foresee or stay away from them.
Predictable ones are 60% mechanical and occur gradually over time. The degradation of drive performance may include head crashes, head contamination, bad solder joints, bad curcuit board connections, motor break down, worn down bearing, spinning inability, excessive run out, bad servo positioning.
Most hard drives lose their performance slowly, and the disk is able to monitor and diagnose many elements’ condition through SMART, providing an early warning for many types of problems. When a potential problem is detected, the drive can be repaired or replaced before any loss of data.

This technology has developed to be industry standard for drive manufacturers and allows checking hard drive status, reporting it and providing some estimation for future failure date. SMART has been able to predict a gradual degradation of the disk. The original SMART spec (SFF-8035i) was written by a group of disk drive manufacturers. In 1995, parts of SFF-8035i were merged into the ATA-3 standard. Starting with the ATA-4 standard, the requirement for the disks to maintain an internal Attribute table was dropped. Instead, now, the disks simply return an OK or NOT OK response to an inquiry about their health. A negative response indicates that the disk firmware has determined that the disk is likely to fail. The ATA-5 standard added an ATA error log and commands to run disk self-tests to the SMART command set.

Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology systems (SMART) are built in to most modern ATA and SCSI hard disks. SMART disk drives internally monitor their own health and performance. SMART technology features include a set of attributes, which determine reliability-prediction parameters of drive and should not be exceeded under normal operation. Each attribute has an identification number (ID). Some types of reliability parameters are:
- Distance between the heads and the disk platters;
- Faulty sectors;
- Recalibration;
- Drive spin-up time;
- Drive temperature;
- Characteristics of the media;
- Motor and servomechanisms.
Attribute value is a positive integral number, usually in the range from 1 to 253. Initially, all attributes have maximum values. A value of 100 or 200 will often be chosen as the "normal" value. Some attributes are considered life-critical and others are just "informative". In case of hard drive wearing or when some components of the disk are about to fail, attributes indicate decreasing amount of values. Consequently, high values determine high reliability of the drive and low values – low reliability or high possibility of drive failure. Specific threshold is assigned to each attribute. Once the value drops below this threshold, SMART considers the disk to be faulty, which means it becomes very dangerous to store data on this drive.

Currently, the SMART system can detect about 70% of all hard drive errors.

Its main shortcoming is that it doesn't provide a direct mechanism for informing the OS or the user if problems are found. In fact, because disk SMART status is frequently not monitored, many disk problems go undetected until they lead to a catastrophic failure.
Monitoring a drive's behavior, SMART has the purpose of warning a user about the threat of drive collapse while time remains to take preventive action, such as back up the data to a replacement device. So why not use SMART monitor programs freely available on Internet to cut these problems off at the pass?


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Rescue your data

Loss of data from hard drive or a hard drive malfunction may prove detrimental to the prospects of your business. But data recovery from damaged hard drives is possible if you know what to do and whose help to ask for.

The biggest question is to what extent can data be recovered successfully. Server databases of up to forty-six gigabytes have been recovered. Data have also been recovered from hard drives damaged due to fire or flood.

Data loss attributable to human error or minor system malfunction, without damage to the hard disk, is recoverable by using data recovery software available in the market. Data is often erased accidentally and cannot be found even in the Recycle Bin. This recovery software provides an 'un-erase' feature that will allow you to retrieve data from your hard drive. There are many recovery utilities available on the internet that can be downloaded for free but they provide limited features than the paid versions. The most popular are McAfee Utilities, Gateway GoBack, Ontrack System Suite and Norton SystemWorks that can cost anything between $40 and $60.

However, if the problem is more serious than a mere loss of data, then it is advisable to send the hard drive to a reputable data recovery service provider. If you are having problems with a damaged hard disk, the best thing to do will be to leave it alone and send it to the recovery service provider. People have been known to install recovery utilities on the damaged hard drive but only to worsen the damage. If you are keen on trying to recover the data on your own, then first attach the damaged hard disk to another computer and use as a secondary slave disk before trying to retrieve the data.

