Windows Explorer: Un-Hide Files

Windows Explorer: How to change files from Hidden

In my last windows explorer tutorial I explained how to open Windows Explorer, now I will start showing some of the functions people need to know. A lot of time a file we are looking for just doesn’t seem to be where we think it should be. This may be attributed to the fact that the file is hidden. In order to unhide these files here are the steps.

1. Open windows explorer (please see my other tutorial)

2. Click on “My Computer” in the left hand window.

3. Select one of your hard drives. In this case I have selected the “C” drive.

4. Now go up top to “Tools” and select “Folder Options”

5. Now click on the “View” tab along the top and you should see “Folder Views” and “Advanced Settings”

6. Scroll through the advanced settings until you come across something that says “Hidden Files And Folders” and under it should be radial buttons to allow you to select “Show Hidden Files” (see picture below)

7. Now just click the OK button. You may get a warning from Windows that this could be dangerous, because now you will have access to system files. If you think this is bad idea because you may delete them then I recommend that you don’t unhide these files.

That is all there is to it. In the next Windows Explorer tutorial I will go over how to see all of your USB mass storage devices this way.

Windows Explorer: How to Open It

A lot of times when I am speaking to customers I need them to make changes to their files or look at their files in a specific way. I will often tell someone to open Windows Explorer and tell me what they see. In many occasion I have had customers open Internet Explorer instead. Because Windows Explorer is a valuable tool that I think everyone should understand and know how to use, at least at a beginner level, I have decided to take a few weeks and write about it.

Click on Start then Accessories and then two from the bottom is Windows Explorer.  Click on it and you will then be given the following program. 

Windows Explorer defaults to the “My Documents” Directory. As you can see all the files and folders you have in your My Documents folder are now displayed.

Below that is “My Computer” clicking the plus sign next to it will now display any mass storage devices Windows sees connected to the machine (i.e. your C drive and CD-Rom drive). From here you can also see your Control Panel, Mobile Devices, as well as Shared Documents and your My Documents folder again. We go further into the Control Panel and Shared Documents in a later blog, for now we are just trying to see what we are able to look at in Windows Explorer.  You will notice you also have access to your Recycle Bin and any folders that reside on your desktop. (Note: You now have full access to your files, if you delete from here it will be sent to the Recycle Bin.)

To Be Continued…

Data Recovery Truth And Consequence

I have been getting a lot of emails about my recent post: Data Recovery Experts: Why Use Them? Most people want to know how to tell if a data recovery company is a “real” company with a clean room, or a reseller, that is going to look at the drive, see if it is a Fed-Ex fix, then up sell it to one of their vendors.

I would get into serious trouble if I were to list the all the BS companies out there, that is a fact. However; I can tell you about some real companies and how they differ to us. I am not going to sit here and go on and on about how rocking DTI is. We are a real data recovery company, we have a class 100 clean room, and we develop all our software in house. We don’t outsource ANYTHING, EVER! We answer our own phones as much as humanly possible. Here is a link to my data recovery software blog, with pictures of everyone. We are a relatively small (24 employees) company that does a big job.

Now on to the stuff that is going to get me in trouble : )

If you look at the top tier data recovery companies, and we all know who they are, they are what some believe to be the cream of the crop. They run a factory line recovery shop. They bait you with a range of prices, and if it is at all a difficult recovery, they are going to call you and bump the price up to 3 or 4 GRAND. I know this, since we have a bunch of their drives in the lab, and almost always have 1 or 2 sent in from people unwilling to pay. I am not saying they stink or are ripping you off, they just play the numbers game. (I recall one time being told “that if enough crap was thrown against the wall, some of it will stick” by the owner of a prominent data recovery company whose model is to charge a $150.00 per drive, “bench” or “evaluation” fee. Type my name into Google and you will see me referenced as their CIO. This is a common attitude out there.)

Now when you look at one of the oldest data recovery companies, they used to be the best, they were the creme de la creme, what everyone strived to be. Once they were bought out, their recovery rate dwindled. The drop off was so significant, that a lot of the top people left that company, I know because we are partnered with some of them that went off and started their own thing.

Now on to another front, recently one hard drive maker acquired another major hard drive maker. OK I can relate, maybe now their drives will actually get even better; however now they go out and buy a data recovery company. Huh? OK say I am a customer that just bought some drives, they fail, now I have to pay 3 grand to get my data back? That seems fishy to me.

The thing about these “big boys” is name recognition. Are Calvin Klines better than Wrangler? No, but they sure cost twice as much. You are paying for the name, nothing more, nothing less. There are no magical machines or proprietary technologies that one company has over the other. Data recovery is not rocket science, but it is all about research and development.

