2025-04-04

Avoiding storage system failures

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM04 mins

There are many ways to reduce or eliminate the impact of storage system failures. You may not be able to prevent a disaster from happening, but you may be able to minimize the disruption of service to your clients.

There are many ways to add redundancy to primary storage systems. Some of the options can be quite costly and only large business organizations can afford the investment. These options include duplicate storage systems or identical servers, known as ‘mirror sites’. Additionally, elaborate backup processes or file-system ‘snapshots’ that always have a checkpoint to restore to, provide another level of data protection.

Experience has shown there are usually multiple or rolling failures that happen when an organization has a data disaster. Therefore, to rely on just one restoration protocol is shortsighted. A successful storage organization will have multiple layers of restoration pathways.

We has heard thousands of IT horror stories of initial storage failures turning into complete data calamities. In an effort to bring back a system, some choices can permanently corrupt the data. Here are several risk mitigation policies that storage administrators can adopt that will help minimize data loss when a disaster happens:

• Offline storage system: Avoid forcing an array or drive back on-line. There is usually a valid reason for a controller card to disable a drive or array, forcing an array back on-line may expose the volume to file system corruption.

• Rebuilding a failed drive: When rebuilding a single failed drive, it is import to allow the controller card to finish the process. If a second drive fails or go off-line during this process, stop and get professional data recovery services involved. During a rebuild, replacing a second failed drive will change the data on the other drives.

• Storage system architecture: Plan the storage system’s configuration carefully. We have seen many cases with multiple configurations used on a single storage array. For example, three RAID 5 arrays (each holding six drives) are striped in a RAID 0 configuration and then spanned. Keep a simple storage configuration and document each aspect of it.

• During an outage: If the problem escalates up to the OEM technical support, always ask “Is the data integrity at risk?” or, “Will this damage my data in any way?” If the technician says that there may be a risk to the data, stop and get professional data recovery services involved.

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Two heads are damaged, data is lost

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM01 mins

Case:Mr. Liao’s hard disk accidentally dropped to the ground during the movement, and did not recognize the disk when it was used again. Solution:Mr. Liao learned about the relevant information about data recovery through telephone consultation.Find professional data recovery company data recovery request help.Senior engineers were tested on the hard disk and found that both…

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Permissions – Deleting “undeletable” files in Vista

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM03 mins

I recently upgraded my workstation from XP SP3 to Vista Business, and during the upgrade Windows moved my old C:Windows directory to C:Windows.old.  I got all of the stuff I needed out of that folder, but there are six “undeletable” files there so I cannot remove it.  They are: Windows.oldProgram1AdobeReader 9.0ResourceCMapIdentity-HWindows.oldProgram1AdobeReader 9.0ResourceCMapIdentity-VWindows.oldProgram1Common FilesAdobeAcrobatActiveXAcroIEHelper.dllWindows.oldProgram1Common FilesAdobeAcrobatActiveXAcroIEHelperShim.dllWindows.oldProgram1Common FilesAdobeAcrobatActiveXAcroPDF.dllWindows.oldProgram1Common…

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How To Backup Data For All Series Of Western Digital Hard Drives?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM07 mins

How To Backup Data For All Series Of Western Digital Hard Drives?Keep a backup of your important data at all times! Backing up your data protects you in case of a computer virus, data corruption, hardware issues, or electrical problems.

Western digital is one of the most popular hard drive manufacturers. This article will give some tips on how to backup data on all series of these hard drives.

1. My Book 3.0, My Book AV DVR Expander, and My Passport AV:
These drives do not come with any backup software. You can manually copy and paste your data to the drive, use Windows Backup or Apple Time Machine if applicable, or you can use a third party backup software of your choice.