Before sending the damaged hard drive for data recovery service, the reputation of the service provider should be taken into account. Companies that have established their credibility in this field should be your first choice. It is also advisable that you ask for an estimate of the cost and time within which the recovery process would be done. Usually, it takes 3 to 5 days for the process to be completed. Depending on the complexity of the problem the cost may be between $300 and $2500. Some of the more established data recovery companies are Ontrack, CBL Data Recovery Technologies, Vogon International, Data Recovery Clinic and Action Front though this is not an exhaustive list.

Though there are ways to recover data, there is no harm in taking measures beforehand. Important data, especially server databases, should always be backed up and businesses should assess the risk involved to take proper preventive measures.

By: Sue Jan -

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Hard Drive Mirroring “a Good Way To Protect Your Data”

Mirroring is the automated process of writing data to two drives simultaneously. Mirroring is used to provide redundancy. If one drive fails, the redundant drive will continue to store the data and provide access to it. The failed drive can then be replaced and the drive set can be re-mirrored.

This is quick how to setup your mirroring with two exactly the same hard disks. It assumes you're building a new system from scratch, and setup mirroring at install time. But let's get something straight first: Software mirroring does not mirror the disks - it mirrors partitions. Thanks to Ed Wilts from Redhat General Newsgroups for this remark. So in this guide I'll show you how to setup your partitions on one disk and mirror them to another. After that, we will learn how to rebuild our mirrored partitions after one disk dies.

Need of Software Mirroring

Mirroring is an easy way of protecting the data, from beeing lost from disk crash. For example, If you keep your private stuff on one partition you can mirror this partition to another on the second drive, and if one disk fails, you will not lose your data, since you have the exact same copy of your files on the second disk. The same goes for the whole filesystem. If you setup mirroring correct, you might never have to reinstall your system again.

Software Mirroring vs. Hardware Mirroring

• Disk mirroring can be implemented entirely in software. Software mirroring can be less expensive, but it is also slower. Software mirroring requires the host computer to write the mirrored data twice.

• Disk mirroring can be implemented in hardware on the host I/O controller. The burden of writing each bit of data twice is placed upon the I/O controller, which is specifically designed for it.

• Disk mirroring can also be implemented in hardware on an external storage device, such as a RAID array. In this case, mirroring is completely removed from the hosts responsibility

Benefits of Software Mirroring

• Data is backed up as changes are made keeping the backup copy current.

• Immediate access of an up-to-date remote data backup in case of local server failure.

• Rapid disk to disk data recovery from the central server to remote server.

• When data is restored, data loss is reduced to a minimum.

• Continuous real-time disk to disk backup operation minimizes impact on network performance.

• Backup windows all but eliminated.

• Provides 24X7 data availability and disaster recovery.

By: subhash

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Tips For Buying An External Hard Disk

By: Cedric Dirose


The first external harddrive which first hit the market, was large, clunky, slow and very expensive. Like most aspects of the world of computer technology, however, the prices of these external had drives have steadily fallen, even as the speed, reliability and storage capacity has increased so greatly. While the storage capacity of the first external hard drives was measured in mere megabytes, today most external hard drives are capable of holding hundreds of gigabytes worth of data.

There are a number of reasons why a computer owner would opt to buy an external harddrive instead of installing a secondary hard drive inside the computer case. One of the most significant benefits, of course, is that of convenience and simplicity. After all, many computer users are simply not comfortable opening the cases of their computer and installing additional hardware. When you opt for an external rather than an internal hard drive you do not need to crack the case; you simply need to plug it in and go.

Another great benefit of an external harddrive is its portability. Unlike internal hard drives, external hard drives can be moved from computer to computer in a matter of minutes, simply by unplugging them from one computer and plugging them into another. For this reason, external hard drives are often used in the business world, especially by traveling employees. Traveling employees can instantly sync up the data on an external hard drive with that on their desktop or laptop PC, and then easily transport that data anywhere in the world.

There are a number of things to consider when buying a new external hard drive, whether the drive is to be used for business or personal purposes. One consideration, of course, is that of price. While there used to be a huge price differential between internal and external hard drives, with external hard drives costing far more than internal had drives, these days the difference in price has dropped significantly, making an external harddrive a more realistic choice for more and more people.

Storage capacity, of course, is important as well. As with any type of hard drive, it is best to buy as large an external hard drive as you can afford. Even if you do not think you will ever need all those gigabytes of storage, it never hurts to have it available, and the price differential between large drives and smaller ones is generally quite low.

