How do I fix it you ask? There are couple of different ways. The first way would be to download a piece of recovery software, something like Recover It All, let it scan and then move the data off to another hard drive. After you move all the data it would then be safe to format your external hard drive and move the data back. This method is the tried and true method of data recovery, but it is time intensive and requires that you have another drive with enough storage to hold the data. The other problem I foresee is that you may also miss an important file.

There is another option though, and that is the Recover It Now service we offer. With this service I use LogMeIn to come into the machine remotely. I load my tools on to your machine and then fix the drive on the fly. When all is said and done you will be back up and running like crash never happened. I can also offer diagnostic analysis of the hard drive for free as well as point you in the right direction of what recovery software will be the best option.

If you want to discuss the options please give me a call at 727.345.9665 ext 236 and I will be happy to help!

What needs to be done is to separate the primary component of the RAID which is the hard drive from the controller in order to make a legitimate diagnosis. The following are some methods you can use that are isolated from a damaged RAID controller that will help you recover the data of your client.

First of all check the drives to make sure they are electronically sound. If you have SCSI drives use an Adaptec SCSI controller.  Perhaps an Adaptec 2930 would suit your needs.  They are inexpensive and have been around for a bit so all of the firmware bugs are worked out.  Put the SCSI card in a reliable computer and mount each drive individually. If the drives are SATA, or PATA use a standard interface port to mount the drives.

If the drive shows up in the ‘Disk Manager’  item of the ‘Computer Management’  then it is a pretty safe assumption that the interface is intact and you have some I/O between the drive and the controller. In addition to this DTI Data has a free surface scanner that will allow you to look at each drive and map any bad sectors on the drive.  If two or more drives come up having bad sectors then that could be the reason why the RAID went down.  RAID controllers are very sensitive to more than one drive exhibiting bad sectors or slow reads.  A RAID 5 controllers’ firmware may be fault tolerant, but when two drives have bad sectors the controller will degrade the array and bring it offline.

If, however, there are not any bad sectors on any of the drives then that is normally a controller problem.  You may have received a power spike, or some kind of memory fault but the fact of the matter is that barring those kinds of things the raid controller failed and will not mount your array.

In addition to doing a surface scan to verify if in fact you have had a raid controller failure you can check the integrity of the raid.  In a raid 5, the controller will do a set of mathematical operations on the data in order to be able to reverse engineer the data if a drive drops out of the array. These XOR math functions are used to do a rebuild on the array and take a degraded raid 5 hard drive and build it.  The drive will have to be replaced before the build but a raid 5 controller has the ability to integrate a brand new drive back into the array.

I bring up the raid 5 mathematics, because in order for the array to have a ‘clean bill of health’ the parity integrity must be intact.  If a raid card does not detect the fact that a drive has dropped out of the array then the drive will become stale.  A raid 5 will continue to function even if one drive is out of the array; however the raid card should notify the technician that the array has been degraded and the drive should be replaced and a rebuild performed.

DTI Data has a free diagnostic tool for raid 5 and will allow you to see if in fact there is a stale drive in the array.  I wrote a blog on how to detect a stale drive in the array and hopefully this will help you diagnose drive array controller failure.  If in fact the software finds a stale drive and the raid controller did not indicate that then the only way to recover the data is to create a virtual raid 5 array offline using software and images created from the raid 5 drives.

In order to create the images DTI Data has an inexpensive solution on our web site.  The software was designed and written with the technician imaging multiple drives to a single drive.  It is as easy as mounting the drives, selecting the source drives, the destination drive and then just walking away.  The software will not only image the drives but it will map all the bad sectors its finds and generate a comprehensive report.

These are just a few things that you can do to detect a raid controller failure.  DTI Data offers a set of comprehensive tools that will check all aspects of the raid 5 hard drive.  These tools are all on our website and will hopefully be an addition to your tool set.

If you need RAID Data Recovery Call Toll Free 1-866-438-6932 ext. 203 or direct 1-727-345-9665 ext. 203 to speak with a qualified RAID engineer now!

OK, so I was really wanting a dual monitor stand for my two LCD flat panel monitors, mainly to get them up off the desk more to give myself more desk space and to raise them up higher.  The cheapest I could find one for was around $80.00, so I decided to attempt to build my own.  I did a little research and saw how other people were building theirs and came up with my own design (based on the size of the LCD’s, the height I wanted them and distance, angle, etc…)  I am SURE there are much better ways of doing this, but I wanted to keep it rather inexpensive.  Total cost of all parts came to around $25.00, give or take a few dollars.

