January 17th, 2012
Protect yourself from identity theft.
The recent successful cyber-attack on online retailer, Zappos, should sound a warning to everyone who uses the Internet for activities that involve sensitive information. Hackers stole important information from approximately 24,000,000 users of the Zappos site. Information that was stolen included names, addresses, telephone numbers and the last four digits of customers’ credit card numbers.
Secure password practice is extremely important when an Internet user is developing their online persona. Unfortunately, many folks use inadequate and even unsafe techniques when they developed their passwords. Here are some do’s and don’ts for password creation and usage.
· Don’t use passwords that are easy to crack. Use a combination of upper and lowercase letters and numbers. Do not use common words or the names of your children or pets.
· Do use a different password for every website log on. This is especially true if you use social networking sites. Use the secure mode on networking sites if it is available.
· Use a password generator to make your passwords. This type of software will generate random passwords and allow you to store them in one place on your computer. The password database is encrypted and requires a password to open, the only one that you will have to remember.
· Only enter password and personal identification information on websites that display the secure website symbol.
The Data Rescue Center recommends that you also use caution when you need emergency data recovery. You need to choose a data recovery company that is trustworthy. Our data recovery service is located in Livermore, California. We hold a Better Business Bureau A+ rating. All of our employees, including our recovery engineers, are given extensive background checks before they are hired as well. We are the only data recovery service in the world with a Class 2 Vault to store your hard drive.
Tags: How to Protect Yourself from Identity Theft, password creation, secure password
Posted in Security, data recovery | Comments Off
January 10th, 2012
Protect your privacy
The team at The Data Rescue Center, a data recovery service based in Livermore, California, would like to remind their clients that protecting personal privacy and information is vitally important. This includes both offline and online information. We would like to recommend that everyone visit the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse website for extensive information on how to protect privacy and personal information. All Internet users should read the article entitled “A New Year for Privacy: The PRC Launches Online Complain Center.”
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is a nonprofit organization that is nationally recognized for consumer education and advocacy. They have been tracking privacy issues since 2005 from their office in San Diego, California. Their website contains information on how consumers can protect their identity. They also include guidelines on how to recover from identity theft and privacy issues. The topics included range from telephone scams and junk faxes to web-based hazards such as email use and online shopping.
For example, they recommend that consumers monitor their credit reports to ensure that no one has stolen vital information and is using it for fraudulent purposes. Furthermore, the PRC explains what to do when a consumer is asked for his or her Social Security number. This includes requests from government agencies as well as businesses.
The Data Rescue Center recommends that consumers thoroughly check into the background of any service working on their computers, especially if disk file recovery is involved. Personal data might even be found during flash drive recovery; therefore, the client should ensure that the recovery lab has been proven trustworthy.
Tags: identity protection, identity theft, privacy issues, Protect Your Privacy
Posted in Security | Comments Off
December 30th, 2011
Oil Blow Out of 2010.
According to a December 9th article on the Allgov.com website, British Petroleum has accused contractor Halliburton of intentionally deleting structural test results that could shed light on the fatal oil well blowout of April 2010. The stability test results, shown in 3D modeling cement tests, could point to ignored potential failure. BP has requested that the computer used in the tests be released to a forensic data recovery company for analysis.
Forensic hard drive recovery is more involved than normal recovery of lost data. The data on this type of drive has not necessarily been accidentally deleted; it may have been an intentional act. Because forensic recovery will be used for legal purposes, extreme care must be taken to ensure that data is not corrupted further. Additionally, the recovery engineer may not be looking for specific files as much as reconstructing fragmented data and looking for specific information. The engineer will need to access areas of the drive that are not normally used in recovery.
The drive may also have been protected by safety measures to prevent recovery for legal investigations. Often the recovery engineer must make copies of the drive, working on them instead of the original drive. This will preserve the original evidence for use in legal proceedings. Forensic data recovery requires expertise and training above that which is used in normal data recovery.
The Data Rescue Center, a California data recovery service company, has provided forensic services for law enforcement agencies and government agencies in legal cases. The founders of its parent company, Prosoft Engineering, have been developing recovery software since 1985. It has been used by law enforcement and all of the major U.S. military branches, as well as major intelligence agencies.
Tags: British Petroleum, Forensic Data Recovery, forensic hard drive recovery, Halliburton
Posted in data recovery | Comments Off
December 27th, 2011
Who do you trust with your data?
The Data Rescue Center, based in Livermore, is a California data recovery service business. We would like you to stop for just a minute and take a mental inventory of the information that is stored on your computer. If you are a home user, you’ll probably have many digital photos of family, friends and special events. You might also have some personal financial information and family documents as well. If you are a business user, you obviously will have some sales and inventory records, contracts and other business financial records. Both users will have personally identifiable information that can be used in identity theft.