It is also important to look at the speed of the hard drive you are considering. The speed of the external hard drive will be expressed in RPMs, and the higher this number the faster the drive will be. In addition, you will see an average seek time number, expressed in milliseconds. The lower this number, the faster the drive should run, and this is an important consideration, especially for business users.

When the first external harddrive first hit the market, it was large, clunky, slow and very expensive. Like most aspects of the world of computer technology, however, the prices of these external had drives have steadily fallen, even as the speed, reliability and storage capacity has increased so greatly.

Cedric has been a technical writer of a computer magazine for over 6 years. He also has a website that helps people with their technical computer problems as well external hard drive reviews. Visit http://www.altsyssoft.com for a technical priority list on what items to look for when choosing a hard drive for your new computer.
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Not too late to recover your data

 Data recovery can save a majority of your data information, in the form of hard drives, zip disks, CDs, DVDs, and other means of storage. Data recovery is very common these days, as it can help you get back on track after your hard drive crash or other means of destruction to your data.

On the professional side of things, there are a lot of companies out there who excel in data recovery. They have technicians who are experts in recovering your data, and spend a majority of their time working on hard drives. Recovering the information from a hard drive can be a very time consuming process, all depending on just how bad the drive has been damaged. If the hard drive is damaged physical or the sectors have been damaged, some of the data that was stored on it may be lost forever.

If you take immediate action and seek a repair service for your hard drive, you just may be able to save everything. In the result of a crash, virus, accidental deletion, or other disaster, you shouldn’t waste any time at all. You should always look into a company, preferably local, that can help you with your hard drive. The company will first do an evaluation on the hard drive, then contact you and discuss what options you have available with you.

To safely and efficiently recover your data using software, companies have a few choices they can use. Below, you’ll find some software examples that companies use to recover lost data on hard drives.

FIRE recovery

FIRE is a bootable program that can immediately take action with data recovery. It can also assist with virus scans, incident response, and forensic analysis. FIRE is a very common program, widely used by data recovery specialists around the world.

LDE recovery

Known as Linux Disc Editor, the LDE method of recovery was originally created for recovering lost files in Linux. It is an older method of software and data recovery, which proved to be very beneficial to those who used Linux.

NT recovery

The software for NT data recovery provides the proper read access for hard drives that are set up with NTFS in the Windows or MS DOS environment. This software is among the most popular for data recovery technicians, allowing them to copy files from NTFS to FAT volumes.

The above examples are all but a few among the software recovery methods. Software recovery can work with most hard drives, if they aren’t too badly damaged. If the hard drive has been damaged by flood, fire, or other physical damage, it will probably need to be rebuilt. Again, if you don’t waste in time seeking a technician, you may be able to get everything fixed. Rebuilding the hard drive will take quite a bit of time, as the technician will have to go through every inch of the drive and replace the parts that have been damaged.

As important as your data is, it’s always in your best interest to get on the ball and don’t let any time be wasted. Time is always of the essence, especially when it comes to recovering all of your data and information. Time will always prove to be the ultimate and deciding factor with your information - which is why you shouldn’t let one precious second be wasted whenever something happens to your hard drive.

By: Kanicen

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Hard Disk Failure and Data Recovery

By Bharat Bista

Hard Disk: An Introduction

Hard disk is a non-volatile data storage device that stores electronic data on a magnetic surface layered onto hard disk platters. Word “Hard” is use to differentiate it from a soft, or floppy disk. Hard disks hold more data and can store from 10 to more than 100 gigabytes, whereas most floppies have a maximum storage capacity of 1.4 megabytes and in addition are faster too.
Normally term hard disk is much familiar with computers only but it is widely used as network attached storage for large volume storage. Furthermore, appliance of hard disk drives spread out to video recorders, audio players, digital organizers, digital cameras, and even in latest cellular telephones.
Reynold Johnson invented the first hard disk in 1955 for IBM 305 computer with fifty 24 inch platters and total capacity of five million characters, and in 1956 - first commercial hard disk was launched with 5 megabyte capacity, the IBM 350 RAMAC disk drive.
Within time frame of 50 years and rapid progress in technical enhancement, we have now reached to latest 2006 - First 750 GB hard drive from (Seagate) and First 200 GB 2.5" Hard Drive utilizing Perpendicular recording (Toshiba).