Design:

1. First come up with a design.  Measure your two monitors and find out the length of pipe you will need.
2. Here is a scan of my original design:



Parts:

3. I chose to build it out of Galvanized plumbing pipe.  I used ¾” for the base and used a reducing coupling to make it ½” for the rest.  I also decided to use a 45 Degree elbow to have the monitors at an angle to each other.  The LCD mounts I cut out of plywood scraps.
4. Here are the parts I used:



Assembly:

5. Putting it together:



6. After painting it black:



7. Mounted to desk:



8. Make sure you have mounting hole measurements correct on the LCD mounts.  I had to go back and redo several times because I had measured the holes to be exactly 4” apart and it turns out they are not exactly 4” apart.  Also getting the correct machine screws gave me a problem.  #8 – 32 screws appeared to be the right size, but it turned out I needed metric size 4mm for the back of the monitors.
9. Mounting first monitor:



10. Finished!

Here is the scenario, a user will plug in an external hard drive and back off all of their important data to that drive in preparation of a format/reload of windows. They then reboot the machine and boot from their Windows cd. They begin by deleting the primary partition on the boot drive and then formatting with NTFS. They go through the entire windows load with out incident. Finally in windows they go to My Computer only to see that the external drive is no longer accessible. I have seen 2 different problems here one is that the drive still has a drive letter but it will throw the error “The drive is not formatted would you like to format it now?”. The second situation is that the drive has no drive letter at all and in Disk Management it will say the drive is unallocated or raw. My recommendation is that you never leave any drive, except the one you are installing windows too, connected to the machine while you are reloading Windows.  Now on to how to fix this problem.

There is a couple of ways to fix the problem, the first one is to get Recover IT All Professional and allow the software to find your files. You can then mark them and move them off. The problem with this option is that it requires a lot of transferring of files, and you may miss some. The other way to do it would be to have DTI Data Recovery remote into your computer and repair the problem remotely. With a hex editor I can put the drive back to the way it was before this happened. This is a nice option and limits the down time to the user. There is no cost to the customer for me to come into the machine and take a look and see if I can recover the drive. If you have any questions about the software or remote service you can reach me at 727-345-9665 ext 236.

If you are restoring Windows because of a hard drive failure, you may need hard drive recovery. Don’t use Windows restore CD’s if your hard drive is clicking, or isn’t seen by the BIOS.

Open Windows Explorer which can be done by right clicking on My Computer and clicking on Explore.

Now selected the drive that the files are missing from and go up to Tools and then Folder Options.

A new window called Folder Options will appear. From here click on the VIEW tab. We need to change two settings in here so that we are sure that we are seeing all the files on the drive. The first option to look for is “Hidden Files and Folders” under here is 2 options one to NOT show them and one to show them make sure you are showing them. The next option (2 under the hidden files one) is “Hide Protected Operating System Files” make sure you UNCHECK this.

Now Click “APPLY TO ALL FOLDERS” and then OK when that is done. Now in the case of my customers what I discovered then was Found001.chk, this meant that chkdsk had been run on the drive and more then likely not to completion. When I right clicked on that directory and went to properties that directory has 30 gigs in it. AH-HA the disappearing data. When I opened the Found001 directory there was sub directories call dir0001, dir0002, etc.. Inside each of these directories was the customers data that had been missing. The customer did not even know chkdsk had run which I find is often the case if the machine reboots when no one is around.

In some cases file are lost due to mechanical problems with the disk. If yours is making noises then it will likely need hard drive recovery. If the hard drive is fine and seen by the BIOS or Windows, we can do remote recovery. Our fast data recovery service Recover It Now starts at under a hundred bucks.

For this job you will need a clear space to work in, not a HUGE amount of space but enough that you can set your laptop down and have a good 4 inches all the way around. You will also need somewhere to set the hard drive once removed, aluminum foil makes a nice anti static surface. Also it is likely you will need a precision Phillips head screw driver, because like everything else on a laptop the screws are much smaller then that of a desktop. The screw drive will look something like this.

This is the bottom of my laptop, from here I need to look around and locate the SMALL screws I will need to remove to free the hard drive from the laptop.

