The good news is that technology exists that can go into storage devices such as hard drives and USB sticks and recover “invisible” data - even if the device has been reformatted. The bad news is that in this case, some of that data may be corrupt and therefore unrecoverable.

First, let’s look at why data recovery tools can recover data from formatted media. When a disk, memory card, USB stick, and other storage devices are reformatted, the data isn’t wiped clean like we’ve been lead to believe. Rather, the file system is cleaned up. That is, all of the indexes and references pointing to the data are removed and replaced with empty indexes and tables. The references are gone, but the data remains. Now, when the operating needs to write data to the device, for all intents and purposes, the device is empty.

Once formatted, new data can be written to the device’s “free space.” This means that your old data, which is now flagged as “free space,” can potentially be overwritten by new data. If this happens, then the old data is gone for good. Currently, you have a window of opportunity because you haven’t yet written new data to the USB stick.

Data recovery tools, such as ParetoLogic’s Data Recovery and Data Recovery Pro, install on your computer and can read any device that shows up as a drive letter, making it possible to recover data on a USB stick like yours. However, there’s some concern about the fact that the computer shut down with the stick in place as it’s possible that the USB stick didn’t shut down properly.

Similarly, unplugging a USB stick without stopping it first can cause problems. While it is a pain to go through the steps of clicking the “remove hardware” link, stopping the device, and clicking OK, it is a necessary evil. Otherwise, if you simple unplug the device, you could be interrupting write operations. The device may have been writing data or updating its file system.

Whatever the cause, something is now amiss. Your computer can’t read the USB stick because something is corrupt. Hopefully it’s just the reference table and not any of your important files.

Here’s what to do about it. First, download a free data recovery scanner and scan your USB device to see if the software can “see” your data on the device. While the scan is free, the recovery isn’t. This saves you money because if the USB stick is not recoverable, then you can find out without making a purchase. If the tool finds your data and indicates that it is recoverable, then you’ll likely be overjoyed! Depending on the product you choose, you’re looking at about $40-$50 should you decide to buy the data recovery tool and recover your USB stick. This is a real bargain if you have irreplaceable files.

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I’ve heard the phrase “your data is only as good as your last backup” countless times, and it’s true. After all, if you need current data, old backups are practically useless. Sure, an old backup can help you rebuild and they’re better than nothing, but the fact remains that failed backups can be a major problem if you need to restore something.

Fortunately, most backup utilities report back to the user when the backup has failed so that you know that something interfered with your backup and that you need to do something about it. Unfortunately, these notifications don’t always give you obvious clues. In this case, a basic alert has appeared in your Taskbar telling you that something went wrong. But what?

My guess is that either the media device is full or that a file or program was in use, and thus skipped. Other common reasons for backup failures include an inability to detect the storage device, unexpected interruptions during the backup, and an inability to mount the media.

Back when I worked in a real office, I was in charge of the nightly backups and often arrived in the morning to find out that a backup failure had occurred. In my case, I had set up the backup software to e-mail me a notification. More often than not, the reason the backup failed was because one of the workstations hadn’t been properly logged off beforehand and that the point of sale system was open on that workstation. What happened is that since data files were technically in use, the backup utility would skip them. Unfortunately, these data files were the whole point of having a backup in the first place. The same is true of backups on home computers. If you leave Microsoft Money open and the backup utility is scheduled to back up your Microsoft Money files, it probably won’t because the files are in use.

The other problem with backup failures I frequently ran into had to do with full tapes. Once the tape was full, future backups failed. Simply replacing the tape, solved the problem. The same is true if you’re performing a backup to a CD-R, USB stick, external hard drive, or other storage media. If the storage media is full or doesn’t have enough capacity for the current backup, the backup will fail.

While these are common reasons for backup failures, you probably don’t have to guess, your backup utility most likely has some sort of event log or reporting mechanism that offers details about what caused the failure. Start by opening the backup utility and then start looking for “reports,” “logs,” “exceptions,” “alerts,” or any other options that make sense.

Once you find the report, it should tell you exactly what went wrong. From there, you can take the necessary steps to prevent a future occurrence.  

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External Data Storage Tips for USB and Firewire

Using external drives to quickly expand the storage options on a PC or a Mac is an increasingly common computing task. Plugging in a disk drive from the outside beats opening the computer and struggling with screws, mounting, and arcane tangled cables. Computer and electronics store shelves are ripe with storage devices of all sizes, shapes, and capacities from the diminutive keychain flash drives to multi-disk storage towers. However, there is more than one way to attach an external disk to a computer. Which should you choose, USB or FireWire?

The familiar Universal Serial Bus (USB) is nearly ubiquitous in modern computing. From mice and keyboards to scanners, printers, and joysticks, virtually any input or output device can be implemented as a USB device. Newer computers feature half a dozen or more USB ports as “legacy” serial and parallel ports disappear. Swarms of devices use the available five-volt power from a USB port to charge or operate. And you can operate a disk drive from a USB port, too.

