External Hard Drives - Best Buying Deals For You

The market for e drives has grown phenomenally over the years, considering the fact that people nowadays store important data, music, pictures and videos in digital format. One can never know when the hard disk of the computer may be damaged, which is why a good e drive is worth going for.
Two of the companies that are famous for manufacturing high quality drives are Seagate and Western Digital, although many others like Hitachi, are also making their presence felt. The best buy when it comes to Seagate d drive is FreeAgent Desk and FreeAgent Go; with affordable prices going down to $100 and a massive data capacity of 1TB(Terabyte)Usually poor motherboards are allowing the computer to not discover this disk, particularly if it's powered while using Hardware. There are lots of exterior hard disks that will additionally demand another energy resource for additional effective make use of.
When, it comes to Western Digital, you can go for MyBook Essentials, which also sell at more or less the same price as Seagate. USB 2. is a regular connection useful for present day pcs, which can be faster when compared with previously versions. Hitachi, though a good product, has not been marketing their stuff as well, but it also forms one of the external drives in the best buy league.You can go for their SimpleDrive series.
One thing you should bear in mind while going for drives is that if you are going to play lots of videos, then you should go for the one with the highest speed. You can get these external hard drives at a very good price online, just make sure that you do sufficient research according to your needs, before buying one. After you buy them online or through the brick and mortar store, make sure that you do not misplace the receipt till the warranty period gets over.The market fordrives has grown phenomenally over the years, considering the fact that people nowadays store important data, music, pictures and videos in digital format. One can never know when the hard disk of the computer may be damaged, which is why a good d drive is worth going for.

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With Online Backup "Trust But Verify"

With online backup of your data you have a real opportunity to take a major load off your mind. It is a truly automatic solution that will take the worry out of wondering if your important files, emails, pictures, and music would be lost in a fire or through theft.
You must check in every once in a while to make sure what you think is being backed up actually is being backed up.
Here's my personal story and why I strongly recommend doing that:
I have been using online backup for some time now and thought all my records were being backed up.
Then, one day, I started getting a message on my computer from Seagate that I couldn't interpret. It was saying, congratulations, you just backed up!, then, the next time I would sign on, it would tell me, Hey, you haven't backed up in a while!
I started to get a bit concerned if my data was in fact being backed up, so I called the company.
Couldn't get a live human that had any interest in helping me. They suggested I go to their live-chat and I did that.
The solution they thought was something to do with "shadow files", whatever that is - anyway, I applied their fix and the mysterious message went away...for a while.
Then, it returned.
So, I gave up on Seagate and peripheral drives as a solution to data backup.
As I began to do some soul-searching I realized my plan was kind of weak anyway. As I am writing this, I can see my little drive sitting under my nightstand, where I left it.
That meant, I was keeping the device in the one place it didn't need to be, out of convenience.
If my house had burned down or were broken into, it may have been stolen along with my computer! Lousy backup plan.
So, I moved to online backup. Totally satisfying experience. Conceptually, set it and forget it...practically speaking though, you'd better trust but verify.
This is the way online backup generally works:
1. You download the client software which runs in the background uploading your files, etc. to the server and then updating on an ongoing basis.
2. The client uploads files from documents, emails, pictures, and music.
3. Depending on the system, you get some kind of indication that files are backed up or are being backed up.
Herein lies the problem and what you need to be wary of...online backup companies each have internal rules about the size and nature of the files they will try to backup.
For example, Mozy won't backup "locked files".
Another example, Carbonite won't backup individual files larger than 2 GB...unless you tell it to - you get my drift.
The way to solve this issue is to trust but verify - just take a peak at the list of files that the system has backed up and make sure that it is backing up all you want it to. All you have to do is look under the restore feature in the client software for the online backup company.
That will tell you which files are available to download - also, any previous versions of the data that you had that were uploaded earlier. If there are any files that you expected to be backed up and aren't, submit them individually to the backup service.
Bottom line: Just always check and make sure your initial upload contains all the files, email, and media you intend to backup.