They can “usually” be identified by the universal sign for Hard Drive which I have a picture of below.

From here you will need to remove the screws.

As you can see there is quite a few screws on the back, make sure you are removing the proper ones. If you are not sure you can always check with the manufacturers web site.

Once the screws are removed then you will have access to the hard drive, if it is the slider type you should be able to easily slide the drive away from the laptop. If it is the kind with a plastic cover over it you will have to disconnect the IDE cable or SATA cable and power. You should now be able to either do hard drive recovery on the laptop drive with an external USB chassis or replace the hard drive if that is what you were trying to do.

Related Hard Drive Recovery Resources:

How To Slave A Laptop Hard Drive Using a USB Enclosure Video - if you are removing your laptop hard drive for data recovery, this video will show you how to use the adapter for USB.

Hard Drive Recovery

This first area I am going to cover is the partition area of the hard drive. It is also sometime referred to as the MBR (master boot record) which can be confusing because it is NOT the boot sector. It is also often called the partition table. For the purpose of this article I will call it the partition sector. The Partition sector is what handles the “logical” drives in “physical” drive. So that is to say just because you have a C and D drive does not mean you have 2 hard drives. It more then likely means you have one physical hard drive with two logical drives contained inside of it.

EXAMPLE: Take a piece of Tupperware and 2 apples. We will consider the Tupperware the “PHYSICAL” hard drive. Now take the 2 apples and put them in the Tupperware and close it up. The 2 Apples inside are the “LOGICAL” drives or the partitions.

You can see how many physical hard drives you have under the Disk Management Utility. Also in this utility you can see how many logical drives are contained in each physical hard drive.

NOTE: You can get to Disk Management by right clicking on “My Computer” and going to manage. From there you will see Disk Management please see screen grab below.

When the partition sector of a hard drive is wrong or gone you can usually still see it in Windows Explorer with a drive letter assigned to it. Unfortunately when you click the drive you will get an error like “the drive is not formatted would you like to format it now?”. This is a problem that can in most cases be easily fixed if I were to remote in to the computer. Follow the link for more information on Remote Logical Hard Drive Recovery and how we can remote into your computer and recover your data.

Now, the cool part about the partition sector is that it has a back up in a different area of the hard drive for recovery. So if it is just an issue of a deleted partition, or some kind of very nasty virus, recovery of the partition becomes very simple with the use of free utilities like our Free Partition Repair Software. In the event on of the free utilities did not work to recover the partition there could be a deeper issue with the hard drive in which case a sector editor may need to be called upon to diagnose and fix the problem. Below is some pictures of a healthy partition in sector editing software.

This is what I see when I go to sector 0 in WinHex as you can see there is even “Invalid partition table. Error loading operating system. Missing Operating system.” Now we know where we get those errors from. If the partition is intact but one of the other system areas is not then it will revert back to one of these errors depending on which area seems to be having the problem.

Now I apply a template to the partition sector so that I can look at it “decoded”. In here we see that the partition sector says I have only 1 partition on the drive (this is correct). In the one partition it is not active (this is correct since it is an external USB drive). The start head, start sector, and start cylinder will read 1,1,0 in MOST cases. The Partition Type Indicator tells us what kind of partition we have, in my case 07 which means NTFS. If You have0b in there is means you have a FAT32 partition, which we are seeing a lot of on the external USB/FireWire drives. Next you have the end head, end sector, end cylinder and again in MOST cases it is going to be 254,63,1023. The next field is Sectors proceeding partition, this means how many sectors is it until this partition starts. You will sometimes hear this referred to as the logical off set. Again in MOST cases this is going to be 63, which means that if we go to sector 63 we should find the “boot sector” (I will go over the boot sector at a later date). Sectors in Partition is the last thing in the list, and it is exactly what it says, the total sectors in that partition. Now how do we figure out if that number is correct? You can go to the blog I wrote Building Partition Record with Recover It All.

For more information about hard drive recovery or our freeware data recovery.

Hard Drive Recovery Video Series – How To Slave a Laptop Hard Drive

If you have a clicking hard disk drive chances are you need hard drive recovery and slaving your laptop will not help you get your files back. This method is for hard drives that are still recognized by the BIOS, they just don’t show you your data, or let you access it.