No one wants to suffer computer data loss; unfortunately, the statistics show that all of us will probably suffer some form of loss eventually. Furthermore, some forms of hard drive recovery require the services of a professional recovery lab. When that happens, all of our important information is suddenly in the hands of someone else. The question is who you will trust to recover your personal files.
You need to find someone who takes the security and safety of your vital information seriously. Here at The Data Rescue Center, we are serious about security. We run an extensive background check on anyone who wants to be employed here. Additionally, all of our employees must wear security badges to gain access to the various areas of our facility. The more critical the area is, the higher the security clearance the employee must have.
Our facility is guarded by a 24/7 security camera system with more than 24 RGB cameras and 24 motion sensors. When your hard drive is not being serviced, it is stored in a UL listed class 2 vault. These security measures are costly; however, they are vital to keeping your personal information safe and secure while it is in our hands for data recovery.
Tags: Who Do You Trust With Your Data?
Posted in data recovery | Comments Off
December 5th, 2011
Prevent data loss
The team at The Data Rescue Center checks trends around the country and around the world, keeping up with the latest information on data loss and data recovery. A recent survey, completed in Europe in 2011, revealed some rather disheartening statistics. Business owners should take this information and review their own business’s data protection and recovery plan.
Here are a few of the statistics, gleaned in a survey of 1,750 European companies. While natural disasters, such as flood, tornados and hurricanes do threaten a business with data loss, they account for only 7% of data loss. The leader in data loss is hardware failure, a staggering 61%. Power failures account for 42%. The third leading cause of data loss, data corruption, accounts for 35%. This is why The Data Rescue Center urges all businesses and consumers to have an effective data backup plan in operation. For Window machines, they recommend Data Backup PC3.
While these statistics are ominous, the resulting productivity loss can be even more damaging. In fact, of those companies surveyed, 74% stated that they were not confident that they could recover from major data loss. Here are the top three measureable impacts of data loss downtime:
· Loss of employees productivity, at 43%
· Loss of revenue, at 29%
· Delay in product development, 27%
Hard drive data recovery services play a major role in getting a business back up and running in the event of data loss. The Data Rescue Center, a data recovery service company in California, is standing by ready to help you keep data loss impact to a minimum. They perform both Windows and Mac data recovery.
Tags: Are You Prepared for the Impact of Data Loss, data protection, data recovery plan, survey
Posted in backing up, data recovery | Comments Off
December 1st, 2011
This is a great data recovery success story. In this scenario, a customer was in a hurry carrying his laptop to the car and placed the laptop on top of their car momentarily. While in a rush, he hopped in the car forgetting he left the laptop outside on the roof of his car. The laptop fell off the roof of the car while he was driving and got ran over at least once after falling. The screen was completely torn off of the laptop and the body had several dents on the backside of the casing.
One of our data recovery specialist opened up the casing of the computer and luckily the hard drive of the laptop did not appear to be physically damaged. Testing of the hard drive did report errors reading which were due to damaged hard drive heads. We were able to locate a donor hard drive and successfully transplant the replacement hard drive heads. This allowed us to scan the clone of the hard drive and recover the client’s data with our professional data recovery software
Damaged Laptop
.
Tags: A great laptop recovery story, damaged laptop, data recovery software, fallen laptop
Posted in data recovery | Comments Off
November 28th, 2011
Data Loss During the Holiday Season
The holiday season is here and it’s time to prepare for all the festivities. Be sure that you have plenty of batteries for your digital camera to take those great, candid snapshots. The average family will probably take hundreds, if not thousands of photos; digital cameras have made it so easy to become a real shutterbug.
Make sure, however, that you don’t let data loss ruin your holiday spirit. Those great shots of the grandkids can come up missing for several reasons. For example, sometimes photos are accidentally deleted before they are downloaded to the computer (in cases where this has happened try Prosoft’s Data Rescue 3 data recovery software or Klix digital picture recovery software). Your digital camera media can also become damaged, rendering the files inaccessible. Furthermore, it is possible that your files can go missing, even after being transferred to the computer. A damaged or compromised hard drive can cause those holiday memories to disappear as well.
Here at The Data Rescue Center, we want you to know that we are here to help you recover your lost holiday memories. While we do perform RAID hard drive data recovery and computer disk file recovery, we can help you with file recovery on your digital camera media, too. Your holiday photos are precious to you. We understand because we have families too, and we know the importance of those candid, memorable shots.