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Basics of RAID

A couple of the recent Tech Tips from http://www.geeks.com have made mention of RAID, but the level of detail required in those tips didn't shed much light on what RAID actually is. The number of e-mail responses and comments in the Readers Digress section was convincing enough that an introduction to the basics of RAID would be an appropriate Tech Tip, so here it is.
Introduction
The word RAID sounds like it might describe something Marines conduct in Fallujah, or a can of what all roaches fear, but it is simply an acronym that stands for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. Depending on who you talk to, the letter "I" can stand for either independent or inexpensive, but in my opinion independent is more appropriate, and far less subjective.
RAID generally allows data to be written to multiple hard disk drives so that a failure of any one drive in the array does not result in the loss of any data, as well as increasing the system's fault tolerance. I say RAID generally does this, as there are several RAID configurations that provide different approaches to redundancy, but some RAID configurations are not redundant at all. Fault tolerance refers to a system's ability to continue operating when presented with a hardware (or software) failure, as should be experienced when a hard drive fails in one of the redundant configurations of RAID.
The Hardware
The basic hardware required to run RAID includes a set of matched hard drives and a RAID controller.
RAID can be run on any type of hard drive, including SCSI, SATA, and ATA. The number of hard drives required is dependent on the particular RAID configuration chosen, as described later. I mention the need for matched hard drives, and although this is not absolutely necessary, it is recommended. Most arrays will only be able to use the capacity of the smallest drive, so if a 250GB Hitachi drive is added to a RAID configuration with an 80GB Hitachi drive, that extra 170GB would probably go to waste (the only time that this doesn't apply is in a RAID configuration called JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks); which really "isn't a RAID configuration" but just a convenient thing that a RAID controller can do - see "Basic RAID Configurations" below for more information). In addition to matching capacities, it is highly recommended that drives match in terms of speed and transfer rate as the performance of the array would be restricted by the weakest drive used. One more area that should be considered while matching is the type of hard drive. RAID controllers are generally for either SCSI, SATA, or ATA exclusively, although some systems allow RAID arrays to be operated across controllers of different formats.
The RAID controller is where the data cables from the hard drives are connected, and conducts all of the processing of the data, like the typical drive connections found on a motherboard. RAID controllers are available as add on cards, such as this Silicon Image PCI ATA RAID controller, or integrated into motherboards, such as the SATA RAID controller found on the Asus K8V SE Deluxe (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=K8VSE-DELUXE). Motherboards that include RAID controllers can be operated without the use of RAID, but the integration is a nice feature to have if RAID is a consideration. Even for systems without onboard RAID, the relatively low cost of add on cards makes this part of the upgrade relatively pain free.
Another piece of hardware that is not required, but may prove useful in a RAID array is a hot swappable drive bay. It allows a failed hard drive to be removed from a live system by simply unlocking the bay and sliding the drive cage out of the case. A new drive can then be slid in, locked into place, and the system won't skip a beat. This is typically seen on SCSI RAID arrays, but some IDE RAIDS cards will also allow this (such as this product manufactured by Promise Technology: [http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=92&familyId=7]).
The Software
RAID can be run on any modern operating system provided that the appropriate drivers are available from the RAID controller's manufacturer. A computer with the operating system and all of the software already installed on one drive can be easily be cloned to another single drive by using software like Norton Ghost. But it is not as easy when going to RAID, as a user who wants to have their existing system with a single bootable hard drive upgraded to RAID must start from the beginning. This implies that the operating system and all software needs to be re-installed from scratch, and all key data must be backed up to be restored on the new RAID array.
If a RAID array is desired in a system for use as storage, but not as the location for the operating system, things get much easier. The existing hard drive can remain intact, and the necessary configuration can be made to add the RAID array without starting from scratch.
Basic RAID Configurations
There are about a dozen different types of RAID that I know of, and I will describe five of the more typical configurations, and usually offered on RAID controller cards.