Heart of hard disk consists of four basic components:
The Platters: Platters are the actual disks inside the drive that store the magnetized data. Conventional platters are made of a light aluminum alloy and coated with magnetize-able material but latest technology uses glass or ceramic platters as they are thinner and also heat resisting. Most drives have at least two platters and the larger the storage capacity of the drive, the more platters there are.
The Spindle Motor: Hard disk drive consists of a spindle on which the platters spin at a constant RPM. Moving along and between the platters on a common arm are read-write heads. The platters in a drive are divided by disk spacers and are clamped to a revolving spindle that turns all the platters in a uniform motion. The spindle motor is built right into the spindle and rotates the platters at a constant set rate ranging from 3,600 to 7,200 RPM.
The Read/Write Heads: Read/write heads read and write data to the platters, and each head is fixed to a single actuator shaft so that all the heads move in harmony.
Typically, only one of the heads is active at a time either reading or writing data. When not in use, the heads are inactive, but when in motion the spinning of the platters generate air pressure that lifts the heads off the platters. The space between the platter and the head is so minute that even one dust particle or a fingerprint could disable the spin. When the platters cease spinning the heads come to rest, at a preset position on the heads, called the landing zone.
The Head Actuator: All the heads are attached to a single head actuator arm, which moves the heads around the platters. The Actuator arm moves the heads on an arc across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter. Contemporary hard drives use a voice coil actuator, which controls the movement of a coil toward or away from a permanent magnet based on the amount of current flowing through it.

Fundamental structures of all hard disk are same, and are composed of the same physical features, but their performance depends on the quality of their inner components.


Hard Disk Failure:
Hard Disk Failure occurs when a hard disk drive malfunctions and the accumulate data cannot be accessed. It may happen in the course of normal operation due to an internal or external factor.
Disk failure varies and the most common is “Head Crash” where the internal read and write head of a device touches a platter or magnetic storage surface often grinding away the magnetic surface. Head hover just micrometers from the platters plane which makes such collision the common one.
This sort of crash usually invites severe data loss and unprofessional data recovery attempts results further damage to the remaining data.
Hard drive also includes other controller electronics i.e., semiconductors, valves or electronic circuits, and major components such as Platters, Spindle Motor and Head Actuator. Failure of any these devices may cause a hard disk failure.

Factors causes disk failure are numerous, yet most common are power surges, voltage fluctuations, electronic malfunction, physical shock, wear and tear, corrosion, exposure to high magnetic waves, sharp impact, high temperature exposure etc.

The phenomena of hard disk failure is raising higher and higher; as to increase the read and write speed, today we have latest hard disk rotating amazingly faster and this immense revolving speed generates massive centrifugal force, a single adverse cause in the course of normal operation can cause severe hard disk failure.

Hard Disk Data Recovery:
Hard disk data recovery is the process of recovering the trapped data from the damage hard disk device, when it can not be accessed in normal circumstance.
Several Techniques are used to retrieving data from damaged hard disk and techniques vary accordingly. It can be done by moving disk drive to a working CPU, or may have to open the disk drive and replace parts such as read/write heads, arms and chips and sometime the platters have to be removed and placed into another drive.
Physical damage can not be repaired by the general users, as it requires clean and dust free lab environment, in addition proper hardware and technical expertise; where under microscopic examination with proper tool and techniques, the damage drive is put on to observation for data salvaging.
In case of worse happening, do consult Data Recovery Service for saving your important data trapped within the damage device.

Before You Take the Plunge: Essential Information on Data Recovery Know what you're dealing with

The world of data recovery is a big mystery for most consumers and even some IT professionals. This is largely because hard drives themselves are complex devices and their technological specifics are not generally well known. Data recovery companies thrive on their customers' lack of information and often get away with charging obscene rates for any recovery, regardless of complexity. I hope this article will be a helpful resource for consumers and professionals alike. I provide some basic information about data recovery by shedding some light on how hard drives work, how they can fail, what are the chances of successful recovery and how much the user can expect to pay. This information will enable the user to make an informed decision when choosing a data recovery company.