So we are ruling out the big boys who charge the big bucks. That leaves us with the hundreds of middle ground data recovery companies out there, and a few bad apples that think they can do data recovery for $199 or $399. What garbage. One air filter for a class 100 clean room is $850 and we need 4 a month to retain class 100 status. Forget about the parts. What are they a charity? Hard drive manufacturers don’t “give” us replacement parts, we have to buy whole hard drives on the secondary market. We have 1 employee and his assistant that do NOTHING but source parts all day every day. With the advent of large capacity drives, and constant revisions, one Western Digital model had 12 revisions in 1 year. That means that the board, heads, and code on the platters are all different, and they are NOT interchangeable. OK so forget about those bargain basement companies, we all know that you get what you pay for. In fact we constantly get in drives that have already been opened somewhere else. 90% of them have been opened outside of a clean room. We had to start a new program just for clients who sent their drives to one of these bargain basement companies only to be told it was “unrecoverable”. Read more about our “Adaptive Logic” process.

That points us once again to the middle ground. I read somewhere that 60% of all data recovery companies on the Internet are resellers. I would put that number closer to 90%, hell we have thousands of resellers ourselves. So where does that leave us? If your drive crashes; do your research into where you are going to send it. Don’t bother with companies that give a range, cause it will always be the high side. Forget about diagnostic or bench fees, all the good companies are no data no charge. We have a lot of competitors, but few equals. One of our real rivals went as far as to put a webcam in their lab to prove they have a clean room. Now that is cool.

Even though we are only 1 day a way Fed-Ex most people would prefer a regional company. The problem is if you aren’t in FL, TX, or Southern CA, UT, MN, IL, upstate NY, GA, or WA, there are NO local companies. Choose wisely, mapquest them, if they are off the beaten track they are probably working out of their garage. Don’t laugh I did it myself with Data Recovery Clinic and Exchange Recovery Clinic. I got drives in and sent them to DTI, took my share and moved on to the next. It is business, we tried to start a clean room and do it right, and even with a lot of backing, my partner and I couldn’t keep up with the changes in hard drives. DTI has 3 or 4 guys that do nothing but get new drives and break them to see how to fix and recover data from them. That’s what data recovery is: research and development, every day.

The fact is hard drives fail. It isn’t because the manufacturers are trying to rip us off, it is just a fact. Dick Correa our chief data recovery software engineer recently wrote an article about “hard drive bad sectors, how to recover data from them“, which explains in detail about the challenges hard drive manufacturers face. They even have a name for it: Mean Time Before Failure. That is the “mean” not the average of when your drive WILL fail. Not IF, but WHEN. If you want to know more about what that is, here is a link to IBM’s description of MTBF on archive.org.

We’ve established that hard drives fail no matter what. What are you to do? Back up your data. Other than the fans, the hard drive is the only other item in your computer that has constantly moving parts. It is also the singular most critical device in your computer. Over the next few months I will be reviewing backup solutions and commenting on the best. If for some reason yours doesn’t work, or failed (believe me it happens, read my post: Data Recovery Case Study - My Own Machine if you don’t believe me. They are still busting my chops about having to send in my own drive for recovery) know that you can trust the guys and gals at DTI Data Recovery.

How to Stop Programs From Starting When You Boot Windows XP

We all have it. It is that program that every time we start our machine it is sitting down in the system tray.

For me it is the Quicktime viewer. We always have to right click on it and tell it to stop running. Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew how to get it to stop running every time you rebooted? I am going to show the very simple process of making sure that it only starts if you want it to start.

1. Click on the Start button and choose RUN

2. In the Run window you are going to want to type msconfig and hit enter.

3. Next the System Configuration Utility will open. You will need to look at the tabs along the top. There will be one named Start Up, click this tab. (NOTE: there are things in here that if you change you could make you system unstable.)

4. After you click Startup you will be given a list of all kinds of programs that start when you boot your machine. You are going to want to make the Command area of you window longer so that you can read more of the text. As you look through these programs you will notice that they have the names of the software in the command area. You will notice on my example that I have Spyware Doctor loading on startup. Now, it is not my regular virus scanner, but I do like to use it once a week to immunize with. I do not need it running all the time with Norton so I want to stop it from taking up more resources. I would have never known that SDtrayspp was the program I was looking for, but by extending the command area I can see that it is spyware doctor. Now all I have to do is click the check box off next to it and click ok. Windows will then want to reboot.

5. After the reboot, the configuration utility will open again. There is a check box to tell it to stop doing that. When you close the program it will ask if you want to reboot again you can say no this time.

