tetikus.my

Have you managed to delete important data from your hard drive?  There should be no reason to worry as there are many data recovery solutions on the market capable of recovering your lost data for you, the key, when using software to recover your files is to follow a process that prevents any further harm coming to your data.

There are some important rules to adhere to when using data recovery software for recovering lost files:

Firstly and a big mistake many people make is not to install the software on the same computer you have been using, why? If you have deleted the file when you install any further software or save anything back to the disk, as the operating system will use what it considers free space to load the program you could end up overwriting the document or part of the document you are trying to recover.

Secondly, has your drive been making any strange sounds recently, if the answer is yes your hard drive may be failing so a recovery company would be better suited to recover your data to be on the safe side.

Thirdly whilst in all probability your prime focus will be to get your data back as soon as possible avoid the temptation to suddenly dive right in and purchase some software straight away. Most file recovery software will offer a free trial so at the very least you can do a scan to see if the document is actually still recognisable on your hard disk or even recoverable for that matter.

Assuming your drive is exhibiting no signs of failure and having used the software you have managed to find the file (intact) and it is recoverable you’ll now need to save the data somewhere. Under no circumstances save it back to the same drive as you may end up saving the data on back to the same area that the data is being recovered from resulting in a corrupted file.

If the recovery software has already reserved a disk area to write files back to some of the data can get overwritten especially if the drive is heavily fragmented.

If your data is simply too valuable to trust in the hands of software, particularly if you are not familiar with the data recovery software and the manner in which it works, it is sensible to contact a data recovery professional.

The cost for the recovery of files from a hard disk by a professional data recovery organisation is now in most cases comparable to the cost of the full version of the software that you have tried, plus you are normally backed up by a no recovery – no fee guarantee.

And lastly, if you choose to use a data recovery company, it is always worth ascertaining what will happen if the drive fails during a recovery process, will they be able to fix it themselves in a proper clean room environment or will they need to send it away to another data recovery company?

If they do not have the facilities for hard drive recovery and there is any sign of mechanical failure then a main data recovery expert company will be your best option.

Recently I was asked for recommendations for DVD software covering a wide range of purposes. The questions made me realize that there exists some confusion as to which DVD software does what. So I will attempt to clarify this seemingly confusing subject.

The real problem in identifying what DVD software would best suit your needs actually comes from the lack of a standard definition of each type. In addition to that the technology of dealing with DVDs has stabilised through development so that just burning a DVD would hardly be described as rocket science anymore!

This has resulted in many of the DVD software brands branching out into other functions in an effort to attract customers through added features and benefits. This “blurring” of the things you can do with a DVD has resulted in a lack of clarity as to which software you should use to suit your specific requirements.

DVD Copying Software.
This DVD software has as its main purpose, the action of copying one DVD onto another DVD. It will commonly achieve this by making a copy on to the hard drive of your computer first then using the copied data to write to a new DVD. Usually this is an automatic process.

A slight difference to this is DVD Ripping which implies the concept of pulling the contents of the DVD apart down to the original files whilst being copied to a computer’s hard drive. This permits a degree of manipulation before burning a fresh DVD. Pure DVD Copying software is very often combined with the ability to make basic edits and changes to parts of the DVD and remove unwanted features like subtitles or extra content.

DVD Conversion Software.
The main action here is to take the contents of a DVD and convert them into another format. Such as a home video DVD converted to a more compressed video file format for uploading on to MetaCafe or similar or for watching on a computer.

A good example of a combination of DVD Copying Software and DVD Conversion Software would be a product called DVD Fab. This software performs DVD copying in many ways with a great deal of control over the final output files and format with the ability to convert the contents of the DVD to other formats.

DVD Burning Software.
The main purpose of DVD burning software is to take data from a computer and transfer it on to a DVD disc. This happens in two ways depending on what is being burned.

In the case of data such as files, folders or documents this is a pretty straightforward process of copying that data and placing it on the DVD in such a way that other programs can read what is there.

As for video DVDs it is a little more complicated procedure. There are certain protocols that determine how a video DVD must be written on to a disc. DVD burning software has the ability to understand and follow those rules as it is burning. An example of this would be the DVD Burning ROM of Nero 9. This does, however, lead to another type of DVD software.

DVD Authoring Software.
DVD authoring is the action of creating the DVD structure (including menus, buttons, subtitles and reference to special features) that you would find on a video DVD.

The video portion of a DVD is a special video file called MPEG2. If you just burned the MPEG2 on to a disc a DVD player would not be able to recognise or play that file. The file has to be created within a specific type of structure for the DVD player to be able to read and play it.

Additionally, the disc must have menus made so that the player and you can navigate around the disc and play the parts you want. The creation of all of this is the job of DVD authoring software. Corel DVD Movie Factory is an example of DVD authoring software and all these types of software must also be able to burn the DVD as well as write the structure.