A bit about Hard Drives

A computer hard drive stores data on metal oxide platters which spin up to 10000 revolutions per minute. An actuator arm contains the 'head' which reads and writes the data in the form of magnetic charges one millionth of an inch above the surface. Any given drive can have multiple read and write heads and each head can 'crash' independently. A head crash occurs when the read/write head comes in contact with the platters of the disk (more on head crashes below). As manufacturers strive to cram more space on hard drives without increasing their physical size, the data gets written increasingly closer together, making for very difficult recovery should one or more heads crash. The brain of the hard drive is its controller board and this is unique for each individual hard drive. One other detail worth a mention is the service track of a hard drive. This is an area located on the outer part of the disk platter and it contains the drive's firmware zone. The firmware of a hard drive is the information used by the computer to communicate correctly with the drive. These are the main components that make a hard drive work, now let's talk about what can go wrong.





There are many ways in which a hard disk can fail





Hard drives are extremely fragile and can suffer failures in many different ways, leading to a loss of data. The five most common types of drive failures are: logical errors, mechanical failure, electronic failure, firmware corruption, and bad sectors, or any combination these. Least severe of these is usually data loss due to logical errors.





Logical errors are often the simplest and sometimes the most difficult problems to deal with when recovering data. They can range from an invalid entry in a file allocation table, a simple problem that needs little work; to severe issues such as the corruption or loss of the entire file system. Logical errors can be spotted when files become inaccessible, there is a delay in starting up the computer, and programs do not run properly. Logical errors are often seen as simple because there is nothing wrong with the physical drive leading users to try recovering it themselves by using third party software. This is quite risky, however, as running such software on a damaged drive can result in total loss of data. The most effective way to prevent logical errors on your hard drive is to regularly use the Disk Defragmentation tool in your operating system. For more comprehensive information on preventing data loss, visit the tips">http://www.a-datarecovery.com/tips">tips section of our website.





Recovering a drive with logical errors can be simple and quick, however if the problem requires manual bit-by-bit reconstruction of the data, it can also be quite complex and time consuming. Normally, logical errors are in the lower end of the price range as they do not require manual disassembly of the drive, however there are cases when logical failures end up in the higher end of the price range. The bottom line with logical errors is the sooner they are caught and the less a user tampers with the drive, the better the chances for a quick and thorough recovery.





Mechanical failures are often much more serious than any other failure and frequently lead to a partial or even total loss of data. The most common type of mechanical failure is a head crash, which is when the read/write head comes in contact with the disk platter. Head crashes can be caused by a variety of reasons, including physical shock, static electricity, power surges, and mechanical read/write failure. Mechanical failures are detected by a constant clicking or grinding noise coming from the drive. If you suspect mechanical failure, you must immediately shut down your computer and call a data recovery company for advice.





Mechanical failures are usually the most severe and most challenging to recover from. All mechanical failures require physical disassembly of the drive. The replacement of a read/write head is one of the most complex and costly procedures that can be performed by a data recovery engineer, especially with larger capacity drives. The chances of recovery depend entirely on how much damage the drive has sustained, however they can be quite good. A crashed head does not mean that all your data is lost! Once again, the sooner you catch a mechanical problem and turn off your drive, the more of your precious data is likely to be rescued.





Electronic failures are most common after a power surge or due to some other electric problem, and the most common type is control board failure. A power surge can knock out the control board, making the drive undetectable in the BIOS. Because each drive is fitted with a unique control board, recovery of this type is relatively complex. However, the good news is that normally once the control board issue is fixed, the data is usually 100% recoverable.





Recovering a drive that has suffered from an electronic failure can be time consuming, mainly because the specific problem takes some time to diagnose. Once diagnosed, though, the recovery is usually not tremendously complex and would probably land in the mid-range in terms of price. Most of the time, we are able to achieve a 100% recovery from drives that have suffered an electronic failure.





Firmware corruption is caused by logical problems or physical damage to the firmware zone on the disk platter. When the firmware becomes corrupt, the computer is often unable to properly communicate with the hard drive, and drive is not recognized in the BIOS. Fortunately, when the drive fails due to firmware corruption, the data is usually fully recoverable once the drive has been repaired.