Notice that the program is no longer in your system tray, and you have gone a long way to freeing up system resources.

How To Remove Unwanted Software From Windows XP

This is just a mini tutorial on how to uninstall software you no longer want or need and is taking up valuable room on your hard disk.

So, step by step this is what you need to do.

1.    Click Start

2.    After the start menu pops open you will need to click on the control panel option. (See the screen grab below for the location)

3.    Now when you click on the control panel you will be presented with one of 2 different screens. With either screen you are going to want to click on Add or Remove Programs. (see images below)

4.    When you choose this option a new window will open that might take several minutes to fully populate depending on how much software you have installed.

5.    Once all of your software is listed you can scroll the list in order to find any software you no longer need.  Once you select the software you will be given the option to remove it.

(NOTE  you may have a button that says CHANGE/REMOVE this is essence the same thing as remove only button)
6.    Most software will ask you if you are sure you want to remove it. (NOTE: Most software programs also delete any saved data associated with them when you remove the files.)

7.    The next phase you will see the machine deleting the files, and then you will be back where you can select other programs you wish to remove.

Hard Drive Repair Explained

Hard Drive Repair is a term that can conjure up a lot of misunderstanding. Most clients that call in needing hard drive recovery, tell me, “I don’t need the hard drive repaired, just the data off of it!”

Yep we know that, but if your hard drive is clicking or isn’t spinning up, you need hard drive recovery. The hard drive recovery process includes repairing the disk to the point that an engineer can read the file system and recover your data! Often times, the hard disk is repaired and cloned sector by sector to stable media. At that point the data recovery truly begins.

While it is true that you don’t care about that old hard drive, just your data, we still have to repair it. For more information about hard drive repair or why hard drives fail visit our site or call: 1-866-438-6932

The data recovery industry explained is a great article about what actually happens when we get in a drive for hard drive recovery.

Give DTI the chance to work for you. Call Toll Free: 1-866-438-6932 or fill out an online quote form.

How To Set Up Your Computer The Right Way

If I were a Technician how would I set my machine up to keep my data safe from Spyware, Malicious)ware and viruses? Although this article actually has little to do with actual “data recovery” if you are attacked by any of these issues it will cause to have data recovery done.Also, I thought it would be nice to share with you how I have my machine set up so that I stay safe. Firstly, I am going to go over your Internet connection and how to stay secure from the infamous 13 year old hacker. This defense, applies directly to my broad band friends out there (cable modems, dsl, etc.). If you are live on the Internet at all times, with your own ip then you should NEVER EVER have that connection going directly into your computer from the cable modem your ISP has provided you with.

It is imperative that you put a wall between you and your computer, and this can easily be done with a router. You can pick up router at most large electronics retailers for a very reasonable price. In many markets the cable company will provide you with a router if you tell them you need one.

I know many of you use a software firewall, but it has been my experience that they do not do a proper job. A software firewall like Zone Alarm just adds more headaches then it is worth in my opinion, and can end up being a data recovery nightmare if you ever decide you want to actually remove the software.

Now we move on to our most important daily protection for our computer. First, how do we scan for this spy ware and malware? I have used a lot of products, tested everything I could get my hands on, and after years of dealing with this problem one thing is clear. It does not get any better the Ad-Aware by Lava Soft. First of all, this software is free for use on a single home computer (you need to pay for it you are going to be running it at a business or in a network environment). Secondly, they are diligent in keeping their offender database up to date. The software is easy to use and allows for many different types of scans.

I run Ad-Aware 2-3 times a week depending on how much Internet surfing I am doing. The next thing we need to do is block the offending malware, and spy ware sites from even getting access your computer. In order to do this I use Spybot Search and Destroy. This product has an extensive list of sites of known spyware offenders and will add blocks to your machine so that they cannot install any of their nasty little pop-ups. Make sure you install the product and then update it. After that, you only need to use the IMMUNIZE feature.

Doing this will block the sites. I IMMUNIZE about once a week. As for virus protection, the product I use most is Norton Anti Virus. This product has a proven record and has long time been an industry leader. I do not recommend installing all of Norton system tools, just the virus scanner. Make sure you keep live the updates setting on and set the weekly scan up. I would also make sure you turn on the email protection. When it comes to trying to block spam, in your email, there are thousands of products. I have tried setting up rules in outlook to deal with this problem and have had little luck with it actually filtering all the bad guys out.

After looking long and hard for a decent product for this I finally found CloudMark. I cannot say enough about their service. Now it does have a subscription fee but is minimal compared to the headaches they prevent. IF one of the baddies does happen to sneak by you have an easy button to click and this will prevent you from getting email from them again. Finally, to toolbar or not to toolbar that is the question. For me the answer was easy.

