What is Defrag

We’ve all probably heard the advice from geeks that we need to defrag our computers now and again to keep them running efficiently, but what is defrag?Defrag, sometimes called defragging or defragmentation, is the process of cleaning up the files in your computer, by taking all of the file fragments that have been scattered across your hard disk, and rejoining them into files that occupy the same area. The result of defrag is that it will usually speed up your computer, saving you time and also extending the hard disk’s lifetime. While defrag can sometimes be a time consuming process, it is nevertheless a regular component of computer maintenance.In order to fully understand what is defrag, we need to know why it is performed. Most people think that their computer stores files in the same...

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Posted in: Defrag

Fat32 Data Recovery

No doubt there will come a time when you accidently delete or ‘lose’ a file that is really important to you, and of course you will want to know about FAT32 data recovery. Therefore you need to know what steps you should take in order to try and do so, otherwise you could do something foolish and lose your files completely, forever! FAT32 is a very common system of filing, used by all Windows users up to and including Windows XP. Although now it is losing popularity to the NTFS system, one plus point of FAT32 is that recovering lost or deleted files is often fairly straightforward to do. Like many people, you probably won’t have the first clue about FAT32 data recovery or what to do in the event that your data is accidently deleted. The first thing you should do is follow these steps:If none...

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Posted in: Fat32,Recovery

Computer Data Recovery Services

In today’s highly competitive world, the business of computer data recovery services has become a multi-million dollar industry. Indeed, it sometimes feels as if the number of companies that perform data recovery has exceeded the amount of junk food restaurants in some cities. Many of these computer data recovery firms specialize in the retrieval of data from a wide range of platforms, including hard drives, flash drives, CD ROM’s and more.Losing your data can be a real nightmare for someone whose business depends on it, and so these computer data recovery services perform a valuable service to thousands of people each year. In the event of you ever losing your data, it pays to be prepared and know exactly what to do when it happens.Almost 45% of all occurrences of data loss is due to the...

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Posted in: Computer,Recovery,Services

What is Fat32

It is the file system that is used by many of the older versions of Microsoft Windows, but just what is FAT32?Introduced along with the OEM Service Release 2 for the Windows 95 edition (sometimes known as Windows 95B or OSR2), it is also the default file system for Windows 98 as well as Windows Me. The FAT32 file system can be installed on Windows 2000 (Professional and Server only as Data Center and Advanced Server don’t support it), Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. However, despite it being able to run on many different operating systems, both Microsoft and UITS recommend that you should use NTFS instead of the FAT32 file system.  It is a system of allocating disk files from Microsoft, using values of 32 bits instead of 16 bit values for FAT entries. The FAT32 file system enables...

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Posted in: Fat32

What is a File System

You’ve probably heard of plenty of terms being bandied about when people talk about files systems, such as FAT, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS, not too mention partition tables and others. If you have no idea what they all mean, and there are many people who don’t, then you would probably like to know the answer to the question "what is a file system?".  This article is going to change your perceptions, and after you’re done reading you’ll know exactly what each of these terms means. First of all, we need to know what is a file system. Basically, a file system is a method in which your computer manages all of the files that are stored on its hard drive disk. Most computers have thousands and thousand of files saved on them. If it wasn’t for an organized file management system, the computer would...

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Posted in: System

Hard Drive Maintenance

Your hard drive is a vulnerable thing, and so it’s something that you’ll need to protect at all costs. Think of your hard drive as the soul of your computer, without it your computer is nothing but an empty shell. Hard drive maintenance is vital. Lose your hard drive and you lose your personal files, records, photos, programs and a whole lot of other things.In order to avoid this happening, you need to keep your hard drive well maintained, and to do that well, you need to know exactly what needs to be done.The first thing you do before any hard drive maintenance check. You can do this by going to the Start menu, clicking on Programs, then Accessories, System Tools then Scandisk. This takes a while so you might want to do it at night or when you are sure nobody will be using the computer for...

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Posted in: Drive,Maintenance

Data Recovery from Crashed External Hard Drive

When your external hard drive crashes then what you need to do in order to retrieve your date will depend on whether it is still mechanically working or not. Data recovery from crashed external hard drive is tricky, yet with luck, the drive will be working, but the data index may still be lost.You’ll have to check this first of all by attaching it to your PC and seeing if the computer recognizes the hard drive or not. If your PC does recognize the external hard drive, but doesn’t show any data on it then follow the advice under Software Data recovery from crashed external hard drive section.However, if your hard drive is not recognized by the computer, then you can try taking it out of its case and manually attaching it to your PC. Now you can check again to see if the hard drive is recognized...

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Posted in: Crashed,Drive,External,Recovery

Hard Drive Data Partition Recovery

When one of the partitions in your hard disc packs up, there are two main methods of hard drive data partition recovery available.Firstly, it’s possible to run special data recovery software in order to retrieve your most vital data files from that partition. Usually, in most cases you will be able to retrieve the data that you need without too much difficulty, with either free software or buy purchasing fully supported data recovery software.If the problem with your hard drive data partition recovery is due to faulty components like the head arm breaking or simply due to aging, then using software might not work. In this case, your only real option is to call up an expert technician to take a look at things and see if they can gain access to any of your precious data, but this can be expensive.There...

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Posted in: Drive,Partition,Recovery

What are Disk Partitions

We here people talking about this all the time, and we see so much disk partitioning software everywhere, but exactly what is disk partitions?In a nutshell, disk partitioning is where we divide up the space on a hard disk into a number of virtual hard disk drives. So it’s one hard disk that is split into many and they all act as separate entities. They are known as partitions and labeled differently so that we treat them as independent drives. As well as asking “what is disk partitions”, we could also ask “what is slices?” since disk partitions are often known as ‘slices’ for different operating systems that are based on Solaris and BSD. These partitions can be easily created, resized, manipulated or even deleted by using partition editing software.Usually, the total storage space on a PC...

