Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Laptop Data Recovery : What The Options Are

A lot of significant data is being stored on laptops nowadays. Laptop use has augmented significantly in recent time. Increased demands for portability and handiness have been envisioned in this mobile technology.

Demand for laptops has gone up in part due to the increase of telecommuting in businesses today. Businesses often allow employees to work on laptops at residence and bring them to job.

Data loss in a laptop can end up costing the business a lot of employee hours worked. Even people who use their laptops for personal use are not happy if they lose any significant data. Moving along with a laptop all day can cause stress on the machine and raise the probability of data loss.

There are many companies that can help you with the laptop data recovery process. After you contact a company, first you will probably go through an assessment process to evaluate the degree of damage done.

A lot of companies will offer a free assessment and a quotation if they feel they can effectively perform resurgence operations. It may be a excellent idea to shop around for services to make sure you are getting the best deal. Each company may offer a different price. Some companies even have flat price.

If you are panic over a blank laptop screen or a hard drive crash, you will be happy to find out that a high percentage of the requests data recovery companies get are successful accomplished. However you still need to be prepared that some of the data may never be recovered. The only way to find out is get proactive and contact representatives from data recovery firms.

Several data recovery companies have specific departments for performing data recovery operations on laptops. You can get a lot of your data recovered and take delivery of it in a readable format, even from badly damaged storage devices.

Laptop systems are more delicate and therefore highly vulnerable to damage to their hard drives.

There are many companies online that can offer you internet-based laptop data recovery. This allows you to ship of your laptop to company’s center of operations and have it shipped back to you after the data has been recovered.

Some frequent problems that are experienced with a laptop are a hard drive crash, dead screen, etc. There are different types of laptop data recovery operations you can perform. Laptop data recovery can allow you to recover files after such events and after technical malfunctions. You may also be able to recover MS Word, Excel or Power Point files that you may have unintentionally deleted.

Laptops can receive a lot of neglect and their hard drives can get damaged. You may need laptop data recovery supports if:

  • You dropped your notebook and it no longer turns on.
  • An unwanted e-mail has downloaded a Trojan or virus on your laptop.
  • You accidentally deleted some significant company files and you want them retrieved in a urgency before your person in charge finds out.
  • The laptop’s hard drive crashes.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Always back up your data before disaster strikes

One day you turn on your computer and it won’t start. Yikes! What now?
If you backed up your data, you won’t lose it no matter what the problem is. Backing up data is simple. For example, keep all your Word documents in a single Folder, then write that Folder to a plug-in USB memory stick after you update the documents. Or, write out all your data Folders once a week to a writeable CD.

For the few minutes it takes to make a backup, you’ll insure your data against a system meltdown. This also protects you if malware corrupts or destroys what’s on your disk drive.

If you didn’t back up your data and you have a system problem, you can still recover your data as long as the disk drive still works and the data files are not corrupted. You could, for example, take the disk drive out of the computer and place it into another Windows machine as its second drive. Then read your data — and back it up!

If the problem is that Windows won’t start up, the web offers tons of advice on how to fix and start Windows.

Another option is to start the machine using a Linux operating system CD and use Linux to read
and save data from your Windows disk. If the problem is that the disk drive itself fails, you’ll need your data backup. If you didn’t make one, your only option is to remove the drive and send it to a service that uses forensics to recover data. This is expensive and may or may not be able to restore your data. Learn the lesson from this guide rather than from experience – back up your data!

Encrypt your data

Even if you have locked your Windows system with a good password, anyone with physical access to your computer can still read the data!

One easy way to do this is simply to boot up the Linux operating system using a CD, then read the Windows files with Linux. This circumvents the Windows password that otherwise protects the files.

Modern versions of Windows like Vista and XP include built-in encryption. Right-click on either a Folder or File to see its Properties. The Properties’ Advanced button allows you to specify that all the files in the Folder or the single File will be automatically encrypted and decrypted for you. This protects that data from being read even if someone circumvents your Windows password. It is sufficient protection for most situations.

Alternatively, you might install free encryption software like TrueCrypt, BestCrypt or many others. If you encrypt your data, be sure you will always be able to decrypt it! If the encryption is based on a key you enter, you must remember the key. If the encryption is based on an encryption certificate, be sure to back up or “export” the certificates, as described here. You might wish to keep unencrypted backups of your data on CD or USB memory stick.

Laptop and notebook computers are most at risk to physical access by an outsider because they are most frequently lost or stolen — keep all data files your portable computer encrypted.

Friday, September 4, 2009

All About Your Recycle Bin

How to Empty your Recycle BIn

Recycle Bin is a place where you files are stored temprorarly for a time period when you deleted some from your pc computer. So, that if the files are deleted accidently it can be recovered.

As after some times a lot of files are piled up in your recycle bin eating up your storage space You should empty them periodially.

  • Select the Recycle Bin Icon available on your Desktop
  • Just Right Click and Select the option Empty Recycle Bin.
  • When ask for further confirmation click Yes.

How to Remove the Recycle Bin from the Desktop

Having some of the icons really iritates some of the time and if you don’t use the Recycle Bin to store deleted files why to carry this icon at your desktop , you can get rid of its desktop icon all together.

Run Regedit and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/explorer/Desktop/NameSpace

Click on the “Recycle Bin” string in the right hand pane. Hit Del, click OK.

How to Rename the Recycle Bin

Have you thought about changing the name of your Recycle Bin to Crap Box. But you were not so here is your chance to do so..

To change the name of the Recycle Bin desktop icon, open Regedit and go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

and change the name “Recycle Bin” to whatever you want (don’t type any quotes).

How to Increase the Size of your Recycle Bin

Have you ever experienced that you have deleted a file accidently and when you tried to recover that from your recycle bin to your astonishment it is not there in your recycle bin. Why?
Well by default the size of the recycle bin is set to certain percentage of your c: drive and if the file you have deleted is more than what it can accomadete in that case the file is deleted permanetly and you can not recover it from your recycle bin. So why not increase that size..

To Increase the size of the Recycle bin

  • Select the Recycle Bin Icon available on your Desktop
  • Just Right Click and Select the Properties option.
  • Increase the percentage bar as per your convinence.
  • Click Ok and you are done.