2. My Book Live, My Book Elite, My Book For Mac, My Book Studio, My Book Studio LX, My Book Essential, My Passport Elite, My Passport Essential SE, My Passport Essential, My Passport Studio, My Passport Essential SE, My Passport For Mac and My Passport SE For Mac:
These drives can use the WD SmartWare backup software that comes on the drive to backup your data from your internal hard drive. Please see the link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

3. My Book Essential Edition 2.0, My Passport Essential Edition, My Passport Essential Edition SE and My Book Essential (Green Ring):
These drives do not come with any backup software. You can manually copy and paste your data to the drive, use Windows Backup or Apple Time Machine if applicable, or you can use a third party backup software of your choice.

4. My Book Mirror Edition, My Book Home Edition, My Book Studio Edition, My Book Studio Edition II, My Book Office Edition, My Book World Edition (White Light), My Book World Edition II (White Light), My Passport Studio Edition, My Passport Elite Edition, My Book World Edition (Blue Rings), My Book World Edition II (Blue Rings), and WD ShareSpace, drives:
These drives can use the WD Anywhere Backup software that come with them to backup your data from your internal hard drive. Please see link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

5. My Book Premium Edition:
This drive came with WD Backup, which you can use to backup your pictures, videos, and other documents. Please see link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

6. WD Elements Play , WD Elements Desktop , WD Elements Portable , WD Elements SE Portable, Elements Portable and Elements Desktop:
This drive does not come with any backup software. You can manually copy and paste your data to the drive, use Windows Backup or Apple Time Machine if applicable, or you can use a third party backup software of your choice.

7. My Book Premium ES:
This drive came with Retrospect HD 2.0 software that can backup your data from the internal hard drive. This software also supports a full system backup. Please see the link below for step-by-step instructions on how to backup your data.

8. WD Dual-Option Combo , WD Dual-Option USB, and WD Dual-Option Media Center :
If you have a WD Media Center, Dual-option Combo, or Dual-option USB external hard drive, you can use the Retrospect Express 6.5 software that comes with the drive to create a backup that will backup your data from the internal drive. This software also supports a full system backup.

9. WD TV Live Hub Media Center:
If you have a WD TV Live Hub Media Center, this drive includes a Network Hard Drive (NAS). WD does not recommend using this drive for backup purposes, and does not provide backup software with this unit.

10. Other External hard drives (that did not come with backup software):
If you want to backup only your data onto a second hard drive, please see links below for how you can use your operating system to store your data on an external drive for both Mac and PC.

Note:: Always remember that “backup” means that you have your data stored in at least two (2) locations. Moving data from your system drive to an external hard drive is not a backup, unless there is already a duplicate of the file on a different drive.

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Power supply – Is it possible (and safe/reliable/non-damaging) to use a 20-pin ATX PSU with a 24-pin ATX motherboard?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM03 mins

I have a reasonably-decent old 20-pin PSU which I want to use on a newer 24-pin ATX motherboard. I see that the ATX page on wikipediamentions that 24-pin ATX is backward-compatible, and I can find 20-to-24 pin adapters to buy for a couple of dollars/pounds at lots of places, but I can’t find any mention…

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Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Command Queuing

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM05 mins

Seagate has a proven track record of consistently delivering reliable products in volume, and the new Barracuda 7200.11 family is no exception. Designed with up to four platters and the only second-generation perpendicular recording technology in the industry, the Barracuda 7200.11 drive offers the ideal balance of world-class technology and value, providing customers with an optimal overall solution. The capacity, reliability and performance of this drive, along with its 5-year limited warranty, ensure the longevity of digital content for years to come.

Key Features and Benefits

  • Delivers the industry’s highest capacity—up to 1.5 TB of storage (also 1 TB and 750, 640, 500, 320 and 160 GB)
  • Ships with the industry’s most reliable and proven perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology
  • Delivers high performance
    • Up to 120 MB/s sustained data rate
    • 32-MB and 16-MB cache buffer (8 MB on 160 GB)
  • Environmentally friendly
    • Consumes up to 43 percent less power during idle than previous products, enabling customers to build low-power systems
    • Meets strict RoHS environmental requirements
  • Leverages best combination of technology (areal density, PMR) and proven components for volume availability
  • Ships with an industry-best 5-year limited warranty

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Drive—the Eco-Friendly Choice
The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drive delivers up to 43 percent power savings over the previous desktop generation without sacrificing drive and system performance levels, giving customers the ability to manufacture eco-friendly PC systems and external storage systems that meet energy-savings requirements.

