Archive for the 'Data Recovery' Category

Jan 27 2010

Data Recovery Post Windows Home Server Failure

Published by admin under Data Recovery

This is a side view of the read head of an IBM...Image via Wikipedia

Windows Home Server is an advanced way of connecting multiple computers together and building a network at home. This enables remote accessing and sharing of files and taking automated backups amongst multiple connected computers. It is most beneficial for home based businesses and companies. But, an advanced medium like Windows Home Server is also vulnerable to failure due to many issues like hard disk damage, human errors, presence of corrupt drivers, and more. If Windows Home Server fails due to any of these factors, then you may have to suffer from data loss. To get your data back, you must have a valid backup file. But, if you have not created any backup, then you need to opt for a powerful Hard Disk Recovery application.

 

 

 

Suppose, on a Windows Home Server based computer, when you see that the system fails to boot or one or more data disks are damaged, or encounter any system crash/disk failure issues, then all these may indicate failure of Windows home server.

 

 

Why does it happen?

Windows Home Server may fail due to any of the following reasons:

 

Presence of faulty network cards.

Overload on Windows Home Server.

NTFS corruption.

 

Ways to resolve the issue:

To resolve the issue follow the measures below:

 

To detect and identify boot problems related to Windows Home Server, check the server event log.

If the system stops the booting process, try attaching the disks to Windows operating system. By doing this, you can copy your data to a secure location.

Try using the CHKDSK command to resolve NTFS corruption issues.

In case of a physically damaged hard drive, you need to replace your hard disk.

 

 

 

But, if these measures fail to help, then it is advised to re-install the operating system. But, re-installing the system can prove disastrous as you lose all the data from the formatted hard drive. But, data recovery is possible using a powerful Hard Drive Recovery application. These applications use highly advanced procedures to provide absolute hard disk recovery.

 

 

 

Stellar Phoenix Windows data recovery is a fully featured Hard Disk Recovery software that recovers all your lost, missing or inaccessible data comprehensively. The software provides various added features like Disk Cloning, Disk Imaging, etc. It supports FAT 12, FAT 16, FAT 32, VFAT, NTFS, and NTFS5 based file systems. This software is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000.

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Jan 10 2010

How Can the Asset Recovery Help You to Retrieve Lost Data?


These days, nearly all business organizations need to use effective computers in order to work effectively. Nevertheless of the excellence of your computer system, there comes a time point when it requires to be substituted. Operating systems malfunctions, new inventions develop, and frequent wear and tear may actually degrade even the best system. But you can not throw your failed systems away as they contain significant data and information that are essential for your business. In such cases, you need to go for Data Recovery solutions to extract data from failed systems.

The process of retrieving data from unusable computers is known as Asset Recovery in business terms. It is the process of maximizing value of the end of life or unused assets through efficient divestment or rescue. Both small and large organization use this type of recovery at some level with end goal of getting the highest possible return from asset. This is also the procedure of liquidating the excess inventory of the healthy organizations, equipment returned, or refurbished items.

When it comes to retrieve data from to failed systems, asset recovery needs specific type of applications or services. The type of solution depends upon the cause and type of failure. There are basically two types of system failure and data loss- Logical and Physical.

Logical Failure:

This is the type of failure, which occurs due to damage to the logical components of your system such as applications, system data structures, and operating system. The logical failure is caused by file system corruption, hard drive formatting, operating system malfunction, hard drive formatting, virus infection, accidental deletion, and sabotage.

You can extract lost data in such cases through effective and advanced Data Recovery Software. The recovery applications use high-end scanning techniques to perform through scan of damaged drive and extract all lost, missing, and inaccessible data from it. With read-only conduct and simple graphical user interface, Data Recovery is safe and easy with these tools.

Physical Failure:

Such kind of system failure takes place due to mechanical failure of hard drive components. It may occur due to read/write head crash, disk controller failure, power surges, accidental drop down, spindle motor damage, natural disasters, and overheating. The system may not detect your drive in such cases and does not boot up.

Recovery in such circumstances is feasible through the help of Data Recovery Service professionals. They offer personalized and sophisticated assistance to extract data from all types of physically damaged storage media. Recovery is carried out in safe and sterile environment of Clean Rooms.

Stellar Information Systems Limited is the foremost provider of best-in-class recovery solutions. The software are available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, UNIX, and Novell operating systems. Service is delivered through Class 100 Clean Rooms using advanced tools and techniques.

