AMD and Streamload have join hands and announced free online storage of 25GB of data. There is another option of paying $4.95 to $29.95. Although this sounds incredible, there are concerns over it.

For example, they are offering 250GB storage at the cost of $10 a month. But the problem here is, in case you loose data and look at the backup to retrieve it, you cannot download more than 2.5GB of data per month. This itself takes 10 months to download all the data. So it's
of what use? You have to decide yourself.

Read

The director of engineering for data recovery at Ontrack, Mike Burmeister has few words of caution about data recovery. Ontrack on a regular basis recovers encrypted data on systems where the user has lost the key. OnTrack has confidential mechanism to crack the encrypted systems difficult to crack. Ontrack can efficiently recover the data from broken CD-ROM discs.

Read

With changing business practices many of the organizations are wholly dependent on email and applications. In spite of all this, IT personal are putting their jobs at risk, without adequate backup. The latest in data backup is considering Neverfail's products. Rather than purchasing large additional hardware, Neverfail is offering about £10,000 worth of software. By acquiring two servers – where both are dissimilar – and you can use one to backup the other. Neverfail's Heartbeat lets you replicate the major applications like RIM's Blackberry server and The Beast's Exchange. If disaster hits and a sever goes down, the replica server simply kicks in within minutes rather than hours.

Read

Researchers at Georgia Tech Research Institute have developed a prototype that can totally destroy a hard disk, in seconds eliminating all the information. Dubbed as GuardDog, this disk erasure system uses, a 125-pound magnet that delivers a field comparable to the strength of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The system, fits inside a mini-fridge, consists an enclosed magnet with a slot big enough to accommodate a standard hard drive.

The new system differs from other commercially available disk erasers in its speed, size, and effectiveness.
Even alternative military-grade disk-destroying approaches must physically destroy the disk by grinding it into a powder to ensure complete destruction. Capability to erase drives completely could make GuardDog an effective system for the military, where a hard drive has to be destroyed at a moment's notice. Although GuardDog was driven by specific military applications, the technology would also benefit banks, credit-card companies, and other
organizations with sensitive personal information. The device not only removes the data, but also destroys the hard drive.

Read

At Gartner’s Storage Summit users have shared their knowledge regarding Disaster Recovery technologies and business continuity in the wake of hurricanes. About 80 Users have attended Donna Scott's ( Vice president and distinguished analyst for Gartner) presentation, out of which 44% told they are involved in developing a disaster recovery plan, 30% said they have plans a foot to do regular testing and 6% said they do the type of diverse testing Norfolk Southern does. Scott has advised companies to consider application/transaction-level disaster recovery, database log recovery, storage controller-based synchronous replication, storage controller-based asynchronous replication and host-based recovery.

Read

To select a disaster recovery (DR) solution which suits accurately to your needs is often a daunting task. Although there are various products to attend to this problem, one has to always keep in mind the cost factor and complexity associated with software platform before going for any product.

A few alternative DR solutions are presented here which can be selected as per the needs.

Looking at costs and simplicity of software, Drive imaging as DR solution is worth considering. There are two products to consider in this context. They are Symantec Ghost Enterprise edition 7.5 and Acronis True Image Enterprise Server 9.1. If your network infrastructure is comprised of a relatively small number of servers with a fairly static database and little change over the span of time between backups, then Symantec Ghost would be an ideal solution. , If you are in the market for a more complete solution for DR then Acronis True Image Enterprise Server 9.1 would be a great candidate, regardless of the size of your network.

Read

Data loss due to natural disasters like hurricanes, is becoming a normal phenomena. Geeks for Relief is now offering free remote backup for 120 days. With National Hurricane Center, predicting 13-16 storms this year, it is better to prepare for these events. The online backup service providers, (sponsored and hosted by Remote Backup Solutions) have decided to provide a website and resource for people exposed to hurricanes free of cost, as many people don’t have a backup plan. For the people in hurricane-affected states the free offer is for 120 days of remote backup coverage, during hurricane season. Each backup vendor has agreed to provide 2 Gigs of space.

With backup service providers using online backup software from Remote Backup Systems, the software allows you to choose which files to backup from different methods. For this first you have to select your backup service provider and create an account and download, install the software and decide which files to backup. The data encryption scrambles your data and until you apply the correct encryption key. Remember that if you lose your key, you would lose your data.

Read

In case your laptop is stolen there are various ways by which you can trace it out or disable it to protect your vital data from getting into wrong hands. There are systems that do useful work of mitigating the consequences of theft. They are tracking software, encryption and switches that can make laptop’s data self-destruct. Computrace is one such tracking system. Computrace, run by Absolute Software of Vancouver, Canada, raises hopes, in this regard. When laptops are monitored by Computrace, every laptop reports to the company server via Net, each day. In case the computer is stolen, the server shall instruct it to send messages every 15 minutes. If the machine’s Internet address could be pinned to a street address, the police can trace it out. Computrace service costs about $50 per year per machine.

