The Web Files » Computer support

DTI Data offers hard drive recovery services and software

Tricia — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:09:47 +0000

I’ve you’ve never been unlucky enough to have gone through a hard drive crash and major loss of data I envy you. I might be luckier than some as I’ve only experienced complete hard drive failure once and that was due to a computer virus.

All I can say is that if you’ve never experienced this you’re lucky and whether you have or haven’t had a hard drive failure you should take some basic steps to prevent hard drive failure or to make recovering your data a fairly easy task.

Some obvious ways of protecting your computer and your data are:

1. Keep your software up to date by upgrading using the latest stable release.

2. Use an anti-virus program to protect your computer.

3. Never open a file that arrives in your email if it’s from someone that you don’t know, if you weren’t expecting the attachment or if it seems suspicious in any way.

4. Backup your data to another hard drive, server, external drive, CD or DVD regularly.

There are many reasons why your hard drive might fail. Power failure is another reason, as is visiting a website that infects your computer with malicious code. However, in my opinion, failing to do some or all of the above mentioned suggestions are probably the number one reasons that lead to hard drive failure.

I don’t know how many times I’ve talked to friends, relatives, coworkers or web friends and they’ve told me that their hard drive crashed or some of the programs that they rely on most won’t work anymore. When I ask them if they have a recent backup or if they use an anti virus program more often than not they say no.

Hard drive failure is bad enough for the home computer user, but if the hard drive failure occurs on a business computer or servers hard drive it could mean downtime, loss of income and loss of valuable company data.

For those who’s hard drives have failed and they are unfortunate enough not to have a backup of their data, or perhaps had a backup failure as well as a crashed hard drive there are companies such as DTI Data that specialize in hard drive recovery. Not only is DTI DATA the only manufacturer authorized data recovery company to provide flat rate pricing for hard drive recovery, but they also have a fantastic data guarantee:

If DTI DATA fails to recover your data you don’t pay!

That claim does come with an exception. If your hard drive was opened elsewhere the guarantee doesn’t apply.

DTI Data can perform hard drive repair on many types of hard drives and servers. For example they offer services for SCSI Hard Drive repair and recovery, Exchange Server Recovery, RAID Data Recovery, laptop hard drive recovery, Western Digital hard drive recovery and even adaptive logic hard drive recovery for those who sent their hard drive to another company for repair before trying DTI Data.

Data recovery and hard drive repair takes place in a class 100 clean room.

DTI Data also offers a number of Data Recovery Resources such as do it yourself recovery software that has been developed in house.

You’ll find software that can be purchased on their website that will help you recover all of the data on your hard drive, assist in recovering lost digital pictures, CD/CDRW DVD/DVDRW drive data recovery, fast file undelete, e-Recovery for Outlook Express and Outlook as well as other forms of data recovery software.

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to have a hard drive failure visit the site and fill out their online quote form or call their toll free number to talk with one of their hard drive recovery specialists.

I had to change web hosts!

Tricia — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:07:52 +0000

Well you probably noticed that my sites went down for a few days if you’ve become a regular visitor of The Web Files or any of my other sites.

I ended up changing web hosts after my former web host attempted to change my shared hosting account over to a TWO year Virtual Private Hosting account and charged me $642 in the process. A move and charge that I hadn’t authorized.

I’d been apparently having CPU resource issues on my former host – Lunarpages, and I worked for close to a month to resolve any CPU resource overuse issues by going over everything in my directories with a fine toothed comb, updating all of the programs that I use to run my various sites and any addons or plugins that I used with those sites and still they kept telling me that I had CPU resource over use issues.

They suspended my account on Saturday stating that my account had almost caused a server to crash so I reluctantly agreed to change my account over to VPS for one month. One single month. It took me almost 24 hours to communicate that desire to support since they are very slow to answer support email and do not have telephone support over the weekend.

Once they apparently understood that I was willing to switch over to VPS for one month they told me that it would cost $75 per hour to transfer my account, but if I wanted I could do it myself once the VPS account was set up. At that point I said No way to the $75 charge and in fact said no to the whole deal until they sent me more info about VPS, Plesk and how I might move my account on my own.

Instead of sending me information they went ahead and set up the VPS account and instead of creating a monthly account they charged me for two years of VPS service.

Right … for CPU resource issues that may or may not exist.

I say may or may not exist because after the stunt they pulled charging me for a two year VPS account I’m not all that certain that I ever had CPU resource issues.

So I spent early Monday morning creating a new hosting account at HostGator and worked on moving my domains and sites.

So far things are going well with HostGator and they’ve yet to mention a thing about CPU resource over use. Still – I think I’m going to continue going over my sites and try to lighten their load on the servers. Some of my sites are getting more and more popular so if my traffic is increasing so will my resource usage too.

CPU resource overuse problems continue! Any ideas?

Tricia — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 06:40:37 +0000

Well I’m still trying to figure out my web hosting CPU resource over usage problems. I’ve got a lot of great suggestions from people on forums and via comments on my sites.

One person asked if I’m using WP-Cache on my wordpress blogs and the answer is yes. I’ve been using it since last Friday and I’ve still been getting messages from my web host saying that my cpu resource usage is too high.

This is depressing!