The software that you need to recover your data is dependent upon the Operating System that was on your laptop.

• For Windows XP or Microsoft Vista with NTFS File System use DART XP – this program will scan your laptop drive and show you the files that can be recovered before you actually buy the software. You can download the demo version for FREE without having to sign up for anything. DART XP Data Recovery Software. If the scan shows you the data you want, you can purchase it right through the software interface.
• For All other types of Windows or for external hard drives that are running NTFS, FAT, FAT 32 or FAT 16 you will need Recover It All. The Demo version also is FREE and will show you the data before you buy it. You can save the scan and purchase the sofrtware off of our website. Like all our products you don’t have to register it to get the demo and will receive the full version within seconds of purchasing it. Click here for the demo of Recover It All Data Recovery Software.

All of our data recovery software is guaranteed to work or you get your money back. Just like our data recovery services which are No Fix No Fee, we will show you your data before you buy!

DTI also has extended software support. Our software support people work right here in Florida. We don’t outsource anything ever! Our support phones are answered from 9 AM EST to 10 PM EST at 727-345-9665, if you are calling after normal business hours choose the software tech support option with your phone.

Remember if you need hard drive recovery DTI has the best support in the business, a class 100 clean room and a strict no data no charge policy on hard drive recovery. When it comes to laptop data recovery, DTI Data is second to none!

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 gave you and overview and some information on the history of these 3 nasty applications or bots that infect most computers at some time or another. There is a TON of information availible on these subjects on the Internet, so if there is anything more specific that you are curious about or that you didn’t understand from this article you can usually go to http://www.google.com and you can reference it there. In this article, I am going to be discussing what Viruses and Spyware are, and how you locate them on your PC.

The first thing that you have to understand is how these malicious applications get onto your systems. Studies show that the number one way to catch a virus or to obtain Spyware on your system is through P2P (Peer to Peer) file sharing applications like Napster, Limewire, Bit Torrent, and any other program of that variety. You may think you are downloading a harmless MP3 file, or you may think you are getting the latest MPEG for free, but the fact is that over 40% of all files that are transferred through P2P programs are actually viruses or Spyware and key loggers that are camouflaged as the file you are looking for. Remember this ONE rule about the Internet, if you only remember ONE thing from this article, and that is there is NO SUCH THING as FREE on the P2P applications. No matter how perfect or scamless the situation may seem, if it is FREE and on the P2P programs than you can guarantee that there are strings attached. So try to stay as far away from P2P programs and applications as you can, because no matter how hard you try and no matter how much protection your system has, you are bound to override your protection to view a file that you shouldn’t because of infection, and you will sooner or later end up destroying your system.

I’m sure as you are reading this article you are thinking that you are probably secure, and that you have Antivirus and Antispyware software on your system, so none of this applies to you. But remember this, those programs are only good if you do updates to their data files at least once a day, and they can only stop what you tell it to stop. So if you try and access a website that you THINK is safe, and your Antivirus software tries to tell you it is not, and you bypass your antivirus software and access the site anyway, then you may have just let a Trojan or key logger onto your system and your Antivirus software can now do nothing about it. Understand that protection software is only as good as it owner. It also only takes ONE piece of Spyware or Malware to get onto your system to corrupt your Antivirus or Antispyware programs so that they cannot detect future attacks against your system. The first thing a virus or piece of spyware does, is look for the services and applications that run your Antivirus software, and disable them, or even worse, cloak themselves so that your antivirus software thinks everything is running smoothly when in all reality, your system is being destroyed one piece at a time. A lot of viruses and Trojans will disguise themselves as system services and then they become nearly impossible even by a trained professional to remove from your PC without formatting the computer. There are so many different variations of spyware, Trojans, key loggers, malware, and backdoors that can attack your system, that you have to be on the lookout for strange occurrences at ALL times when surfing the Internet.

Your best bet for protection is to follow the steps in my next article and try to stick to the rule of Internet thumb, and that is if you don’t know the website or file your are downloading and cannot verify its integrity, then DON’T go to that site or download that file. It is a very simple rule, but end users seem to forget it a lot, I myself am included in that statement.

So check back later this week for my last installment of, “Spyware and Malware protection and removal and what you MAY not know!”, which will explain how to understand, locate, and eliminate spyware, malware, and viruses.