USB devices come in two types, indistinguishable from the outside: USB 1.1, which is capable of low-speed operation and is sometimes confusingly called “Full Speed”, and USB 2.0, which is much faster and is generally referred to as “High-Speed”. Most data-type devices like disk drives and scanners require a USB 2.0 connection for full performance. At 480 megabits per second (mbps), USB 2.0 easily outpaces the languid 12 mbps offered by USB 1.1. One must defer to the specifications of both the device and the computer to which it will be attached to determine which version of USB is in use; some computers might even have ports of both types.

FireWire, also called iLink (on Sony devices) or IEEE 1394 (in the generic sense, “FireWire” being an Apple trademark), also comes in two flavors, though they are easily identifiable by their connection cable. FireWire 400 (also known as 1394a) features a rectangular 6-pin cable and operates at 400 mbps; FireWire 800 (1394b) has a square 9-pin cable and runs at 800 mbps. FireWire doesn’t have the device support of USB, but doesn’t really need it since it’s designed primarily for the high-speed data transport required for disk drives and high-end capture devices (video cameras and some scanners).

Although USB 2.0 runs at a speed nominally better than FireWire 400, real-world benchmarks show that during sustained file operations, FireWire is dramatically faster than USB — by 33-50%! FireWire 800 is even faster, though real-world results might not match the 100% improvement implied by the raw reported speed. The advantage FireWire has over USB in large data transfer is one reason most (if not all) digital video cameras only support image capture over FireWire. USB devices are good at bursty data transfers, making it a fine choice for most scanners, digital still cameras, and small disk drives, where data is moved in a short period of time.

Choosing between USB and FireWire is usually a pretty simple choice: often, devices don’t give you a choice. But presented with the option to buy an external disk drive with USB or FireWire (or better yet, both), consider the purpose of that drive and which connection type is a better fit. If you’ll be storing and editing video files, FireWire is the obvious best choice, but for storing many small files accessed infrequently, such as backups or text documents or MP3 music libraries, USB should work just fine.

Successful computing is often about making the right choice, and at least this one is now a little easier.

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Computer Data Backup Tips

Has your hard drive ever crashed and all your valuable files went with it? The photos you took of Baby’s first steps, your financial data and maybe all those MP3 files you loved?

If it hasn’t happened, rest assurred that someday it will. If it has happened, you know the value of backing up your files.

So maybe you’d better get busy and backup your computer before disaster strikes.

You have several alternatives to use when backing up your computer. These choices range from using CDs, an external hard drive, another computer on a home or office network, or one of the many online backup services available on the Internet. You may use one, or several of these methods in combination.

If you choose to use CDs, make sure you get the CD/RW discs, as these may be written over several times. Using CDs to back up your files can be a bit cumbersome if you have a lot of files, since a CD only holds 700mb of data. If you have a lot of data, it can take a lot of CD’s to hold it all. To back up using CD/RW’s just stick the CD/RW disc in the CD drive, then copy and paste the files onto it. If you make changes to files later and want to refresh your backup, just stick the CD backup disc into the drive again, copy and paste the changed file to the CD and the computer will replace the old version on the CD with the new version from the computer.

A better solution than the CD may be to use an external hard drive. These are fairly inexpensive and hold a lot of data. For most people, one external hard drive can hold all the files on their computer. The external hard drive will connect directly to your computer via a USB connector. Like the CD, you can just copy and paste your files directly onto the external hard drive. You can use the same process to refresh the old copies on the external hard drive with updated files from the computer as is used for CD-RWs.

Whether you choose CD-RWs or an external hard drive, it may pay to make two copies of your backup files and store one in a place away from your home or office in case of a disaster like a fire, tornado, hurricane or other calamity destroys your computer and all your backups. A copy of your backup files stored in a bank deposit box, friend or relative’s home or other place can be a real lifesaver.

Backing up your files to another computer if you have a home or office network is another alternative. If file sharing is turned on both computers, you may back the computers up on each other, or to an external hard drive hooked up to either.

When you have your backup files set up and your computer crashes, all you have to do when you finally get it up and running again is to copy and paste from your backups back into your new hard drive or computer. If you have been actively refreshing your backups, then you may have very few, if any files lost and you can be back in the saddle relatively quickly.

As an alternative to manually copying and pasting to your backup you can use a backup program to automatically run your backups. Windows Vista comes with a backup utility which works pretty good. There are many other programs available to buy, or free at online freeware web sites. The advantage to using these programs is that they can be set to work automatically, freeing you from the chore. Most can automatically sense the files you have changed, and only back up those files. You can choose the frequency, time of day and types of files to backup with most of these programs. Some will even shut your computer off for you if you choose to backup at the end of the day. The program will back up your files and shut the computer off while you sleep. If your computer fails, you just restore the data from the backup device when you get up and running again.