RAID 0 is one of the configurations that does not provide redundancy, making it arguably not a true RAID array. Using at least two disks, RAID 0 writes data to the two drives in an alternating fashion, referred to as striping. If you had 8 chunks of data, for example, chunk 1, 3, 5, and 7 would be written to the first drive, and chunk 2, 4, 6, and 8 would be written to the second drive, but all in sequential order. This process of splitting the data across drives allows for a theoretical performance boost of up to double the speed of a single hard drive, but real world results will generally not be nearly that good. Since all data is not written to each disk, the failure of any one drive in the array generally results in a complete loss of data. RAID 0 is good for people who need to access large files quickly, or just demand high performance across the board (i.e. gaming systems). The capacity of a RAID 0 array is equal to the sum of the individual drives. So, if two 160GB Seagate drives were in a RAID 0 array, the total capacity would be 320GB.
RAID 1 is one of the most basic arrays that provides redundancy. Using at least two hard drives, all data is written to both drives in a method referred to as mirroring. Each drive's contents are identical to each other, so if one drive fails, the system could continue operating on the remaining good drive, making it an ideal choice for those who value their data. There is no performance increase as in RAID 0, and in fact there may be a slight decrease compared to a single drive system as the data is processed and written to both drives. The capacity of a RAID 1 array is equal to half the capacity of the sum of individual drives. Using those same two 160GB Seagate drives from above in RAID 1 would result in a total capacity of 160GB.
RAID 0+1, as the name may imply, is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1. You have the best of both worlds, the performance boost of RAID 0 and the redundancy of RAID 1. A minimum of four drives is required to implement RAID 0+1, where all data is written in both a mirrored and striped fashion to the four drives. Using the 8 chunks of data from the example above, the write pattern would be something like this... Chunks 1, 3, 5, and 7 would be written to drives one and three, and chunks 2, 4, 6, and 8 would be written to drives two and four, again in a sequential manner. If one drive should fail, the system and data are still intact. The capacity of a RAID 0+1 array is equal to half the total capacity of the individual drives. So, using four of the 160 GB Seagate drives results in a total capacity of 320GB when configured in RAID 0+1.
RAID 5 may be the most powerful RAID configuration for the typical user, with three (or five) disks required. Data is striped across all drives in the array, and in addition, parity information is striped as well. This parity information is basically a check on the data being written, so even though all data is not being written to all the drives in the array, the parity information can be used to reconstruct a lost drive in case of failure. Perhaps a bit difficult to describe, so let's go back to the example of the 8 chunks of data now being written to 3 drives in a RAID 5 array. Chunks one and two would be written to drive one and two respectively, with a corresponding parity chunk being written to drive three. Chunks three and four would then be written to drives one and three respectively, with the corresponding parity chunk being written to drive two. Chunks five and six would be written to drives two and three, with the corresponding parity chunk being written to drive one. Chunks seven and eight take us back to the beginning with the data being written to drives one and two, and the parity chunk being written to drive three. It might not sound like it, but due to the parity information being written to the drive not containing that specific bits of information, there is full redundancy. The capacity of a RAID 5 array is equal to the sum of the capacities of all the drives used, minus one drive. So, using three of the 160GB Seagate drives, the total capacity is 320GB when configured in RAID 5.
JBOD is another non-redundant configuration, which does not really offer a true RAID array. JBOD stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks (or Drives), and that is basically all that it is. RAID controllers that support JBOD allow users to ignore the RAID functions available and simply attach drives as they would to a standard drive controller. No redundancy, no performance boost, just additional connections for adding more drives to a system. A smart thing that JBOD does is that it can treat the odd sized drives as if they are a single volume (thus a 10GB drive and a 30GB would be seen as a single 40GB drive), so it is good to use if you have a bunch of odd sized drives sitting around - but otherwise it is better to go with a RAID 0, 1 or 0+1 configuration to get the performance boost, redundancy or both.
Final Words
Implementing RAID may sound daunting to those unfamiliar with the concept, but with some of the more basic configurations it is not much more involved than setting up a computer to use a standard drive controller. But, the benefits of RAID over a single drive system far outweigh the extra consideration required during installation. Losing data once due to hard drive failure may be all that is required to convince anyone that RAID is right for them, but why wait until that happens.