Read

Travelers insurance firm has declared to offer Net-based tools designed to aid small and medium businesses to create customized disaster recovery plans and counter the risks of natural disasters. These net based tools will ensure business continuity in the wake of natural disasters. The new online tool ‘Disaster Preparedness and Business Continuity Management’ is a guide available to customers, agents on a CD-ROM that enlists steps for business continuity planning. The guide consists of technical bulletins, checklists and presentations regarding hurricane preparedness, natural disaster protection, response and recovery, health precautions and FEMA emergency management guide for business and industry.

Read

For small and medium businesses (SMBs), HP has unveiled a new data protection, recovery program, which can help businesses, prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover the critical data that backs their companies, lost out of unexpected events. This business protection portfolio offers a Virtual Library System (VLS) and tape library along with improved software for HP ProLiant servers. This ensures data protection, and is affordable, easy-to-use. VLS stores upto 1.5 terabytes of data, using integrated data compression feature, allowing customers to restore files in few minutes.

Read

IBM is now offering a new service, called Contingency Planning Assessment, exclusively to help businesses running in the event of a virus outbreak. Corporate companies might be well prepared to face natural disasters like fire accidents, earthquake etc. But there is no way if majority of staff is out of office due to pandemic. Priced at $10,000 for small business, IBM’s services will have a close examination on how the pandemic might hit company’s operations. After this, IBM will prepare a contingency plan, taking into account the effects on communicating with employees, working with Government and supply chain.

Read

Toronto based Asigra (A specialist in agentless remote backup and recovery software) and Texas based NetMass the safe data company, have introduced an advanced solution for companies, to protect data at remote branches and offices. Last year numerous companies have lost data due to hurricane, thus necessitating disaster recovery plan, which includes automated offsite data protection.

In a what can be said as a First data recovery plan ADRC has launched ‘Datainsure’ to recover the lost data for notebook/laptop users in Singapore. By paying less than 50 cents/a day, akin to an insurance plan, users can be assured of their data. If you have lost data on your laptops, ADRC would recover the data from the damaged drive within a span of 3-5 days, failing which they would refund the whole money paid. As the money lost on failure to recover the data is to the tune of $14,500 to $6.5 million per hour for the companies, the package Datainsure, would be a cheering news to corporates. ADRC’s strong hardware, their long-standing experience in recovering data from hard
drives and their competent staff has earned them priestagious clients such as ExxonMobil and Frost & Sullivan.

Read

11) Collocate the data center on the San Andreas fault

10) Keep backup tapes in the CIO's basement

9) Store copies of all the really important data on stone tablets

8) Redirect all customers to the backup Web site on MySpace.com

7) When the building burns down just outsource the rest of the jobs overseas

6) Move the servers to the parking lot and attach them to car batteries with jumper cables

5) Use the nearest Starbucks hotspot as a remote worksite

4) Send a St. Bernard with a cask of brandy to search for lost data

3) Use smoke signals to communicate with branch offices

2) Stock up on carrier pigeons and Post-It notes in case e-mail goes down

1) Hire Mike "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" Brown as a disaster-recovery consultant

Read

Researchers of Georgia Tech Research Institute, have developed; a special high strength neodymium iron-boron magnet that can permanently delete, all the information from your computer drive. Taking cue from the instance where US intelligence-gathering aircraft was involved in a mid-air collision off the coast of China, where sensitive information from magnetic data storage systems was in the hands of the chinese. This event highlighted the need for simple techniques to provide fail-safe destruction of sensitive data aboard such aircraft.

A study report of Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine Unversity, revealed the statistics regarding data loss in US. Around 70% of the businessmen are facing the problem of data loss due to Viruses, disk or system failure, and accidental deletion costing about $18 billion a year to US Business. As per the 2005 global survey by Minneapolis-based Ontrack Data Recovery, the employees trying to recover the data using recovery software, or
their half knowledge in this regard is making data recovery almost impossible.

Read

Users facing the problem of loosing data can now ship their Hard Drives to Salvage data Recovery Inc, across 3600 UPS Locations in the US at no cost. Top player in data recovery services for inaccessible, damaged computer and electronic storage media devices, SalvageData Recovery Inc, has now come forward to assist computer users facing the problem of ‘data loss’ by providing complimentary packaging and shipping for their affected laptops and disk drives.

Speaking to media the President & CEO Ralph Pierre said that “We now work to assure that their hard drives will arrive securely, with minimal time and cost”. Customer's can now take their laptops & hard drives to the nearest UPS store and notify the clerk that they are a SalvageData Recovery Inc customer.

Read

The customer backup company, Carbonite will back up PCs of those living in hurricane-prone states in the US, free of cost for 6 months during the hurricane season (Regular price of backup is $50/year). Carbonite is ready to back up huge amount of data, excluding videos and music. The company protects even the accidentally deleted files, as it holds the deleted files for 30 days. PCBackup with Carbonite Online is simple and automatic.

Read

eSys Technologies a leading hard drive distributor in the world, has announced the launch of eXtract, an advanced disaster recovery service that facilitates recovery of lost data due to accidental reformatting, accidental deletion, virus attacks, non-bootable hard drives and power outages. Extract can be used from any type of hard disk and operating systems. The process at an average shall take 6-8 days.

Read