Recovering a drive that has suffered from Firmware corruption is possible with the use of our proprietary technology. Because the firmware information is isolated on the outer rim of the disk, most of the data can be recovered successfully. The complexity of recovering a drive that has suffered from firmware corruption depends on the amount of damage suffered by the service track on the disk's platter. Expect the cost of this type of recovery to be in the mid- to high-price range.





Bad sectors are a common fate of all hard drives.





Eventually, all drives develop areas that are no longer functional and when this happens, they are isolated by the operating system. Bad sectors are very much like bumps in the road, areas which are avoided by the read/write head and which are no longer accessible to the user. If mission critical data exists on the drive, we recommend to backup as soon as possible, as the formation of bad sectors often indicates the impending demise of the drive. Finally, and most importantly, do NOT under any circumstances run the ScanDisk or Chckdisk utilities when data becomes inaccessible. These utilities are designed to fix only file system errors and not any other types of errors, so if your hard drive has suffered from bad sectors, these utilities only make things worse.





Bad sectors are accessible





We are able to recover drives with bad sectors using our proprietary mirroring technology. The process often involves manual mirroring bit-by-bit, which can be time consuming. The price of this type of recovery will generally be in the mid-range of the pricing schedule.



I hope the above explanations are of some use to all computer users. The basic fact is that data loss happens to everyone. Every hard drive crashes, and often when you least expect it to. Backup is essential for end-users and business users alike, and there are many excellent ways to back up your data. But if you've lost data, attempt to understand the problem before calling a data recovery company. Be informed, save your money, get your data back.

Source: www.articledepot.co.uk

Flash, Minidrive, Or Hard Drive: Which Mp3 Player Is Right For You?

By: Andrea Morris -

If you’re ready to ditch the Walkman and go high-tech with your portable music needs, you’re probably in the market for an MP3 player. For the non-gadget geeks among us, selecting a digital music player involves navigating some choppy waters. It’s easy to get bowled over by the waves of new technology—shuffles, nanos…where do you start?

As with any purchase, you can start by assessing your needs. There are three major types of MP3 players: flash, microdrive, and hard drive. Each has its pros and cons, many of which are dependent upon how you plan to use your MP3 player.

First, think about the size of your music collection. Do you have a modest sized collection of just your all-time faves or are you the live-for-music type who’s first in line when a new CD comes out? At most, a flash MP3 player will hold the equivalent of approximately 20 CDs. This size could be just right for people who plan to use their MP3 players mainly for their daily workouts.

The microdrive is the middle ground. They hold anywhere from 50 to 120 CDs. For the majority of us, a microdrive is big enough to hold most every song we want. If not, then you want the hard drive MP3 player. These puppies will hold your entire collection—as many as 1200 CDs.

The size and weight of each type of MP3 player corresponds with the amount of music it can hold. A hard drive is going to be bigger and heavier than a flash player. Price works the same way. You’ll pay more for a player that holds more. You can get a flash MP3 player for less than $150, a minidrive for $150-250, and a hard drive for $250 and up.

Next, think about where you’ll be taking your MP3 player. For example, if you want something you can listen to at the gym, a flash player might be the right choice because it tends to be lighter. A hard drive player would be bulky and heavy, at least in relation to a workout.

The flash is also a good choice for someone who wants something to listen to for short periods of time, such as during a commute. If you’ll be listening to your MP3 player for hours on end, you’ll want something that holds more music. It won’t take long to go through the 20 CDs worth of songs on a flash. A minidrive is a good compromise. It’s relatively small and light, but still holds enough music to prevent your favorite song from becoming your least favorite song because you’ve listened to it 30 times.

We’ve said that the hard drive MP3 player is bigger and heavier than the other two kinds. That’s only relatively speaking, of course. It’s hardly like lugging around a concrete block. If you want all your music with you all the time, a hard drive is the way to go. For instance, this type of player is good for someone who goes on long trips without access to their collection for switching out songs.

If you’re ready to ditch the Walkman and go high-tech with your portable music needs, you’re probably in the market for an MP3 player. For the non-gadget geeks among us, selecting a digital music player involves navigating some choppy waters. It’s easy to get bowled over by the waves of new technology—shuffles, nanos…where do you start?