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Dec 30 2009

Windows Unbootable after Changing Cluster Size


All file systems (including of Windows, like FAT32, NTFS etc.) use a definite cluster size to organize data on the hard disk. The hard disk cluster size is the smallest value of disk space that is allocated to hold a file and is defined at the time of formatting the disk. When you try to change the set cluster size value of hard disk, chances are that the process may affect the boot structures as well. The third-party utilities that claim to safely change the cluster size value can sometimes, bring adverse effects to the Windows boot process. Thus, it is strongly recommended to backup all your data prior to use any utility that draws any direct consequences to your hard disk structures and data. But if you still lose data, you can use a Partition recovery utility to perform data recovery. Partition Recovery

To elaborate such problems, suppose you use a third-party software to change the existing cluster size of your Windows based hard disk. The utility reports successful process completion. But the next time, when you try to boot the computer, it fails and you receive an error message, similar to below:

A Disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart”

The data stored on hard disk is inaccessible and you cannot boot the computer even at subsequent attempts.

Cause

The described issue can occur due to corruption in hard disk MBR (Master Boot Record). MBR is the first sector read by computer to load the operating system and find disk partitions. The third-party software used in this case can corrupt the MBR.

Solution

Boot your computer using Windows installation disc and start command prompt. To fix and rewrite the MBR, you need to run the /fixmbr command.

If this solution doesn’t work and data is still out of access, you are suggested to use a Partition Recovery Software to recover the lost data, however, you can reformat the disk if a good backup is available. Partition Recovery utilities use effective scanning algorithms to analyze the crashed disk and extract the lost data safely.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a fully-featured data recovery utility designed for Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2003, and 2000 based systems. The advanced Partition Recovery Software is compatible with FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, and NTFS5 file systems. The software has a graphically enriched interface with powerful features, like RAW File Recovery, Disk Cloning, Disk Imaging etc.

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Dec 23 2009

How to Troubleshoot Boot Errors?

Published by admin under Data Recovery

When your system boots up, BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) setup performs POST (Power On Self Test) for checking the system and ensuring that everything is functioning properly. If BIOS is able to start your system and gain access to video subsystem, it displays information about system as it starts up. However, sometimes you may come across boot error messages, which prevent your system from booting. It renders all your critical data inaccessible and leads to data loss situations. At this point, you need to perform data recovery through appropriate solutions.

The error may be caused by several different components of your computer, depending upon how far into boot process the operating system gets before the error is produced. Majority of the errors are caused by your system BIOS because it handles most of the system booting functions. Other error messages can be the operating system specific.

There are several individual error messages and some are very common as there are a few different BIOS manufacturers, which are used by most of the systems today. But, since the actual wording of error may be changed by manufacturer of every motherboard or system, there are many variations. One common example of boot time error message is as follows:

Disk Drive failure”

After above error message, your system can not boot up and you can not log into the system. All your data business-critical becomes inaccessible. In order to gain access of your significant data in such cases, you need to find out the cause of this issue and perform Data Recovery through fixing it.

Root of the problem

As stated in above error message, boot errors generally occur due to hard drive failure. The failure can be either logical or physical:

  • Logical Failure- Such type of disk failure occurs due to virus infection, file system corruption, operating system malfunction, and disk metadata structure corruption. In these cases, operating system can not read files from the drive and data loss occurs. You can recover lost data using Data Recovery Software. The applications are pretty easy to use and work in most of the logical failure situations.

  • Physical Failure- This type of failure is caused by read/write head crash, spindle motor damage, actuator arm damage, power surges, and natural disasters. Data Recovery Services professionals help you to get your data recovered in such circumstances.

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Nov 30 2009

Recovery of Data Post Windows Corruption

Published by admin under Data Recovery


Operating system is the most important part of the computer system without which a computer cannot work. It acts as an interface between the hardware and user. Talking about Windows operating system, it provides various advanced features that provide easy and safe operation of computer applications. But, there are times when Windows operating system gets corrupted, the system becomes unbootable, which may further lead to loss of all the data present in the system. In such situations, a valid backup file comes in handy to restore your data. But in case of non availability of backup, you can always rely upon robust Disk Recovery solutions available.

There are a lot of reasons responsible for corruption of Windows. Few of these are improper system shutdown, accidental deletion, system malfunctioning, virus attacks, etc, due to which you may observe the following:

  • Damage of important system components like boot sector, NTLDR, MBR, MFT, EBR, NTFS.sys and more.

  • Partition table error.

  • Windows registry corruption

  • FAT or NTFS file system corruption due to excessive fragmentation.

  • Dynamic volumes corruption or loss.

  • CHKDSK errors.