DVD Editing Software.
Many people search in the internet for this and probably get a little frustrated as to why they can not get a definitive result. That is because the phrase itself is a little inaccurate. It is hard to tell if the person wants to edit the structure of the DVD (menus, movie titles etc.) or whether they are seeking to edit the actual video.

In reality if you want to re-edit or manipulate the menus or features that are on a DVD and then burn to a new DVD that action would be covered by either a DVD copying or conversion software as mentioned above.

If you are wanting to edit the actual video contained on an existing DVD then DVD software is not really designed to do that. This activity has now crossed over into the field of video editing software. Having said that there still is a range of DVD software suites that do include this function as an added feature. Nero 9 and Roxio Creator 2009 have this ability.

DVD Merging or Combining Software.
This function has probably the poorest definition of them all. Most DVD copying software or conversion software offers the ability to take a couple of DVDs or more and have you re-combine the contents on to a newly created DVD. So you could say they merge or combine DVDs.

However there is another very specific action which is the merging of two, three or even four DVDs into one DVD but at the same time retaining the menus of the original DVDs. This is very often called for when a DVD camcorder is being used that records to 8cm DVDs.

People who re-use their 8cm RW DVDs or who wish to archive their recordings may want to transfer the contents of a few of those DVDs on to one full sized DVD and save some space. Just copying the files of the DVDs over to one full DVD would result in your losing the menus of the original DVDs. That would mean you would have hundreds of individual MPEG2 files on a disc and no way of knowing which one is which. Simply a sea of MPEG2 icons in a folder!

There is only one software I know of that can handle that problem and is the only one I know of that could be described as DVD Merging software. It’s name is DVDRemake and it can merge or combine two, three or even four DVDs on to one without losing the original menus. Great for DVD camcorder users.

Finally! DVD Disc Repair Software / DVD Data Error Correction.
As much as the manufacturers of DVDs, DVD burning software and DVD burners would have you believe that DVD is somehow perfect because it is digital that is very far from the truth. DVDs can get burned with errors, get scratched, or have errors “built in” because of glitches in the software being used or even the computer being used.

For such occurrences we have this category of DVD software. Generally speaking we are now getting down to some very specialised software that can correct existing errors in DVDs.

Often when you get these errors you see silly or meaningless alerts like “no disc” (even if you can see one!), “disc error” (well duh!), “invalid DVD navigation structure” (my personal favorite!) and a whole range of others. Without going into the myriad of available specialist software for this it is interesting to note that Nero 9 now has a module within it to handle a great number of these problems called RescueAgent.

Well that became a bit more complex than I expected but I hope it will provide you with a workable guide to the different functions of DVD software.

Removing data from a hard drive, permanently, is something that sounds an awful lot simpler than it proves to be in reality. As we all know deleting a file does not remove the file or its content from the hard drive permanently, data recovery companies can normally aid in the recovery of such files, no doubt other less scrupulous individuals are equally capable of such recovery feats.

So what lengths do we need to go to in order to ensure that our data is securely removed?

The answer, in short, is that there is no easy method of permanently removing data from a storage media. This does not make it impossible, but does mean that you will normally have to obtain expensive software to help in the task.

In order to completely erase data on a drive it is best to overwrite the original several times but not necessarily using the same methodology on each rewrite. Using a method that involves numerous passes over the data either using specialist software or with a manual process that adheres to recognized data erasure standards will under most circumstances guarantee that the data has been successfully erased.

There are many companies that can provide such data elimination services, and there are also a number of software applications that can serve the process including Evidence Eliminator, M-Sweep Pro Data Eliminatior and R-Wipe software from the company behind R-Studio Data Recovery Software.

There are also more permanent methods of data destruction, few data recovery companies can retrieve data from a hard drive where the disk’s platters have been physically destroyed.

If you wish to attempt this yourself, it is important to note that the platters within the device should be completely destroyed, this means bending, scratching, smashing, shattering or whatever else seems reasonable to completely annihilate the hard disk platter.

There will always be those that are less educated in the filed of data recovery that will have you believe that simply formatting your drive or even conducting a low level format will do the trick. Sadly this is simply not the case. Another common myth is that reinstalling the operating system will suffice but that will remain the myth that it is.

If your data is business critical or extremely sensitive, always ensure that you can have the data certifiably removed from the storage media, whether that media be Flash Memory device, a hard disk drive, a RAID Array, Floppy Disk or CD / DVD Optical Media often only a professional can help you.

Your local data recovery company will be able to advise you on safe hard drive recovery data disposal methods and will probably have a local service. data recovery and data disposal should always be left to professional operators who are happy to certify their work.