Now Offering Local Computer Networking and It Solutions

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DTIData is proud to announce the launch of our Networking Division DTI Networks in the Tampa Bay area. We offer both Microsoft and Cisco certified technicians in order to meet all of your IT needs. Contact us today at 727-612-6482 to set up an … [Read more...]

Not Formatted Would You Like to Format Now?

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This is a common problem with external hard drives like the Western Digital My Book. The reason is that we as a USB using public do not “Safely Remove” the hardware before we turn off or unplug the devices from our computers.  A lot of the time … [Read more...]

Western Digital My Book Problem Question and Answer

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Below are some more fun Q&A about hard drive recovery. I have given what I think is the best solution to these problems. As always please leave a comment if you have a question or contact me directly at 727-345-9665 ext 236. Question: I … [Read more...]

Data Recovery Forum Questions Answered PST Recovery and Hard Drive Not Detected

So I trolled the Internet for topics to write about and found tons of forums with very good questions not being answered so I am going to post the questions and then give you the best possible answer I cam up with. Q: Yesterday I was cleaning out … [Read more...]

What is a Hard Drive Boot Sector?

A common misunderstanding is that because a hard drive is not a boot drive it does not have or need a boot sector, this just isn't the case. All DOS based (Windows) hard drives have a boot sector. It is often also confused with the MBR (Master Boot … [Read more...]

How To Recover Data from Your Teens Cell Phone

I have a lot of customers who are wanting to be able recover data from their child's cell phone. With all the news lately about teens being convicted of child pornography I find it to be a valid worry. In the case of MOST phones when you teen takes … [Read more...]

RAID Explained in Simple Terms

I find that "RAID" is such a scary term to a lot of my end users or business clients who are not Network Admin's. A RAID is in it's simplest form more then one "physical" (physical means the actual device you would hold in you hand) hard drive put … [Read more...]

Missing Email in Outlook Express and How to Get it Back

Up until recently it had been the general thought that after an archive or compression in Outlook Express that if you had lost email you were just out of luck. I recently found that when Outlook is doing this compression/archiving that it move you … [Read more...]

Reload Windows Restore CD Hard Drive Data Recovery

I have been doing technical support for DTI Data Recovery for 3+ years now and there has been one constant problem across those years. Here is the scenario, a user will plug in an external hard drive and back off all of their important data to … [Read more...]

My Book is Not Being Seen by Windows

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Ok so the most popular external drives on the market have to be the My Book and The Passport. I get a ton of calls every week about them, and I don't believe it is because it is not a good product but more because they are being SO widely used. So … [Read more...]

My Files Have Disappeared

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Recently I have had a situation where customers are calling to tell me that they have files that seem to have disappeared. After going through the usual questions, like are you sure you didn't delete them, or maybe someone else deleted them? I will … [Read more...]

How To Remove A Laptop Hard Drive

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So here is a little tutorial on how to remove a laptop hard drive. I only have Dell's in my little arsenal but the method should be the same across the board no matter what laptop you have. The only exception I will make that is with the dell I use … [Read more...]

How to Replace a Partition on a Single Partition Drive

We have a Free Partition Repair Tool that I get a lot of calls about. The problem most people have when using it is trying to figure out what goes into each of the fields. When a hard drive has a missing partition it is hard to know what is supposed … [Read more...]

System Area Of The Hard Disk A Look At A Partition

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So here is the deal, I would say in about 99 percent of the calls I take, I talk about the "System Area Of The Hard Drive" and I am sure that must seem like techno babble to most people. Because of the specialization of this field of technology, a … [Read more...]

Remote Logical Hard Drive Recovery

I have over the past few years had customers with hard drives that I knew I could fix their problem easily if I just had access to the drive. In these situations I will usually offer the customer a logical recovery, which entails them sending us the … [Read more...]

My Data Failure Nightmare, The Beginning

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So here is the deal, recently I  have been having serious data issues. Like a bad dream it would seem I have lost my main data areas in three different machines in the last 4 months. On a side note one of the machines (my main one) lost its hard … [Read more...]

When good RAIDs Go Bad, A Technicians Worst Nightmare

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The next machine with a bad hard drive was my server. This server has been running as a server in our home for about 8 years. HAH! Now that is not to say that we haven’t done upgrades, because we have. We have always kept the “data” area of the … [Read more...]

When My Main Gaming Machine Has Serious Hard Drive Crash

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Ok so here is what I have, 3 broken machines, all with bad hard drives. I am not talking about a little logical damage to the drive where recovery is a possibility with software. Oh no these are full blow physical recoveries. In machine one I have a … [Read more...]

DART XP Data Recovery Software Now Only $49

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A few weeks back I got a call from a woman who had lost the partition on her hard drive; she had all of the photos of her kids on that drive and was slightly hysterical about it. I had her download DART XP and run it on the drive; it found the … [Read more...]

Spyware, Viruses, Malware (Part 2)

Spyware, Viruses, and Malware - What you may not know. (Part 2 - How they work and how to locate them.) Welcome back to my series of articles that pertain to Spyware, Malware, and Viruses and what you may not know about them. In my first article, I … [Read more...]