In case of the errors given above, the computer system may encounter boot problems, which may

lead to inaccessibility of data stored in the hard drive. Sometimes, in this situation the data gets deleted too.

Resolution:

Consider the following measures to resolve the issue:

  • Use a powerful anti virus software.

  • Use an updated and valid backup.

  • Re-install the operating system.

However, when you re-install the operating system, all the hard drive data gets deleted, which creates catastrophic situations. In these cases, your data can only be recovered by using an efficient hard disk recovery software. These are reliable applications that salvage all your lost, deleted or missing data that cannot be accessed normally. Incorporating sophisticated scanning mechanisms, these hard disk recovery application provide comprehensive recovery of your data. Designed by well-educated data recovery experts, these tools are embedded with rich graphical user interface that make them user-friendly and self-explanatory and hence do not require any prior technical understanding.

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Nov 26 2009

What Happens When Virus or Malware Infected your Hard drive & How You recover Your Data From There

Published by admin under Data Recovery

Virus PerformanceImage by Kilian Arjona via Flickr


The hard disk of a computer stores all the information of the system. This data is not only vital for us, but some of it is critical for the system itself. The information stored in the file system, refers to the working of the operating system and other such applications stored on the system. However, the proper functioning of the system can be disrupted when it encounters malware infection. A computer malware is one of the most common reasons behind data loss in computers. These are the programs that are specially developed to damage the system. Removing a virus from a system often causes the data on it to get wiped out. After this, if a backup is available, you can use it to recover the data. In case the backup is not available, use a powerful hard drive recovery software to recover your data.

For example - One day you observe that your system is running slow. After a while random programs start on their own and your CD ROM opens and closes randomly. The system starts after a while, but all your programs on it are gone. 

No doubt, this is a catastrophic situation as all your important programs might have been affected due to malware or virus infection. At this point of time, you need to find a quick solution for the problem before it gets worse. But, let us first find out the cause of the problem.
The prime cause for this is virus or malware infection. It can come through various sources like If you have an anti-virus, it may not be up-to-date. This is why the virus on your system went undetected by it. It is also possible that the virus scan did show it, but you ignored the warnings.


Whatever may be the reason of the problem, damage has been done. However, the following measures may help you prevent your system from virus.

  • Use and up-to-date anti-virus and remove the virus.

  • Always keep your firewall on.

  • Computer virus can also come through files downloaded from Internet. Therefore, it is important to scan the files before downloading.

These measures ensure total safety of the system as well as the data. In case, you fail to apply these measures and the system gets affected by virus or malware, then your data can either be lost or corrupted. In such situations, you can recover your data using a Disk Recovery software. These tools employ quick scanning algorithms to recover your data accurately. Also, these Hard Drive Recovery applications are equipped with intuitive graphical user interface that makes them easy to use and understand.

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Nov 19 2009

Successful Data Recovery Must be Done As Quickly As Possible

Published by admin under Data Recovery

You must retrieve your lost data and information as soon as possible to save your business and organization. Obviously, the quick recovery is just a plain convenient, if lost or missing data is required soon. Whenever you store data or download and install a software of damaged computer hard drive, there are strong chances that data is being overwritten and you may come across permanent data loss. The same thing applies on all other storage media like USB drive, CD, DVD, external hard drive and so forth. The best way out to handle such cases is to opt for data recovery solutions through reliable applications.

 

In order to learn why and how the system failure and data loss occurs, it is essential to have grasp on how the operating system stores and deletes data on hard drive. Every time when you store data on the hard drive, a file icon is created by which you can identify the file and access it. In background, the file is converted into digital form and stored using binary digits (0 and 1).

 

Operating system creates a unique entry for every file in the file system table. The entry includes, file name, file size, starting sector address of the file, ending sector address of the file, creation date and time and so forth.

 

Whenever you delete any file from your computer hard drive, the file icon and file system table entry are deleted. The file remains physically intact, but operating system can not locate the file due to missing file memory reference pointer in the file system table. Operating system shows the disk space, that was used by lost file, as free and can be allocated to new file. Until the space is overwritten, data recovery is possible.

 

When the memory reference pointer is deleted, operating system can not locate the files on hard drive and thus it seems that file is lost permanently. In such cases, Data Recovery Software come for your rescue.

 

The partition recovery software are powerful and advanced third-party applications that methodically scan the whole hard drive and extract all of the lost data from it. The applications do not demand prior and sound technical skills as they come equipped with simple and interactive graphical user interface.

