Thursday, August 30, 2012

Disaster Recovery Due to Human Error

Human error happens even with the most diligent individuals. If a new employee or even an owner accidentally deletes important data, it can take drastic disaster recovery measures to restore it. While there are some programs that can find and restore deleted data, it is always a gamble that businesses cannot afford to take. Human error can even occur in the restoring phase where the backed up data becomes invalid. No matter what the case may be, there are options to ensure that data can be recovered quickly and easily.

Human Error with Data

There are many cases in which data can be destroyed or deleted. While this might not seem like a common occurrence, it happens quite often in the business world. When this happens, customer data or weeks of work can be irretrievable. What would happen if your businesses customer database was accidentally destroyed? Would customers understand if months of work suddenly disappeared? Of course not, but an appropriate disaster recovery plan would practically eliminate this issue from occurring.

Human Error Restoring Data

While human error can be reduced greatly with the proper measures, there is always a chance of it occurring. If data is properly backed up, but gets damaged while being restored, what ramifications would this have on a business? Would they be able to clone the drive and hope to retrieve the data? Honestly, any chance of losing data would be too much for a company to risk. This is especially true with the amount of backup options that are available. The cost of these solutions is very minimal compared to the loss of company data and perhaps company downtime caused by such an occurrence.

Backup Solutions

Errors can happen even in the most restricted of systems. Regardless of file permissions, accidents do happen. These would call for an appropriate backup system that not only syncs current data, but has a solution for retrieving older data as well. Ideally, a backup solution would include:

Data replication: Data that is replicated to an off-site facility is typically used to ensure damaged data can be restored promptly. Not only does this solution provide one of the best options for recovery, but it is utilized by many of the largest businesses in the world. It is a proven method for disaster recovery.

Point-in-time Restoration: While data replication ensures that the latest files are retrievable, deleted data might also be removed from the backup. In optimal situations, data replication would be accompanied by a point-in-time restoration option. This would allow the data to be recovered closest to its stable state.

The data and information a business collects is what allows them to retain its client base. If something were to happen to the company's data, it could possibly lose months of work, client information, and virtually every important piece of data that it has collected. However, this does not have to be an issue if a business has a robust disaster recovery system in place. Not only can a company's data be damaged, but the backups can as well. A tiered solution would safeguard data and would offer the highest possibility of data restoration.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Disaster Recovery Strategies Used in Cloud Hosting

Cloud computing and hosting has revolutionized the way in which businesses, small and large, conduct their operations. While the cloud environment allows users to easily scale their websites, there are additional concerns with disaster recovery. Since this type of hosting service is drastically different from the traditional shared or dedicated hosting options, there must be more diverse ways to protect vital data.

Data Replication
Data replication is a concept that everyone in the IT industry should be well versed in. This is when data is duplicated from one system to another. Essentially, any changes to the current data on a server are automatically replicated on another machine or portion of the cloud. While this might result in the loss of some data in the case of an immediate failure, most of the data will remain in place. Depending on the replication system being utilized, a server might replicate to multiple physical locations. In the event of a failure at one replicated location, another could be used to restore services, in the event of a disaster.

Managed Service Provider
When consistency and data is important, many businesses will essentially outsource their disaster recovery to their managed service provider. Many hosting services will offer a managed level of service, but this comes with an additional cost. When this type of disaster recovery option is being employed, it is essential to have a reliable SLA, or service level agreement, in place. The SLA will ensure that an appropriate measure of service is offered to maintain a good quality of service. This will also state the allotted amount of time it should take for any restorations, if they are needed.

Restore From Backup
Many websites will have their data automatically backed up into the cloud. This allows for an easy recovery, but at a cost. While backing up data is relatively cheap in this instance, restoring it can be very time consuming. Depending on the amount of data, the restoration process can take minutes or hours. These backups come in two different types: an interval backup or a synced backup.