Data Recovery

I have had the luxury of being in some sort of IT Industry in one way or another for the last 17 years of my life. I have worked in fields from standard PSTN Telecom, to basic PC building and repair, to Corporate Network Design and Infrastructure Integration, down to Web Design and Programming. I would say that over the years I have seen MANY drastic transitions in technology, some greater than others. I watched as I saw a standard telephone line connected to one personal computer at a time sending messages and files through a BBS (Bulletin Board System), develop into the large scale high speed data network we use now known as the Internet. One thing that has ALWAYS held true in the communications and data networking industry is that there is always someone out there trying to make a quick scamming buck or to take down systems of the masses by playing on the end users lack of knowledge on how to protect and secure their computers. Since the early days of BBSing, I remember even in the late 80’s and early 90’s, there were Trojan viruses and infections that were in place for NO other reason but to annoy and destroy file systems. Anyone who remembers Wildcat and Oblivion BBS’s and was ever struck by the Michelangelo or Jerusalem viruses knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Since the inception or communications, there has always been the need to secure and prevent hackers, warez freaks, and script kiddies from getting into your computers. The only thing I have seen change over the years, is that it is no longer just a 12 year old kid slurping down mellow yellow until 4 am that is hacking your system and corrupting your files, or even worse, stealing your personal information. Now it has become a multibillion dollar BIG BUSINESS for companies which I won’t mention in this article to install Spyware, Malware, and Scamware onto your system so they can collect information about your personal life, your personal preferences, your web surfing habits, and even your credit card and social security number so they can store your information into a database and sell your information off to the highest bidder.

Now please understand, I am not a conspiracy theory type of guy, and I don’t think that big brother is trying to get me, but I am a realist and I know for a FACT that EVERYONE that is reading this article has at some point in time in one way, shape, or form has had a virus, a Trojan, some Spyware, or Malware on their system. So that is not a conspiracy, it is the plain and cold hard truth. We as a community of Internet surfers and knowledge seekers have to be able to protect ourselves and our family’s against the unwanted bots, programs, and software that is being installed onto our systems and is invading our privacy without knowledge. So my next few articles are going to explain a few ways on how to spot the malicious software and viruses on your system, and a few of the best tools to protect and guarantee your computers and family’s safety from these devious applications.

So check back later this week for my next installment of, “Spyware and Malware protection and removal and what you MAY not know!”, which will explain how to understand, locate, and eliminate spyware, malware, and viruses.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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!

No matter how much you have learned or know about these subjects, with the ever changing technologies and infrastructures around us it is important to stay up to date, because these technologies can pass you by in a matter of weeks. These articles are designed to give you a low level understanding of each of their subjects, so that you may be able to diagnose and fix issues that you keep running into without relying on restrictive applications to fix these problems for you. We have found that technicians, and even end users have become VERY dependent on 3rd party applications and tools to fix issues and problems for them, but what do you do when a problem is outside of the scope of your utilities? These articles are designed to not only help you solve problems, but to show you how they start, and WHERE they start, and how to get to the roots of the real problems on your PC’s.

This portion will give you a little bit of a background on who I am and what I do, so you can kind of associate with me in these articles. I am going to go over a little bit of where most of my knowledge has come from and how I can help you. My name is Richard Correa III, and I have been a Systems and Network engineer for as long as I can remember. My first computer that I ever used was an Atari 800xl, which at 6 years old I learned to program in basic in the early 80’s and from then on I was hooked on computers. Of course I played with the Commodore 64s and Vic 20s, Tandy’s, and other Atari’s (ST Series), but my first real PC was an IBM XT 8086 running DOS 3.3 that my father brought home from work to code on. My father is a true low level Systems Analyst, and has been coding in low level Assembler and C for 30+ years. He is also a Kernel UNIX coder and now engineers RAID Data Recovery software for our firm. I have been fortunate to work in my industry my entire life and have been able to see the amazing growth of computer technology over the last 20 years. Shortly after I started using the IBM XT, I was introduced to the 80286 AT series and then the 80386×16 series. My first true networking experience came when the 386s came out. I setup my first Novell IPX/SPX Token Ring network at the age of 12 so that I could play Doom and Quake with friends and family head to head. I was always interested in communications and started my very first Wild Cat BBS (Bulletin Board System) shortly after my parents opened a retail computer store in 1995. BBS’s were the predecessor to email, forums, and messaging systems we know and now use. I learned about IRC (Internet Relay Chat) systems shortly after I started BBSing and that is was when I truly saw technology changing. IRC was the first system in which I was able to talk to thousands of people online at one time, and it was LIVE! From that point further, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and have been fortunate enough to grow with the technologies at hand, and have been teaching ever since.