As with any purchase, you can start by assessing your needs. There are three major types of MP3 players: flash, microdrive, and hard drive...

Andrea Morris is a staff writer for DiscountOnline. The latest electronics discounts are at DiscountsOnline Electronics .
http://www.articledashboard.com

Data Recovery Procedures For Hard Drives

Your computer’s data is at risk. Whether you use a Mac or a PC, viruses, power surges, hackers, human error, natural disasters, hardware failures, and more are real everyday threats. To keep your data safe and sound, you will first need to back up your files on a regular basis. Secondly, when hard drive failure does occur, data recovery is the only solution.

Of course it is ideal to back up data and avoid the complicated process that is data recovery altogether, but even when you take the necessary steps to prepare for hard drive damage, you might run into problems.

Here are some procedures to follow if you experience trouble.

If a program is not functioning well on your computer, turn the computer off! This may seem a simple task, but shutting down a computer at the moment you notice your hard drive to be working overtime – perhaps you hear unusual sounds (like “cleaning”) – can prevent damage to the disk and data loss. If you let a failed hard drive run, it will eventually self-destruct. Damage to your disk is inevitable in this scenario.

If this is the case, unless you know exactly what you’re doing, don’t fix your computer yourself. Professional expertise is not a luxury in this situation – it is a must. Data recovery is a difficult and sensitive process requiring special tools and a clean environment. Not only will it be tremendously challenging to repair a hard drive on your own, but you might actually make matters worse and ensure irreversible data loss.

There is “do-it-yourself” data recovery software, but be cautious of things like this. With most computer problems of this nature, at-home instructions can be more dangerous than useful. Even if a company boasts that its products and instructions will handle your vulnerable data properly, it is important to be a skeptical consumer.

A local service provider is the average solution. Repair can happen on your own premises and you can be assured that your computer is in good hands. However, there is always the possibility that your hard drive is beyond repair – even for expert technicians – so be prepared to buy a new hard drive altogether; data recovery may not be an option any more.

By: Stu Pearson -

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Shopping Tips For Buying An External Harddrive

By: Cedric Dirose


When the first external harddrive first hit the market, it was large, clunky, slow and very expensive. Like most aspects of the world of computer technology, however, the prices of these external had drives have steadily fallen, even as the speed, reliability and storage capacity has increased so greatly. While the storage capacity of the first external hard drives was measured in mere megabytes, today most external hard drives are capable of holding hundreds of gigabytes worth of data.

There are a number of reasons why a computer owner would opt to buy an external harddrive instead of installing a secondary hard drive inside the computer case. One of the most significant benefits, of course, is that of convenience and simplicity. After all, many computer users are simply not comfortable opening the cases of their computer and installing additional hardware. When you opt for an external rather than an internal hard drive you do not need to crack the case; you simply need to plug it in and go.

Another great benefit of an external harddrive is its portability. Unlike internal hard drives, external hard drives can be moved from computer to computer in a matter of minutes, simply by unplugging them from one computer and plugging them into another. For this reason, external hard drives are often used in the business world, especially by traveling employees. Traveling employees can instantly sync up the data on an external hard drive with that on their desktop or laptop PC, and then easily transport that data anywhere in the world.

There are a number of things to consider when buying a new external hard drive, whether the drive is to be used for business or personal purposes. One consideration, of course, is that of price. While there used to be a huge price differential between internal and external hard drives, with external hard drives costing far more than internal had drives, these days the difference in price has dropped significantly, making an external harddrive a more realistic choice for more and more people.

Storage capacity, of course, is important as well. As with any type of hard drive, it is best to buy as large an external hard drive as you can afford. Even if you do not think you will ever need all those gigabytes of storage, it never hurts to have it available, and the price differential between large drives and smaller ones is generally quite low.

It is also important to look at the speed of the hard drive you are considering. The speed of the external hard drive will be expressed in RPMs, and the higher this number the faster the drive will be. In addition, you will see an average seek time number, expressed in milliseconds. The lower this number, the faster the drive should run, and this is an important consideration, especially for business users.