Interval backups are usually set on a predetermined interval and will not contain any new data that was written since the last backup. This might be ideal for a small blog, but many businesses cannot afford to lose any of their customer's data. Synced backups work very similar to data replication, but they are different in that they can be stored on the cloud or sent for on-site restorations. However, this will require a third-party service, which can be very expensive.

Hosting a server on the cloud has many benefits. The ease of use, scalability and affordable pricing model has made the IT world adapt their disaster recovery options rapidly. While large companies have the means for more expensive recovery options, small businesses also have affordable options. This allows virtually every website owner to start their endeavors without worrying about their data being lost. Diligence and proper testing of disaster recovery options will ensure that rapid recovery is possible, and feasible, in an appropriate amount of time.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

The Importance of Regular Backups for Your System

Data loss can wreak havoc on anyone's life, but for business owners, this will ring particularly true. Because losing data is such a common occurrence, and one almost impossible to protect yourself from in all circumstances, certain precautions must be taken in order to keep the information on your computers as safe as possible. By backing up your system regularly, you are giving yourself and your business the best possible chance of going on uninterrupted by a frustrating data loss occurrence. It may feel unnecessary if you have not yet experienced such an unfortunate accident, but consider how much critical information is kept in your computers. What would happen if it were all lost? Unless the answer to this question is something other than catastrophic amounts of damage, be smart and keep your system backed up.

Unavoidable Circumstances

The list of events that could cause you to lose critical data is almost endless. Hackers are running rampant these days, targeting any system flaws in order to "helpfully" point them out, and their malicious attacks can be devastating. Computer viruses can sometimes slip through your defenses, corrupting critical information. There are many causes, however, that are much simpler and without cruel intentions at all. A simple power outage can cause a major loss of data. You may have fair warning of such an event, perhaps if there is a big storm forecast to come through your area, but sometimes we simply cannot know when a power line will be hit, and our computers and businesses affected. For this reason, even if you feel like you are generally pretty safe, having your system backed up on a regular basis will keep you covered for those unexpected moments when the plug is pulled on your normal flow of information, and critical items lost.

Keep Your Business Moving

It is true that sometimes not even a well backed up system will be able to have one hundred percent of information recovered after an unfortunate event like a power outage. However, as long as the last backup was relatively recent, most of your data should be safe and ready to be returned to you, intact. This may mean that you lose a day's worth of work, but this is almost certainly preferable to losing an entire project. In those panicked moments when you are still considering the possibility that weeks' or even months' worth of work has been lost forever, you will be glad to have the relief of a safely kept duplicate, so that you can continue with business as usual.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Have a Data Recovery Plan for Your Business

Can you think of anything more frightening than turning on your computer one day to discover everything you've had on it is gone? If you rely on your computer for work or day to day activities, you would understandably suffer some kind of panic attack. As a business manager, what you lose could mean the difference between a setback in your company or serious damage.

It's important, therefore, not to put off devising a data recovery plan. It doesn't matter if you are self-employed or have an office of 50-100 people. If the bulk of your work is stored on computers and servers - and chances are this is true of you - you need to have a system in place where you can easily recover data in the event of a natural disaster or virus threat. If your business collects sensitive data like personal information, Social Security numbers, or bank routing numbers, make this a priority.

So, what does a data recovery plan entail? Data recovery is the process by which you retrieve files and other material from a digital storage facility, typically in the event of damage or an infection that renders the source unreadable. This is possible with everything from hard disk drives to CD-ROMs, USB thumb drives and older devices like ZIP drives. As technology changes and the equipment evolves, you may one day end up having to retrieve something from an obsolete source (remember the five-inch floppy?). Data recovery is one way to help.

Some actions you may wish to consider include:

    Regular backup of systems. Talk with a technology provider about your options. Is isn't uncommon for businesses to back up data on a nightly basis to make sure everything is up to speed. Cloud computing may be an option, but risks exist.

    Protection of secondary drives. If you use USB drives and disks, keep everything in protective cases and make sure they are not exposed to the elements. Being careless with disks increases the risk of unreadable or damaged files.

