What Businesses Need to Know Regarding Disaster Recovery Planning

The goal of disaster recovery planning is to make sure that a business can survive an event that destroys the IT network. Many businesses never financially recover from an event that destroys its servers because they don't have a short-term way to restore network capability. A large percentage of them go out of business less than a year after the event. Most businesses are aware of the need for a recovery plan, but some do not realize that the plan should contain knowledge that typically comes from speaking with recovery planning IT consulting groups.

More Than Data Storage

Some businesses believe that storing data offsite is an effective strategy for recovering from the destruction of the IT network. Nothing is further from the truth. Although backing up data offsite is an essential aspect of a recovery plan, businesses need a way to migrate offsite data onto new servers after a catastrophic event. They may also need a temporary business location for the servers and other network components. This is where a service partner that specializes in recovery planning can help. In addition to helping the customer develop a plan of action, the partner also deploys temporary hardware and establishes a temporary business location, where the company operates until a permanent location is found.

Developing the Plan

For some companies, carrying out the recovery plan is actually easier than developing it. This is often because the plan experiences internal obstacles to its development and implementation, especially at a time when cutting costs often takes precedence over new initiatives. According to IT consulting groups that specialize in disaster recovery planning, developing a plan typically consists of the following steps:

    Building a Governance Structure - The governance structure is composed of a working committee and an oversight committee that address the financial and technical aspects of the plan.

    Selecting a Service Partner - The governance structure selects a service partner to help develop and implement the plan. If necessary, the service partner will help the plan's advocates build a compelling initiative for its implementation.

    Developing a Plan and Strategy - The customer works with the service partner to develop the best plan and strategy. A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is performed, which helps form the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) goals.

    Executing and Maintaining the Plan - After the plan is developed, it is tested. Over time, the plan is adjusted according to the customer's needs.

These are the basic steps that companies take to develop and implement a recovery plan. A provider of business continuity services will discuss the steps in greater detail.

Conclusion

Without a recovery plan in place, many companies go out of business when an event destroys the IT network. Although companies cannot prevent unforeseen disasters, they can plan for them by taking the steps listed above. For more information on keeping businesses viable in the wake of an event that takes down the IT system, speak with IT consulting groups that specialize in disaster planning today.

Recover Pictures on Your Android

We all take plenty of pictures on our phones and there are times when we go ahead and delete a few either to make space for more or maybe the pictures weren't good enough.

Whatever be the reason, there are times wherein we delete pictures by mistake and want to get them back. Well, if that's your problem, you need not worry as you could always retrieve lost data.

Do you own an Android?

Well, that's the question people ask - I've accidentally deleted photos on my Android Phone - is there a way to recover them? Well, as you know Android is just an operating system and not a special kind of phone - therefore, there's a way to recover pictures just as in the case of other mobiles.

Your pictures are originally either stored on your phone's internal memory, your sim card or your added memory. Therefore, before you decide to recover a picture, you should know where you stored it. It's not necessary; but, does make the task a lot simpler.

What actually happens?

Whenever you delete something from your Android Phone, whether it's a message, picture or something else; it's never permanently wiped off your phone. The data is actually stored until it's re-written upon.

Therefore, you should try to recover something the moment you realize that you're missing it. This would reduce the chances of you permanently losing it. The more you use your phone after you've deleted some data the harder would it be to recover this precious information.

If at all you don't know what needs to be done, it would be wise to contact someone who knows exactly what needs to be done. Until then, stay away from the phone as any small change that you make - even sending a message could over write the stored data.

Recovering the pictures

Recovering the pictures or any other data that you lost from your phone is possible; but, it's not an easy job if you've never done it before. All you need to do is get yourself card recovery software.

Note that most of these software aren't free and you would have to pay a small amount to buy them. If you're lucky you'd find an amazing piece of software that's got a free trial period - you'd find quite a few on the Android Store. The reader reads your phones memory and gives you a list of possible lost files. You could pick the one you need if it's still there.

Using most of the common photo recover software

Most of the photo recovery software work the same way, let's take a look at what needs to be done in most cases:

1. First and foremost you would need to connect your Android phone to your computer

2. Launch the Photo Recovery Software or App and you would then see a sort of removable media on the main control panel.

3. Once the software/App is launched make sure to begin a scan of all your images, music as well as videos.

4. After the scan is completed you would get a list of lost and deleted pictures, music as well as videos.

5. Pick the ones you wish to restore and hit the Recover button.

That's it! You could find plenty of free recovery software - they may not be totally free; but, if you don't need it often you could always get back what you need during the trial period.

Laptop Repairs - Data Recovery Options By Dominik Barth

If you are a computer, laptop, netbook, iPhone or android phone user you are not safe from data loss. It can strike at any time, and as most of us have experienced, it happens when we need the data most. We have all been told, backup! backup! backup! but statistics prove most of us don't. Laziness being the most likely reason. So what now, who do we turn to, types of failures and how much will it cost?