When the first external harddrive first hit the market, it was large, clunky, slow and very expensive. Like most aspects of the world of computer technology, however, the prices of these external had drives have steadily fallen, even as the speed, reliability and storage capacity has increased so greatly.

Cedric has been a technical writer of a computer magazine for over 6 years. He also has a website that helps people with their technical computer problems as well external hard drive reviews. Visit http://www.altsyssoft.com for a technical priority list on what items to look for when choosing a hard drive for your new computer.

An Introduction To Raid – Greater Reliability ,faster, Less Costly Hard Drive Units

What is a raid setup on a computer system?

Like anything else it depends who you talk to.

Raid hard drive systems had their acronym explained as “Redundant Array of Individual Drives “and “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives”. The acronym for this is the shortened term “RAID”.

Capacity, reliability and performance are all important for file servers or other computer systems when you are storing large or very important files.

It is often said that “It is not if you hard drive will fail. It is at what point in time your hard drive will fail”.

Of course if your hard drives fail even if you have backup the last bit of data which was being written onto the hard drive when the failure occurred will be lost.

You can get much greater capacities, avoid losing data from disk failure, and do all this with the RAID (the acronym for the system).

RAID can now be done with standard commercially available hard drives so the cost is now within your price range for all the benefits and peace of mind RAID will give you.

RAID can be simply explained as putting the hard drives in parallel sequence.

The host adapter (usually called the RAID system controller) sits between one higher stream (on the computer side) and several lower rate data streams (on the hard drive side). When the computer writes to the disks , the host adapter takes high stream data and breaks it into many synchronized streams , one for each of the disks in process called “Striping “. Upon reading the data the host adapter takes the data stream from each disk multiplexes the sets of data streams and coordinates sending the resulting combined set of data onto the computer.

It is all a matter of redundancy which makes RAID such a good thing in most cases.

There are six different levels of RAID functionality depending on your requirements. – the level of data security and integrity you want as well as the size of hard drive space you want.

First of RAID Level 0 which spreads the data across multiple disks. You can get a similar effect to the RAID Level 0 by having multiple disks and using the features in Windows 2000 or its successor Windows XP.

Since the data volume and rate to any specific disk is a fraction of the aggregate you will receive larger capacity and better performance from a RAID 0 setup than from any one conventional disk.

As well data can be sourced from multiple drives as once. This can be most useful in shared situations which may benefit from enhancements in speed, two examples which come to mind are game servers and peer to peer (P2P) file or music file sharing servers.

However since there is no allocation for error correction or redundancy RAID 0 is not a safe system for vital data. Data will be lost on disk failure. Only use RAID 0 in situations where you need the extended disk capacity or performance gain but not enhanced data reliability.

Secondly in sequence there is RAID Level 1.

In the same way that RAID 0 focuses solely on storage capacity and performance with no concern whatsoever on reliable data storage RAID 1, which us also called “Disk Mirroring” uses disks in pairs to save the files in a redundant manner.

Several points.

One performance may be slower as it takes time for the host adapter to send the data and for the drives to write it to disk,

Secondly a user may delete or damage files which of course will be stored in that way on both drives.

Raid 1 hence offers better reliability than RAID 0 or the conventional drive setups but does not give full security for your data or enhanced performance.

Next in sequence we have RAID Levels 2, 3 and 4.

Raid 2 adds one or more disks to hold error correction codes with which lost data can be reconstructed.

Raid Level 3 is the same as RAID Level 2 but uses a simpler code the maximum storage capacity with Raid 3 may be somewhat less.

Raid Level 4 is nearly the same as RAID LEVEL 3 but instead of “Striping “ across disks is operates at a sector level, You now have the better situation of both a simpler , less intensive demanding system and as well as good data reliability . In addition performance may be enhanced as large data blocks can be written faster due to more coordinated writing to the drives in smaller “sector” areas.

Lastly is RAID Level 5.

Raid level 5 is the same as the excellent RAID Level 4 except that instead of dedicating a single disk to storing the data the data stream is striped across all the disks. You have greater performance with greater reliability for your computer systems.
A RAID setup may take some effort and training on your part.
Base your planning for your new RAID system on a careful analysis of your needs.
What is important in your situation currently? Disk size capacities, data reliability and integrity, performance or a combination or all.

By: Stoney Mountain

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