In early 1999 I received my MCP, MCSA, MCSE, and MCDBA certifications to try and guarantee my place in the workforce, but I soon after found that companies were not only looking for certifications, but they also required years of field knowledge as well. In late 1999 I started working for a local IT Firm that installed High Speed Broadband for a major ISP and cable television company. I was a lead technical trainer there, and trained other technicians how to install network cards, setup home and small to medium business networks, and to show customers how to surf the Internet and use their computers safely. All of this technology was very new and EVERYONE wanted it. I left this firm shortly after and was offered a Director’s position at a much larger contracting firm who at the time had over 800 field engineers and technicians installing coaxial cable and large scale voice and data systems all over the state of Florida. I helped to implement all of the training and installation material to teach these 800 technicians how to use computers and integrate small scale networks. Within 2 years of being with this company I had trained over 2000 technicians and helped in becoming the largest contractor for Time Warner and Bright House Networks in the south east region. I published a lot of manuals and technical documentation that I am going to be posting in these Beginners Guides over the next few months, and I hope you can benefit from them as much as my technicians did. Please feel free to contact me anytime via phone or email with any questions or problems that you may have, no matter how large scale the problem may be. I love a good challenge and love to fix intricate problems.

The Internet Protocol TCP/IP and IP Addresses:

Have you ever wondered how the Internet works? Have you ever just been typing in a web address into your URL (Uniform Resource Locator) bar and wondered how your Internet browser knows where to go and get the information you are about to see on your screen? Well if so, here is a very basic introduction to the Internet and how it works.

Every computer, every server, every website, every router, and pretty much every network device uses something called a protocol to communicate between each other. A protocol is basically a common language that all of the network devices use to pass data and information back and forth. The protocol that the Internet uses to talk back and forth is TCP/IP v4 (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol version 4). TCP/IP Is bases on a 4 octet numbering system called an IP Address that we will not go too far into depths in this article, but this is an example of an IP Address (10.10.10.1). Understand that IP Addresses can range anywhere from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255. An IP Address is a unique identifier for every Internet device, and can be looked at similarly to a house or business address. If I wanted to send you a letter via the postal service, I would have to know your address, and if you wanted to send me a return message, you would have to know my mail address. Now do you see the similarities? Everyone has two unique numbers assigned to them to make sure that the correct information gets to the correct person or computer. Everyone has an IP Address, and they have a MAC address. The MAC address is a serial number that EVERY networking card or device has that is a 12 digit alpha-numeric number that is NEVER duplicated by the manufacturers, making sure that with a proper IP Address the correct information has 2 layers of addressing to guarantee packets and traffic to the right computer.

The Domain Naming System (DNS):

So hopefully, you now understand that your computer has an IP Address that allows you to send packets of information back and forth to websites so that you can surf the Internet. You now have to wonder, how do I use my IP Address to get to www.google.com? When the Internet was first designed, it was never even conceived that it would scale and grow to the size that it has gotten to today. The original design for the Internet was made so that military bases could securely send data back and forth to each other and guarantee the packets were addressed to the correct places. Shortly afterward the School Board and Universities started designing their own network protocols and adopted TCP/IP as their own internal LAN / WAN (Local Area Network / Wide Area Network) network protocol as well. When the Internet was first designed, you had to know the IP Address of the server or site you were trying to communicate with, but this was quickly becoming a problem, because people were starting to be expected to know thousands of IP Address just to communicate. It would be like trying to memorize a phone book to place a call. So this is when the first versions and implementations of DNS were introduced.

DNS Is an overlying service that runs on top of TCP/IP called the Domain Naming System. DNS uses special DNS Server Database to translate Domain Names (Such as google.com) to an IP Addresses so that your computer knows where to go when you make a request in your browser. So when you type in http://www.google.com into your browser, the first thing your network card, IP Address, and browser do, is check with your ISPs (Internet Service Provider) DNS server to find out what www.google.com’s IP Address is. Your ISPs DNS server then sends your computer the IP Address you are looking for, and your browser then goes to the IP Address for requested websites (I.e. google.com) web server. Google’s Web Server then sends the web page to your browser in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) format, and your browser converts the HTML to the web pages that you see in your browser every day. Now understand that this is in all actuality MUCH more complicated, but this truly is the gist of it.