Backing up you computer files to an online service is growing in popularity. The way is works is pretty simple. Investigate the companies online, choose one, download their software and install it. The software will backup your files to the remote computer on a schedule you choose. Some of these backup companies will give you a small amount of space free. Expect to pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee for space used above the minimum. These services can be great if you are on the go a lot and lugging an external hard drive or boxes of CDs would be inconvenient. On the downside, they can be impossible to use if you have dial-up Internet service. Or, if you forget to pay the fee, or cannot access the internet, the backup data may be unavailable to you.

How often should you backup your computer? That depends on how much you use your computer. If you operate a small business and use it daily, then your computer should be backed up daily. If you are an infrequent user, weekly or monthly may suffice. The key is to make a backup plan and stick to it.

Backing up your computer files is very important to avoid lost data in case of a computer failure. With so many backup systems available, there is sure to be a system which will work for you. This is one project you should start today.

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Backup and Restore your Files, Music, Videos, Pictures and Documents, In fact- Back up your Entire Harddrive Automatically!

Backing up your computer is important however, you don’t necessarily need to backup every single file residing on your hard drive. Your backups are part of a larger recovery strategy. First, it’s simply impractical to back up the entire operating system, all program files, system settings, and data. Plus, you can always reinstall your operating system and programs from the original installation discs. In addition, your computer has systems in place for restoring or repairing system files such as System Restore or Microsoft Windows Resource Checker.

When deciding what to back up, focus on data. This includes documents, spreadsheets, financial data, photos, videos, and any other information that you value. For example, if you’re a poet who regularly composes poems on your computer, make sure to back up your poetry files! Likewise, if you’re business professional who has a huge database of customers on your computer, make sure to backup the database.

Simply choosing to back up your My Documents folder isn’t good enough. For example, if you use a tax preparation program such as TurboTax or TaxCut to file your taxes each year, your data may be stored in the application’s folder - not My Documents. Similarly, if you have an Act Database with all of your professional contacts’ information stored in it, the actual data will be in the Act folder. In addition, if you’ve created your own folder system or have partitioned your hard drive, you’ll need to make sure that you carefully go through each folder and subfolder in search of data.

Before setting up the backup, it’s smart to create a list of data that you know you need to backup and then go through and find the appropriate folder. For example, your list might look something like this:

• Family photos
• Manuscripts
• Microsoft Money files
• Tax returns
• Contact list
• Estate planning documents
• Travel videos
• Recipes
• All work-related files (D: drive)

The first backup will take a great deal of time because the data has not been backed up before. Once backed up, future backups will be much faster as only changed files are copied. For example, if you’ve only altered three files since the last backup, then only three files will be copied.

Make sure that when the backup is scheduled, all programs and documents are closed. Otherwise, if the backup utility sees that the data is in use, it might skip the file.

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The best way to backup data is the easy way. After all, if it’s not easy, it’s not going to happen, right? In addition to being easy, your backup plan needs to make sense for the volume of data that you have. For example, a large corporation will have different data backup requirements than a housewife who wants to protect her family photos and recipes. In the middle are small businesses and independent professionals who have fairly large amounts of data that is updated frequently.

If you only have small amounts of data to backup, consider burning the data to CD or DVD. DVDs can hold quite a few gigabytes of data, making them ideal for backing up data. However, you will need a CD or DVD burner to burn CDs and DVDs. If you don’t have a CD or DVD burner, flash media cards are another option as are USB sticks.

Tape drives are capable of storing large amounts of data but they do require several expensive cartridges. Not only will you need to purchase the drive and cartridges, you will also need to install the drive.

External hard drives have huge capacities and have fallen in price dramatically. If you have large amounts of data to backup, consider buying an external hard drive and backing up your data to it. One advantage of having an external hard drive is that it is portable; you can use it when you buy a new computer. This makes transferring your data to the new computer fast and easy, plus you have a storage and backup solution for your future computer.

The problem with backing up data to any sort of medium such as CDs, DVDs, tapes, USB sticks, or external hard drives is that the data really should be stored offsite, such as in your safe deposit box. Data must also be backed up regularly or else all you’ll have is old data. Plan on backing up the data regularly (like weekly or daily) and then swapping out the media as you do it. But wait, that’s not so easy, is it? Are you really going to go to the bank with a backup disc or tape backup each month? Not likely.

Online backup services are quickly becoming popular options. If you’re backup needs are modest, check with your Internet service provider and see if they offer free online storage. For example, Roadrunner offers 500 MB of free online storage through their Safe Storage backup service. This product provides automatic backups, encryption, privacy assurance, web access, a firewall, redundancy, and strict internal controls. Additional storage is available for a fee.   

The best part of online backup services is that your data is stored separately from your computer. If your home or office burns down, your backup won’t be destroyed alongside your computer.

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