Accidentally deleted photos and logically failed drives can usually be recovered with a software recovery program. We offer you one of the best in the business, our award-winning Data Rescue programs for both PC and Mac. If you need a hardcore recovery that involves drive repair , our state-of-the art facilities allow us to recover physically damaged drives effectively. Our family at The Data Rescue Center would like to wish your family a happy holiday season!
Tags: Data Loss During the Holiday Season, digital camera media, digital picture loss, file recovery
Posted in data recovery | Comments Off
November 23rd, 2011
Priceless photos
As we approach the holiday season I would like to remind all of you to back up your computers. Now is the time of year great memories are captured with digital pictures and videos. It is easy to overlook and forget about doing those backups.
If you have a Mac and are using Leopard , Snow Leopard or Lion you can easily utilize Apple’s Time Machine backup app included in your OSX. If not, try the demo version of Data Backup 3 for 30 days.
Data Backup 3 offers standard backup types and includes a bootable clone option that I recommend highly.
Here is a quick guide on how to create a bootable clone back up and test drive Data Backup 3 at the same time.
Before starting your backup be sure your external hard drive is properly formatted with a GUID Partition table for intel based or Apple Partition map scheme for PPC based Mac’s before continuing.
Please download the latest version of Data Backup 3 from the link below and install it:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_backup_update.php
Within Data Backup, you will be selecting File > New Backup Set. Please follow the steps below to properly create a bootable clone.
Click on Show Backup Options to expand the drop down menu.
1. Select Backup Type, then select Clone.
2. Click on the “+” symbol under Sources and select Mac HD from the Devices list in the Finder window.
3.Select > Bootable Clone Backup as your destination from the “Devices” list in the Finder window.
5. To finish, goto File > Save Backup Set As. Then once saved click Start Now.
Once the clone is created, open System Preferences > Startup Disk and select the Bootable Clone BkUp and select Restart.
Tags: Backup your Holiday Photos and videos today for free, backups, Clone, data backup, holiday photos, holiday videos
Posted in backing up | Comments Off
November 10th, 2011
Here at The Data Rescue Center, we take data recovery seriously. We can recover data from logically and physically failed drives. A logical failure is often caused by operating system corruption. This can be solved by a software-based solution. Even so, the correct steps must be taken in the proper sequence to ensure success.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen many instances where poorly performed disk file recovery attempts have done more damage to the data. Some folks will panic when a drive won’t mount and will try to reinstall the operating system. This process overwrites many the files on the drive. Unless a recent backup is available, many of the user’s files are not recoverable.
If called, we can analyze the situation and give advice on the best solution. This service is free, even if we determine that the owner can fix the problem themselves. We will even explain the proper procedures that should be taken.
If the hard drive is physically damaged, the only way to recover the files is to repair the drive first. This entails opening the drive, a task that should not be attempted in a normal environment. These drives are assembled in a cleanroom environment; they must be repaired in one also. Your local computer guru does not have the equipment to perform a successful recovery. If data recovery prices seem pricey, please understand that the necessary equipment is expensive to purchase and maintain, there are numerous parts costs for most cases, and technician experience and training is also an expense. Having an untrained, ill-prepared tech can make your hard drive unrecoverable.
If you need the best data recovery service available, give us a call. Our award-winning service is here to guarantee the most successful recovery possible.
Tags: ill-prepared techs, safe data recovery, unrecoverable drives
Posted in data recovery | Comments Off
November 3rd, 2011
Watch the video to see the proper attire for a Class 100 Cleanroom
Opening a hard drive for data recovery requires a contaminant-free atmosphere. At The Data Rescue Center, we use a class 100 cleanroom that removes the contaminants from the air. However, it doesn’t stop there. We do everything we can to prevent contamination damage; that includes our technicians’ attire as well.
Before entering the donning and doffing antechamber, the technician cleans his or her shoes with a motorized, rotating brush to remove any loose dirt. The technician enters the gowning chamber, walking across a sticky mat to remove particles from the shoe soles. Then foot booties are placed over the shoes and secured.
Next, the technician dons a zippered, hooded, full-body jump suit. After putting on a hairnet and hospital style facemask, the technician pulls the hood over the head and makes sure all zippers and fasteners are secured. However, the donning is not done yet! Full shoe covers are donned next. They reach to just under the knees and are fastened in place. Finally, the security badge is attached, ensuring that only our qualified technicians are working on your equipment.
It may sound like a lot of trouble, but we value you as a client and protecting your data is vital. Internal and external hard drive recovery must be done correctly, including the removal of all contaminants. Based in Livermore, California, The Data Rescue Center also performs flash drive recovery for your digital cameras and mp3 players.
Tags: Attire for Entering a Class 100 Cleanroom, Cleanroom, cleanroom attire
Posted in data recovery | Comments Off