If I ever figure out what caused the problem I’ll be sure to write about it on my sites so that others might be able to get themselves out of this mess a little quicker than I’ve managed.

Well, I’m not out of the mess yet.

I’ve finished updating everything I can think of including a joomla installation that runs one of my other sites. I think the Joomla CMS might be one of the causes of the problem. I guess I’ll find out later today when I hear from my web host. I hope that the resources are back to normal.

I wrote out more details of how I’m using the servers on my other tech blog WebStyle if you’d care to read that post. Perhaps those of you that have been through this before or know a little something about this kind of problem could read that post and offer a few suggestions? I’d really appreciate it if you would.

Also, just in case I do end up having to move to a Virtual Private Server … how difficult is that to work with? I’m pretty good about figuring out stuff but I’d like to know if I’m going to end up with a VPS headache before I make my decision to move off shared hosting.

Overuse of CPU on my web host – Help!

Tricia — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:57:55 +0000

I got a note yesterday evening from my webhost stating that my sites were using too much of their resources. Most of our sites are fairly well visited but I don’t believe they are so well visited that they would begin causing CPU problems on my web host just yet.

So, I’ve been going over all our sites for the last few hours turning off any plugins that aren’t vital and ones that I think might use CPU. For example I had viewcounter and postrater activated on two of our sites and since they store info in the database I thought that they might be using the hosts CPU so it was worth turning them off.

I’ve also downloaded a copy of WP-Cache that I’m going to be installing in a few minutes. This caches a page when it’s first viewed and then presents the cached copy the next time it’s viewed and doesn’t create a new cache copy of the page until data on the page changes or I think until a certain amount of time has passed. If this works properly it should cut down on the amount of resources that my sites are using.

I’m also going to update my Google Sitemaps plugin as the latest Beta version has been optimized to use fewer CPU resources.

I’m crossing my fingers that this works.

In the meantime my host has moved my sites to a different server on their network. I’m not sure the move went well because once I got to this blog I noticed that when I tried to click on the titles of the posts I got an error message. I hope they didn’t mess up my database!

That’s one reason why I’m writing a post now. I’m hoping the new post will update my database and fix whatever’s going on with the rest of the posts. I sure hope it does, and I also hope that this posts when I publish it!

If anyone has been put on notice by their webhost that their site is overusing CPU resources how did you resolve the problem? Any suggestions?

Recover files that you’ve accidently deleted

Tricia — Sat, 19 May 2007 03:50:07 +0000

I almost decided to call this post “Oops I did it again”. Why? Well, I know some people who constantly have problems with their computers. I spend hours with them either online, on the phone or visiting their homes fixing their computer for them. Days or weeks later I inevitably get a call from them saying “Remember that problem I had a few days ago? Well it happened again.”.

The problems that I fix most often are due to opening email that contains a virus or downloading a program that contains a virus. If these people would get decent anti-virus protection perhaps I wouldn’t waste so much time helping them!

The viruses they get on their computer end up either deleting files that their system needs to work properly or corrupts the files. What’s worse is that sometimes the people I try to help try to fix the problem themselves and not really knowing what they are doing they end up deleting important files as well.

That’s why I’m so happy that there’s a new program called Active File Recovery. You can use the program to restore files that have been accidentally deleted or that have been deleted or altered by a virus attack. It will even help restore files that have been lost when your system crashes or that are lost when the power fails.

It’s easy and safe to use. The program is definitely a reliable and efficient data recovery tool. I’m planning on purchasing a copy of this program myself, and you can bet I’ll be urging the people who’s computers I fix regularly to get a copy of this software too!

One great thing about this software is that if you suddenly find that you can’t boot up your computer you can use the CD/DVD ISO image that comes with the Active file Recovery Enterprise Installation. You can burn a copy in order to get a bootable CD or DVD with a lightweight version of Windows Vista that will run in RAM. Once you are able to boot your computer with the disk that you made you can then use the Active file Recovery software to recovery important files that might have been deleted and that might have caused the crash.

With this program you’ll also be able to perform Partition recovery. So if you have had a partition loss or the partitions been damaged by formatting you can repair it using Active File Recovery professional. The program can also be used to recover media files such as photos, deleted files from flash memory, and data that’s been lost or formatted from memory cards.

You can download a demo version of the Active file recovery software if you’d like to check it out, or you can simply purchase one of three packages – Standard, Professional or the Enterprise package that are priced from $29.95 to $99. Corporate licenses are also available. All of these products include free updates and technical support.

Computer trouble? Try 866GeekNeed.com

Tricia — Wed, 16 May 2007 05:09:05 +0000

I think I just found the service that I’m going to be refering some of my friends and relatives to! It’s called 866GeekNeed.com. The company provides phone based tech support.

They can help you with any of your computer related problems over the phone. It does cost $1.99 a minute after the first three minutes, so if you have a problem I’d be prepared when you call.

Looking at their site it seems that they are experienced in dealing with all types of computer, software, hardware and computer accessory (printers, scanners) type problems. Naturally the most common types of problems that people need help with are virus removal, spyware removal, email support, and connectivity trouble.

Techs from 866GeekNeed.com are available to assist you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Give them a try if you have a problem that you can’t figure out.

The Web Files » Computer support

DTI Data offers hard drive recovery services and software

If DTI DATA fails to recover your data you don’t pay!

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