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iPod Error - iTunes Could Not Contact the iPod Software Update Server

To update or restore an iPod, you first need to download and install the latest version of iTunes. Update refers to the process of simply updating the software that controls the iPod and doesn't affect the stored data. However, restoring an iPod implies erasing all the data from it and getting it back to its original factory settings. After restoration, you need to use your recent data backup or commercial iPod Data Recovery applications to get the lost data back. But at times, you find errors while trying to update or restore your iPod.
As an example, when you try to update or restore your iPod using iTunes 7 or later, you might receive the following error message:
"iTunes could not contact the iPod software update server because you are not connected to the Internet. Make sure your Internet connection is active and try again."
This error is specific to Windows Vista installed computer systems.
Cause
As suggested by error message, this error occurs when Internet access is not available that could download the available updates for iPod. In some cases, the reason could be faulty LAN settings.
Solution
Try resolving the existing issue by following these steps:
Make sure that the Internet access is available

If you can connect to the Internet using Internet Explorer and access the iTunes Store, use these steps:
Launch Control Panel using Start menu
Next, you need to open Internet Options control panel
You should then click the Connection tab and click the LAN Settings button
You can then select the 'Automatically detect settings' checkbox. Click OK in both of the windows that appear
You can try again to restore or update your iPod by reopening iTunes and connecting your iPod. It should be successfully updated or restored.
If you have performed iPod restoration, use your existing backup to get the lost files and folders. If in any case, you observe that data backup cannot give the required data, it is suggested to use iPod Recovery applications. These are special purpose iPod Data Recovery applications designed to offer effective lost data recovery from crashed iPods.

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What Are the Causes of Hard Disk Failure?

Almost everyone has had to deal with the pains of a dying hard drive, but not everyone knows what the causes of hard disk failure are. If you are still unaware of what you may be doing to shorten the life of your drive, you will be destined to scramble to backup your data when that ticking noise starts again. It is never pleasant to have to deal with a dying hard drive, so make sure you know what causes it and what you can do to prevent it.
Probably the single biggest cause of hard drive failure is physical trauma. Hard drives are extremely delicate, the pieces inside are built with only a micron of space between them. It doesn't take much to cause a scratch or other damage. Some computers are under the desk where they are constantly bumped and kicked. Others sit right next to loud subwoofers which may cause vibrations. Still others, and almost everyone has done this, get smacked a few times by frustrated users. Make sure your computer is kept in a safe place where it doesn't have to endure these physical abuses. And remember that hitting your computer will only make problems worse.
Among the causes of hard disk failure, overheating is a big one. Computers today are capable of incredible things, but they put out a large amount of heat in exchange. While the problem can usually be solved by turning down your settings or turning up your fans, sometimes there are layout issues inside the computer. Most pre-built computers are laid out just fine, but if you want to save money by building your own, there are a couple things to be aware of. You have to install the fans so that the airflow inside is maximized. Make sure you install the fans so they let out hot air at the top and force in cool air at the bottom. Heat poses a risk to the hard drive as well as almost every other facet of the computer.
One easily prevented problem is an electrical surge. Getting a surge protector for all of your computer's plugs is crucial. It cannot be stressed enough that you should never plug your computer directly into the wall. Even a small electrical surge can cause a computer to short out entirely. Not only could it kill the hard drive, but every other component is at risk. And make sure that your surge protector is tough enough to protect against a big surge. If it can't protect your computer adequately, it serves no purpose.
There are countless reasons that a hard drive can fail. These are just three of those reasons, but they are among the most common. If you take care of your drive, you shouldn't have to worry about that strange noise that you get when your hard drive plays its death knell. By listening to your hard drive and taking care of it properly, you can extend its life indefinitely.