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Posted in: Partitions

RAID Failure Prevention Tips

There are several ways in which you may prevent failure of your RAID disk or array. Before you prevent this, though, you must exercise caution so that if failure does occur, you are not left without extra copies of your original data. So that means…Rule #1: Always keep backups of your original data on a separate disk from your current disk or array and preferably in a completely different location. The reason for the different location is in case of fire, flooding, power surges, etc. which can damage all the information in one place.Rule #2: Test your disks often. Test fault tolerance of disks before uploading important data, and check the SMART status of all of your drives on a regular basis. This monitoring is important so that you are aware of potential hard drive failures before they...

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Posted in: Failure,Prevention

How to Recover Data from a Hard Drive

The hard drive on your computer has one of the shortest life expectancies out of your PC’s components, and at some point, it will inevitably fail you.It is inevitable, and always seems to happen at the worst possible time – When your data isn’t backed up! So what can you do now? How to recover data from a hard drive? Is it still possible?This will depend on exactly what it is that happened to your hard drive, however in most cases it is possible to recover at least some of your lost data.This is the simplest method of recovering lost data, yet it won’t always work. So, how to recover data from a hard drive using an external case? Remove the damaged hard drive from your PC and then insert it carefully into the external hard drive case, then plug it into another PC and see if you...

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Posted in: Drive,Recover

Configuring your RAID Array

When putting two drives together into an array, restart your computer. Type Cntrl+A during start-up in order to enter the RAID BIOS area. After the RAID configuration utility is open, click on Create Array in the Main Menu. You will see all of the drives set up to be in your array in a box on the screen. The “gray” drive name is your boot-up drive, which is the drive you are using now. Now that you see that everything is in order and that all of the drives you will be using are displayed, you can return to the Main Menu by hitting your Esc key.Click on Configure Drives, hit your Ins (Insert) key to select all drives together, hit Enter, and you will probably see a warning. Just hit Y for Yes in answer to the warning. This process will create a mirror of information on both or all of the drives...

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Posted in: Array,Configuring

How to Recover Data from a Hard Drive

The hard drive on your computer has one of the shortest life expectancies out of your PC’s components, and at some point, it will inevitably fail you.It is inevitable, and always seems to happen at the worst possible time – When your data isn’t backed up! So what can you do now? How to recover data from a hard drive? Is it still possible?This will depend on exactly what it is that happened to your hard drive, however in most cases it is possible to recover at least some of your lost data.This is the simplest method of recovering lost data, yet it won’t always work. So, how to recover data from a hard drive using an external case? Remove the damaged hard drive from your PC and then insert it carefully into the external hard drive case, then plug it into another PC and see if you...

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Posted in: Drive,Recover

RAID Data Recovery

RAID data systems can greatly increase your data’s speed and availability, but sometimes the system can fail meaning you’ll need to implement RAID data recovery.RAID is a very common method of data storage, the term ‘RAID’ meaning ‘redundant array of disks’. First designed in 1987, the name is now used to describe any method of storing data that uses separation and duplication of data amongst a number of different disk drives.RAID can improve your data storage system’s reliability thanks to the way it creates a network of drives to store your data on. Therefore, if one of the drives fails, all of your data remains protected due to the fact it is also stored on other drives in the array. RAID protects you from losing your vital information. The chance of each of your drives failing at the...

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Posted in: Recovery

Hard Drive Data Recovery

Okay, so we can cut out all the I told you so nonsense, that isn’t going to get us anywhere.Chances are that if you find yourself needing to perform hard drive data recovery, then it is almost certainly because you forgot computing cardinal rule: Always backup your data. Learn “How to Recover Data from a Hard Drive” here…Hard drives are not indestructible, and they will all fail eventually. So really, the choice is yours – Do you want to learn the hard way or the easy way?But then of course, you already have your data backed up don’t you? Right???But what to do if, lo and behold, you never did back up your files and now your files are gone and lost? The first thing you mustn’t do is panic! There’s really no need, there are many options...

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Posted in: Drive,Recovery

Windows XP Data Recovery

Restoring previous or lost data on Windows XP is easy. There are several steps you can take in order to do this. You will want to use these tools in the order presented, because System Restore is far easier than later tools, and if you can fix your problem with that, then you are good to go.System RestoreSystem Restore is when your computer makes “saves” or “photographic snapshots” of the current running system and files periodically, and you can restore your computer back to any of these times if your computer crashes or a virus is affecting your files. Be sure to get rid of the virus first, before restoring your computer to a previous state. System Restore is automatically enabled on some computers. You must check to make sure that your computer is currently backing your files up and that...

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Posted in: Recovery,Windows

Windows 7 Data Recovery

Data recovery with the new Windows 7 is easier than ever. When information is lost due to computer viruses or crashes, then you may be able to retrieve the lost data with System Restore. If this is not effective, then you may use Data Recovery Software to fish out the files of your choice. If these steps are ineffective, you may need to take your computer to a file recovery expert. Before you do, however, try these options.System Restore is made possible by the fact your computer periodically takes “pictures” of the current files, settings and state of affairs, and this state can be restored if damage is created in the current state.In order to invoke System Restore on your Windows 7 PC, click on Start Menu, then All Programs, then Accessories,...

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Posted in: Recovery,Windows