When disaster strikes it can cause enormous stress for those involved. Since computers have replaced the humble writing pad, nearly everything is stored digitally. Data Recovery is big business and its very important to realise data damage falls in a few different categories. These distinctions are vital to the user because of two factors, and those are recovery rates, and cost.

First things first.Turn off the device you are using. Most important! further damage can result from the user constantly switching the device on, in the hope their data will magically appears before their eyes. It wont happen and it can potentially cost you more to have the data salvaged.

Data recovery companies are located in most major cities, and can be searched for either online, or in the yellow pages. Type in a few different keywords in to the search engines and those firms which consistently appear in the major search engines would be the best to go with.

Essentially there are two types of failure categories; no physical damage ( logical damage) and physical damage ( failed components within the drive itself).

The most common type of failure is due to the operating system, which is generally the easiest and cheapest recovery scenario. It usually involves copying all wanted data onto another drive. The next level up being file deletion when the contents of deleted files are not removed immediately from the drive; instead, references to them in the directory structure are destroyed, and the room they occupy is made available for later overwriting. The original file contents remain, in fragments and may be recoverable.

More expensive scenarios involve a disk-level failure, an example being a compromised file system or disk partition.This involves repairing the file system, partition table or master boot record, or hard disk recovery techniques ranging from software-based to hardware replacement on a mechanically damaged disk.

The most expensive of all involves damaged components, whether it be the printed circuit board underneath the drive, or any part contained inside the drive. It could be the motor spindle, platter(s), read/write head assembly and matching parts. All this involves dismantling the drive in a clean room, with specialised tools and expert skill and finding donor parts which are not readily available. This takes time and money.

Average costs start from $300-$500 for basic to moderate data recovery, then go up from there to $2000 to $3000 dollars for advanced, hardware failures. Whether it be for pc repairs or mac repairs, backup your data regularly, and to as many devices as you have at your disposal, either external drives or online with the many cloud storage facilities available. There is no excuse and if you can't afford to lose the data, then it's most important for you to save it.

Best Way to Recover Data From Corrupt Backup File of MS Exchange Server

Nowadays backup has become an essential part of our life. As the utilization of computer has been increased a lot from last decade we have become more cautious for our computer data. The computer can store a large amount of data which is one of the most valuable things for its users. And the backup is a process which provides security of our computer data. We can easily backup all our data by using NT-Backup (Windows free utility) or any third-party tool. It helps us to restore our data from it when situations like sudden data loss and data corruption takes place.

In these days emails are playing an important role in communication especially in corporate sectors. If we are a part of an organization or a business (big and small) we need a safe and secured platform to send emails and other data items to our clients or users. Microsoft has designed a client-server application program for this purpose known as MS Exchange Server. By this program we can easily send, manage and store all the data items related to our organization such as emails, calendars, contacts, tasks, et cetera. All the data and information stored in the exchange server is very important for any organization. Sometimes MS Exchange can be crashed due to any particular reason or the data inside it can be deleted mistakenly. To prevent such situations we can create backup copies of all the data from any one of them: NT-Backup utility, VERITAS or any third-party tool. But we must update it regularly as a lot of data is added in exchange server every day. Though its backup can be done by NT-Backup utility but it is very different from Windows backup. The data of MS Exchange are saved in.bkf file extension but has a different file format than a Windows backup file. In MS Exchange backup there are three types of files: EDB (Exchange Database), STM (Exchange Streaming Media File) and Log file. Each file type contains a particular type of data, i.e. EDB stores all the exchange information, STM stores all the internet content and Log file stores all the changes to the exchange server databases.

No computer file is immune to corruption as it can take place at any time. The backup file of MS exchange can also be corrupted or damaged due to several unforeseen reasons. And if the file gets corrupted or damaged we can't restore our data from it. A BKF file of MS Exchange can be corrupted in many conditions such as: serious virus infections, improper system shutdown due to sudden power failure or intentionally, missing catalog files, unexpected interruption in the backup process, crash in system hard disk or hard disk failure, software and hardware malfunctions, cyclic redundancy check fails, and many more.

Unfortunately if we have lost our exchange server backup file due to corruption then we can repair it or recover our essential data from it. But we can't do this manually, so a third-party tool must be considered by all of us. It is one of the most effective and the safest solution what we must have in this situation. MS Exchange BKF Recovery can be said the best solution to recover the data from corrupt or damaged BKF file of Microsoft exchange server. Generally other Exchange BKF recovery tools recover EDB, STM or EDB+ STM files but this advanced BKF recovery tool recovers all three files, i.e. EDB, STM and Log files of exchange server backup. This is one of the most reliable and easiest ways to restore data from corrupt BKF file of the exchange server. This tool smoothly runs with all major versions of MS Exchange Server and Windows.

This tool is the perfect solution to recover data from corrupt BKF file of MS Exchange Server. It has a wizard interface that will be very beneficial for non-technical persons and before going for its full version we can check its demo for free examining.