TCP/IP Is a very fast and seemingly secure layered protocol that has been suffice for 20 years now. The only problem is that the world and the Internet have outgrown this protocol, and we will most likely be seeing a newer, faster, more secure, and robust protocol in the next 10 years. Companies like AOL, Time Warner, and Microsoft are already testing a new version of TCP/IP named TCP/IP v6 (version 6) on their internal networks. TCP/IP v6 is supposedly going to be more secure, and also going to allow for more public IP Addresses, which is one of the major issues that TCP/IP v4 is running into now.

If you would like to get a more technical understanding of the 7 layers of TCP/IP and how it handles data packets, or you want to understand how DNS truly resolves name in its hierarchy, please look for future articles or send me an email and I will be more than happy to deliver some intricate documentation explaining these 2 amazing Internet back bone pieces.

Until Next time, take care, and please leave comments on any questions or inaccuracies that you may have found for this article.

Richard Correa, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCDBA
Senior Network Engineer / Lead Web Developer
DTIData – DTI Networks
Office :: 727.345.9665 ext.206
Mobile :: 727.656.8690
rcorrea@dtidata.com

http://www.dtidata.com

http://www.dtinetworking.com

The most popular of these seem to be Dell’s PC Restore by Symantec and HP Compaq’s PC system recovery. Let me take a moment to explain how these restores work. When your hard drive is installed at the factory and the operating system loaded, a very small semi invisible partition area is created at the beginning of the drive. This small partition usually uses about 2 gig of your drive and is used to store a compressed image of your machine as it was when it left the manufacturer. In other words, it takes a snapshot of how all the software was loaded and stores that in the tiny partition. If something happens to your operating systems and you can no longer get into Windows, you employ this partition.

In your documentation there is an explanation of how to get into you recover partition or diagnostic partition and is usually done by hitting F10 when you boot up. At this point you will be asked to make sure you have your data backed up and then you will be asked if you would like to restore your machine. If at the time you’re doing this you happen to be speaking with the manufactures technical support people they advise you to click yes and continue the restore procedure. Now, the party is over and from this point forward your data has become highly compromised, if not totally destroyed. Understand that the tech support at the manufacturer only cares about getting the PC back up and running and feel no responsibility to your data. This is an important point that must be clearly understood. They don’t care about your data or if you need hard drive recovery.

Ok so now you have run the system restore, you boot in to windows and low and behold all of your data is gone. Your operating system and applications have been restored to the original state and your data now resides in the Twilight Zone. The following are the steps you will need to take in order to try and recover some of your data files (ie .jpg, .doc, .mp3) for hard drive recovery.

Dell Compaq and HP System Restore feature and how to recover your data files.

1. Move the hard disk to another computer either via USB chassis or by slaving it to another PC. Please see DTI’s blog if you don’t know How To Slave A Hard Drive.
2. Purchase a piece of file carving or file harvester software for a raw file recovery. The piece of software that we sell that does this kind of data recovery is Fast File Finder the link will take you to the download page where you can download the demo. Like all of DTI Data Recovery’s software, it will show you your data before you buy it! We have a long list of file types that we can recover and hopefully yours will be on it. Data Recovery Software like this normally recovers many different types of data file formats.
3. Run a scan of the hard drive and see what files Fast File Finder locates.
4. Save the files to a different hard drive because you do not want to put any data on the hard drive you are trying to recover from. Let me say that again, do not save the data to the physical drive you are trying to recover data from.
5. Lastly, go through all the files that the raw file finder has recovered for you and see if your data is there.

If you had not defragged your drive in more then 2 weeks before the system restore a lot of the files will be corrupted due to file fragmentation. You can see DTI’s blog on how to set up a scheduled defrag so that in the event that this happens again you will be prepared. You will also notice you have lost all your directory structure and file names. It is unfortunate, but because you have a perfectly good working file system at this point, and all of the old information in the Master File Table, Partition Sector, and Master Boot Record have all been over written this is the only option. The best way to avoid hard drive recovery all together is to back up often!