    Use recovery data software with caution. These programs may work in a minor situation, but if you sense your hardware is not working correctly, you could experience problems and make things worse.

If you do not have an IT department to handle disaster recovery, contact a local company that specializes in data recovery. The process is quite delicate, and a certified expert will have the tools needed to get you back online with your files.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

How To Recover Data From Corrupt ZIP, RAR, TAR, TAR-GZ and 7z Files

Compressed files are the most common and safe way to reduce the files size, store and send them over the network. They are small as they are compressed by a safe compression algorithm. This technique is very safe as it only reduces the file size, it does not alter or modify the data. The files which are in compressed file formats take less space in our system hard disk and due to compressed form they can be easily shared or transmitted over the network. We usually compress our computer data to get more free space in our hard disk and by doing this we can easily and quickly share them via email.

Generally there are five main compressed file formats:

    ZIP: ZIP stands for Zicxac Inline Pin is used for data compression and archiving. It can contain one or many files in compressed form to provide more space in hard disk and good transmission speed. It can be easily created by WinZip or WinRar program.

    RAR: RAR stand for Roshal Archive is the best data container to store various files in compressed form. We can create a RAR file with the help of WinRar program. It has some more advanced features than ZIP archive.

    TAR: TAR stands for Tape Archive is actually not a compressed file format however it is known as a compressed file. It is commonly used to store many files into a single large file. It is best known for archiving files in Linux operating system. It can be created by using TAR program.

    TAR.GZ: It is the most common compressed archive file format in Linux operating system. It is much better than TAR file as TAR file is archive file format while tar.gz is a compressed archive file format. It is not only used for archiving but also for data compression. It is also created by TAR program.

    7-z: It is one of best archive formats with a high-compression ratio. We can easily compress files up to 16000000000 GB of size. 7-Zip program is mainly required to create 7-z files.

But unfortunately none of them are immune to corruption. All these files are prone to high level of corruption as corruption is an inevitable occurrence. They can be easily corrupted at any point of time and in this circumstance we cannot extract our data from it.

There are various unavoidable reasons which are mainly responsible for the corruption in these files, such as:

    Computer bug and viruses are very harmful for our files. They can easily damage our files and make them unusable or corrupted. If a compressed file is damaged by virus attack then it becomes inaccessible and unable to be extracted.

    These types of files get mostly corrupted or damaged while sending or downloading through internet. Bad or weak network connection can easily damage our files and make them corrupted.

    If we have used any faulty or outdated program to compress our files then it could be corrupted or damaged and the data can be lost forever. And sometimes mistakenly we add some invalid data in our compressed file and this can damage our file.

    As we know that our files can be damaged or gone if our system crashes down or error occurred in system hard disk. It happens due to bad maintenance of hard drive or any mechanical problem in it.

    While opening a file or extracting data from it if our system suddenly turns off then this can damage the file or make it corrupted.

In all these critical happenstances we cannot open our files and data cannot be extracted from them at any cost. But we have a valid backup then we can restore the backup copies of our corrupt files from it. But if we do not have any backup then we must not worry as one more solution is still there. We can use a third-party tool to recover our data from corrupt compressed files. But before using any third-party tool we must use its demo version to check its performance. Generally demo versions are free which can be easily downloaded from the website.

Generally most third-party tools only support one or two files recovery. But if we have several compressed files of more than two file format, i.e., ZIP, RAR and TAR then it will become little difficult for us. We need to buy more than one tool to recover data from corrupt files which must be little expensive. But there is a tool named as Archive Recovery tool which supports all five file formats, i.e., ZIP, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ and 7-z. By using this tool we can easily recover our data from corrupt compressed file of any format.

Archive Recovery tool is multipurpose tool offered by SysInfoTools at very affordable rate. It is only tool that supports all five compressed archive file formats. Due to this it is highly recommended by most computer experts and many satisfied users. It can easily recover data from a large corrupt archive file, i.e., one TB. If corrupt archive files are stored inside an external storage device it will recover the data from it. And to check its features and high performance we must use its free demo version.