ANY DEVICE

RAID arrays have built in features that can help reduce the likelihood of a failed hard drive, data loss, and a data recovery emergency.  The hard drives from popular manufacturers, including Western Digital and Samsung/Hitachi, all have different features that permit the system administrator, or whoever has configured the RAID array to configure how long a drive’s firmware can spend recovering from a read or write error.  Western Digital calls this Error Recovery Control (ERC), while Samsung/Hitachi calls it Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER). The generic name for this feature in other hard drives is Command Completion Time Limit (CCTL).  The idea is to limit the on-drive recovery time, leaving recovery to the RAID controller to prevent the possibility of performance…

Permitting employees to telecommute can reduce costs, but it can increase the chances of a security breech, damages to your server due to viruses and malware, and a data recovery emergency. One way to reduce these risks is through a virtual private network, which protects data transmitted in both directions: from employees’ devices to your server and the other way around.  Your company’s mission-critical, confidential data is placed at risk when employees connect to the network via unsecured wireless connections, including free WiFi in airports, coffee shops and, increasingly, in many other random places. Using a mobile device as a WiFi hotspot and transmitting data via their network may not be entirely secure. In some cases, even employees home wireless…

 With more more businesses and organizations turning to VMware and virtualization, as well as cloud storage, RAID arrays are becoming even more common in business. When your RAID array fails, it could mean the loss of mission critical files, as well as time and money lost for your business. Your business recovery plan should include the number of a reliable RAID recovery service that you can call anytime, when your RAID array fails and you need fast data recovery.  Here are a few things to look for when you choose a RAID recovery service:  1 – Experts in RAID data recovery on staff, with extensive experience in RAID recovery – Our data recovery specialists have expertise in recovery RAID 0, RAID 1,…

As technology advances, do-it-yourself data recovery software improves in its capabilities. But hard disk drives, hybrid drives and solid state drives are also becoming more complex. At the same time, as hard drives increase in capacity, the amount and value of the data stored increases, too. The risks associated with attempting do-it-yourself data recovery may not be worth it. Would you want to risk losing your entire music or movie collecting, potentially thousands of dollars worth of media? Valuable family photos? Or mission critical work files that you brought home because you didn’t finish your work at the office?  When It’s Safe to Use Data Recovery Software If you accidentally delete files from a hard disk drive, it may be…

Seagate Technology has become the first hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturer to ship 2 billion hard disk drives. Since the first HDDs were used commercially in 1956, prices have dropped, storage capacity has increased, and the industry has seen exponential sales growth.  Today, hard disk drives are used in RAID servers, home computers, laptops, and more, with storage capacities of 3 TB and up. It took hard disk manufacturer Seagate 29 years to sell the first billion hard disk drives but only four years to sell its next billion.  “By 2015 households which today routinely consume 1TB of data a month are expected to generate 20 times the amount of data than they currently save,” said Richard Doherty, research director of…

Hard disk drives just keep getting bigger and bigger. Meanwhile, the price per gigabyte of storage keeps dropping. This means everyone from home users to enterprise-level server administrators can pack more data onto their hard disk drives and RAID drives than ever before, making the need for data back-up and reliable data recovery methods even more important. New Preamp Increases Hard Disk Capacity New technology from LSI promises to pack even more data onto conventional and hybrid hard disk drives from any manufacturer. Designated as a “preamplifier” for hard disk drives, LSI’s TrueStore PA5200 increases the areal density of hard disk drives. The integrated circuit can can be integrated onto nearly any brand of hard disk drive by the manufacturer,…

Are you upgrading your small business servers? Are you wondering what the right RAID array configuration may be for your data storage needs?  RAID arrays are complicated pieces of machinery that combine several hard disk drives with a RAID controller to increase storage capacity, performance, or stability. Typically, you will sacrifice performance for better back-ups or redundancy, or you can get a RAID array that does not offer redundancy but performs faster than a single hard disk drive would.  Most businesses want the balance between redundancy and performance, which you can find in some RAID configurations.  Most Popular RAID Configurations RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 5 are some of the more popular RAID configurations for small businesses.XXA RAID 0…

Here at 24 Hour Data, we often consider ourselves doctors for our customers’ data storage devices; we take “sick” (that is, crashed, damaged or virus-infected) hard drives, solid state drives, and RAID arrays, recover lost data, and make them “well.” As a side effect, we reduce our customers’ stress, help lower their blood pressure, and we like to think we’ve prevented more than a few anxiety attacks caused by potential lost data. But that’s where the analogy ended… until recently.  Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) says they’ve developed a way to store data in man-made, DNA-like strands. This DNA storage doesn’t require any power and, unlike a hard disk drive which can wear out, causing a data recovery…

LaCie has introduced a new, five-bay RAID array that it’s calling the 5big Thunderbolt, with up to 20TB capacity. Allowing for custom RAID configurations but pre-configured at RAID 0, both the 20TB an 10TB versions have speeds up to 785MB per second via five 7200 RPM/64 MB cache hard disks.  Designed for Video Pros The 5big Thunderbolt is tailor-made to edit multiple 2K uncompressed 10-bit streams, says the manufacturer, making it ideal for video post-production work. Users can use fast volume in conjunction with popular software like Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere and Aperture. The RAID array includes two Thunderbolt ports. Up to six Thunderbolt peripherals can be daisy-chained together to further increase storage capacity and back-up capabilities.  Back-ups,…

Overheating PCs, which can lead to a burnt out hard drive and potential data loss, are always a danger. In the summer, PCs and servers may overheat from outside or indoor temperatures. But in the winter, hard disk drives may also overheat if a home or business is kept too warm, with the heat turned up too high. PCs give off their own heat when they run, so they need to be kept cool in order to perform optimally.  In most cases, the included fans or heat sinks should be enough to keep an “off-the-shelf” PC, server or hard disk drive cool. But if you overclock your electronics equipment, you may need to add additional cooling mechanisms. Processors work overtime…