Seagate hard drives have long been produced with the environment in mind, and not just with low power consumption. Like all other Seagate drives, the Barracuda 7200.11 product family complies with the Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) Directive—a regulation that limits the use of hazardous materials in electronic goods. Seagate also takes great pride in implementing numerous voluntary material restrictions for the good of the environment.

Seagate is committed to minimizing the impact of our products and operations on the environment, and producing energy-efficient, RoHS-compliant hard drives is just one element of that commitment. Our facilities are operated to be energy efficient and minimize our carbon footprint. For example, Seagate has implemented production efficiency measures, such as replacing or renovating less-efficient equipment, resulting in a 20 percent increase in production efficiency on a per-hard-drive basis. In just six months this delivered a savings of 158.93 million kWh, or enough energy to power nearly 15,000 U.S. homes for one year. Seagate also has deployed aggressive waste minimization and recycling programs in facilities worldwide.

Seagate employees are fully engaged in this environmental commitment and participate in many ways, from innovating eco-friendly hard drives, planting trees at company facilities and identifying eco-friendly manufacturing improvements to car-pooling and telecommuting.

With Seagate and the Barracuda 7200.11 drive, our customers can have the best of both worlds—top hard drive performance and the satisfaction of knowing they are using a high-capacity drive with a very small eco-footprint.

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The mobile hard disk prompts that the file or directory structure is damaged

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM01 mins

Case:Individual customers have dozens of folders. Several important folders of them cannot be opened or copied. After double -clicking, the file or directory structure is damaged and cannot be read. Solution:Data recovery engineers use professional data recovery tools. All the damaged folders data were successfully read on the spot, and all the data recovered successfully.

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RAID Array & Server Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter F)

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM53 mins

Failback
Restoring a failed system component’s share of a load to a replacement component.

Failover
A mode of operation for failure tolerant systems in which a component has failed and a redundant component has assumed its functions.

Failover Port
A fibre channel port capable of assuming I/O requests for another, failed port on the loop. During normal operation, a failover port may be active or inactive. Failover ports assume the same loop ID and, optionally, the same node from the failed port.

Failure
A detectable physical change in hardware, requiring replacement of the component.

Fault Tolerance, Failure Tolerance
The ability of a system to continue to perform its function even when one of its components has failed. A fault tolerant system requires redundancy in disk drives, power supplies, adapters, controllers, and cabling. Mylex RAID controllers offer high levels of fault tolerance.

Failed-drive mode
A mode of reduced-performance operation that a disk array is in after a drive failure.

Failover
The automatic replacement of a failed system component with a properly functioning one. Most often used in the context of redundant external array controllers. If one of the controllers fails, failover enables the second controller to take over the failed controller’s I/O load.

Fault tolerance
The ability of a system to continue to perform its functions, even when one or more components have failed

Fibre Channel
Technology for transmitting data between computer devices at a data rate of up to 2 Gbps (two billion bits per second), especially suited for connecting computer servers to shared storage devices and for interconnecting storage controllers and drives.

Fibre Channel is expected to replace the Small System Computer Interface (SCSI) as the transmission interface between servers and clustered storage devices. It is also more flexible: devices can be as far as ten kilometers (about six miles) apart. The longer distance requires optical fiber as the physical medium; however, fibre channels also work using coaxial cable and ordinary telephone twisted pair wires.

Flash ROM
Memory on an adapter containing software that can be reprogrammed without removing it from the board.

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