Yes! With the toolbar battle raging I have found the Google tool bar to be the most flexible and reliable. The toolbar makes searching a snap, as well as blocking pop-up’s. It adds that extra oomph needed to really keep them at bay. Make sure you have your Internet Explorer pop-up’s turned off also. I hope that this article has at least been a little helpful in keeping your Internet browsing as safe as possible.

Why You Should Defrag Your Hard Drive

I more then likely average about 3 to 4 calls a day from people who have formatted and reinstalled their operating system. Usually by using the manufactures (i.e. Dell) system restore feature, not realizing that this will bring the machine back to the way it was when purchased. All of the data that was on this drive now seems to be gone forever.But this is not the case; most of the data should still be fairly intact. You will have to use what is called a file harvester, or raw data scan, piece of software in order to find these files. The way these pieces of software work, is they start at the beginning of a hard drive and begin to scan looking for unique file header information. These file headers, are unique to the type of file (i.e. JPG is FF D8 FF E0) and therefore the software can try to “piece” the drive back together. If you have defragged your hard disk recently there is a much higher recovery rate because there will be no trash data in your file. If you have not defragged, the likelihood of recovery diminishes greatly, because the software you are using can not tell where a file starts and ends, if it is fragmented.

So I still have not explained what Defragging does. In a perfect world when we wrote data to our drive we would never delete it, but that is just not the case. As we delete files and add files there is “empty” spaces left on our hard drives. These spaces have actual data in them but it is no longer part of any file. As we go forward with normal pc use, we continue to cause the drive to be fragmented and not contiguous. Running Windows defrag on a weekly basis will up the performance of your machine, free space on your hard disk, and leave you in a better data recovery situation should that happen to you. Windows Defrag will move your files around to make them contiguous and therefore more easily accessed by Windows. You can schedule a weekly defrag by following the directions below.

How To Schedule a Weekly Defrag:

Click on the Start Menu and go to the control panel.

Now click on Performance and Maintenance

Once in that screen click on the Scheduled Tasks option

Now double click on Add Scheduled Task

Then Click Next

Click Browse, and now let’s go to the windows/system32 folder, and select defrag.exe, and click Open

Now use the wizard to set a schedule for when to run the defrag.exe program.

When you are asked for your password be sure to enter it, and click next.

Check Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish box, and then click finished.

The following window will pop up.

In the RUN text box add the drive you are wishing to run Defrag on, in most cases this will be C:, to the end of the line.

Click ok and your computer should run defrag on your main hard drive once a week! This will make it better for anyone who might need to perform hard drive data recovery on your hard drive.

How Defrag Works

One of the very important questions I ask people when we are trying to do a raw file extraction on their drive is how long it has been since they defragged their hard drive. On most occasions they can’t remember.

The reason that it is important to defrag, is first of all it makes your computer run faster, second you will have less of a chance of a Windows crash, and lastly if for some reason you need to do data recovery on the hard drive you will have a higher recovery rate if you have recently defragged. The reason for this is that when we talk about a “Raw File Scan” what that means is a sector scanner that is looking for header files.

These programs all work generally in the same way, all files whether it be a JPG or a DOC have their own unique header files. File Recovery Programs like Digital Picture Recovery and software that Undelete Files scan down the drive looking for this header information. Now if your hard drive had been defragged when the program gets to the next header and ends the other file then it is likely that the file is all there, but if it had been a long time since the defrag then you run into a situation where we are only going to see part of a file because the rest of the file is strewn across the hard drive.

Please see the image below for an eyes on to the problem.

 

For more info visit our hard drive recovery or data recovery software pages. Learn How and Why To Defrag Your Hard Drive.

RAID O or RAID 1 Choices In New Computer

RAID 0 or No?

So recently I got myself a brand spankin’ new computer. Yahoo, right? I can finally play Vanguard with out lag. So, anyway it was set up with a RAID 0 a 64k stripe for speed since it is my gaming machine. The RAID contained two 80gig Maxtor SATA drives. Now when I set up the RAID I promised myself I would not put any data on it, for fear of failure. Well as the story goes one of the drives has failed, and I have family photos all over my desktop.

In another article I had preached that RAID 0 is wonderful, and I still feel that way, just make sure you have a data drive in the machine. I only wrote this to show you all even someone who KNOWS better doesn’t back up, and makes what I feel was a silly mistake of not keeping the data in a safer place, so don’t feel bad if you make a mistake with your data, I do it all the time.

Fortunately I work for on of the best RAID Data Recovery companies, but if you don’t, then back up your data!

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