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How to Recover Data From Windows 7 Hard Drive

What Is Data?

Data is a small word of great importance in today's world of computers. In this small word, the whole world of information could be fed.
What Is Data Loss?

Data loss can be the biggest trouble for many computer users as data is a thing of prime importance today. The problem of data loss is a very common problem for computer users as human follies, computer bugs etc cannot be ruled out. Data is very important for many business/organizational/institutional/personal operations because it contains chief information whose loss can lead to severe trouble. You can lose your valuable data due to any reason like virus problem, formatting of hard disk, accidental file deletion etc.
Is Data Recovery Possible After The Loss?

Sometimes, when we have lost our precious records (data), we think negatively that the lost data can't be recovered. But, this is a wrong notion! At the time of data loss, you should not panic as most deleted documents can be recovered.
How to Recover Deleted Files?

If you act immediately after the deletion occurs, then you have very high probability of retrieving your files. After deletion of files, they not permanently deleted from your system but they are in a hidden mode; so, you are unable to see them. To get back deleted data, follow these steps:
Step 1: Look in the Recycle Bin
Your first step is to look in the Recycle Bin and see if you can restore the deleted file(s). If you are able to restore the files, then navigate their original location as they will be present there. If you have already emptied the Recycle Bin or deleted the files using Shift+Del, then go to Step 2.
Step 2: Use a Third-Party Software Tool to Recover Data
You can still recover files even if you have deleted or emptied the contents of the Recycle Bin by using an outside software tool. It is important to use the correct software to recover your deleted data. Recover Data's Data Recovery Tool is perhaps the most commonly used software to recover deleted data from any type of data storage media device or any other Windows Operating System such as 98, ME, XP, 2000, 2003, Vista, Windows 7. Windows 7 Data Recovery Software is an excellent recovery program for Windows 7 Operating Systems. After file deletion/corruption, if you take immediate action, then the chances of recovery are very good and you can easily recover all of your deleted data from any corrupted or formatted partition.
(Note: Many times people try to recover files through the 'System Restore' feature but this only restores your system to a previous date and cannot recover the file you just deleted.)

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Microsoft Popfly

Microsoft has just released its latest mashup program, Popfly, which is part of Web 2.0 technology. It is a free service that can be used to create applications or gadgets, as well as a variety of other web services.
It is based on another program of Microsoft's, Silverlight. As a result, Popfly can function on both Macs and Windows. It can also be used with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Currently the program is still in beta testing, however, the reviews for it have been very positive.
Unlike other mashup tools, the user isn't required to know that much about Web Scripts, in fact for simple tools, they don't need to know any. It has a user-friendly interface, allowing users to click, drag and drop and fill in information on form-based fields.
However, the programs don't have much to provide, as far as cross-platform capabilities are concerned. Users can log into the program, with any of their Microsoft account information, for example MSN. There are tutorials available for users to familiarise themselves with the technology.
There are gadgets, blocks, and even WebPages [http://www.popfly.com] The interface is made up of online visual tools, which are common for Web pages and mashups. You can create games and applications for your social media sites, such as Facebook, or Windows Live Space.
You can create your own home page, with over 150 themes to choose from, 10 styles and 30 unique colour themes. Photos can be uploaded or get an RSS feed. Earth maps are also available as an option. For Facebook, you could create slideshows by combining the application with your Flickr account. Alternatively, you could feed in videos from YouTube.
Another useful tool is being able to unify your online profiles and stick together all your social media accounts. The programme over all has tremendous power to create and recreate a web-programming environment and social network for all your data sources. It is also a means to having new ways of displaying your information, and for embarking on full Visual Studio projects.

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