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Oct 23 2009

Hard Drive failure due to “Non-system disk error”

Published by admin under Data Recovery

Hitachi 2.5 inch laptop hard drive.Image via Wikipedia

Hard disk is a mechanical storage device that stores electronic data on rapidly rotating platters. It is considered as a reliable storage medium that contains the most vital information of the computer system including system files. But, being a mechanical device, hard drive is bound to failure or damage. In situations when this reliable storage medium comes across failure, it may prompt some error message and eventually, you may lose the data stored in the hard drive. However, in these conditions, you can still restore your data, only if you have maintained a valid data backup. But, in cases where the backup is unavailable, there it is recommended to use Hard Drive Data Recovery solutions to retrieve your data from the damaged hard drive.

 

For instance – At times when the hard drive fails or damages, you may encounter the below error message:

 

“Non-system disk error”

 

After the occurrence of the above error message, you may not be able to access the data stored in the hard drive.

 

Cause:

Following are the possible reasons for the above error message:

 

  • When the (BIOS) Basic Input/ Output System fails to locate the hard disk’s boot sectors and Master boot records on the hard drive.

  • On of the drive was not specified in the CMOS setup.

 

Resolution:

To resolve these issues, remove all the floppy boot drives from the system. But., if this does not fix the problem, then the need of Disk Recovery arises. It is a kind of a manual help offered by a data recovery company, in which failed hard drive is repaired, as an intermediate. Hard drive Data Recovery is the special service provided by professional data recovery experts. These technicians employ their experience and proficiency to extract the lost data even in cases where the hard drive is severely damaged. Disk Recovery is is done under the sterilized environment of Clean Rooms to maintain the integrity of data so that no dust particle may harm disk internals.

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Sep 30 2009

How to Solve LSASS System Errors in Windows?

Published by admin under Data Recovery

LSASS (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service) is a Microsoft Windows process that serves as the Local Security Authentication Server. The file performs tasks, like enforcing system security policy, handling password changes, verifying users logging onto Windows system or server, creating access tokens, and writing to the Windows Security Log. When you try to access the computer, the file checks the provided identity information for validity. If you forcibly terminate lsass.exe process, you lose all accounts. At times, a lsass.exe system or application error makes the computer unusable to operate. You computer might enter a reboot loop without permitting you to access the stored data. If all the recommended solutions fail, you might need to perform a clean reinstall of Windows. Since it deletes all the data, you need to use to restore it using an updated backup or a powerful Data Recovery utility.

 

For instance, you might come across the below symtoms with your Windows based computer:

 

  • Error “The system process ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe’ terminated unexpectedly with status code -<status_code>. The system will now shut down and restart.”

  • An lsass.exe error causing system to reboot continuously

  • You try to change the password but fails with an lsass.exe error

 

Cause

 

A Windows computer exhibits the above behavior in any of the below conditions:

 

  • Authenticated user group doesn’t have required Apply Policy and Read Permission in order to access GPO applied on domain system.

  • Your computer cannot get user authentication token from server.

  • Your computer is infected from Sasser worm, , corrupt or missing configuration file or registry entry

 

Solution

 

You need to apply the following measures to isolate the described system behavior:

 

  • In case of permission issues, you should grant the required permissions to the default domain policy

  • As your computer starts after reboot, immediately click Start → Run and then type shutdown -a to prevent it from restarting

  • Start the computer in Safe mode and scan it using an up-to-date antivirus program

  • Install all the Windows updates available

  • If the problem persists, repair Windows installation or perform a clean Windows reinstall

 

Clean Windows reinstall causes data loss, thereby compelling you to restore from backup. If no suitable backup is present, use a data recovery software to restore it. Data recovery applications serve as advanced and safe utilities using high-end scanning algorithms to locate and restore missing data. These tools are perfect partition recovery software.

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Sep 24 2009

Windows 7 RC Unbootable After Installing Test Updates

Published by admin under Data Recovery

PALO ALTO, CA - FEBRUARY 19:  In this handout ...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) is a test-version of Windows 7, the latest release in family of Windows operating systems by Microsoft. When you use it, the problems encountered are recorded and sent to Microsoft for making desired changes. A Windows 7 RC based computer system might fail to boot for several reasons and leave your data completely inaccessible. Among other reasons, you might experience Windows 7 boot issues after installing test updates. However, to restore the data thus lost, you should use the last good backup. On occasion, restoring from backup might not work as it is incomplete or damaged. So, to cope with such problems, it is suggested to use a data recovery software that supports Win 7 RC and allows perfect recovery of lost data.

 

 

For instance, suppose that you use a Win 7 RC based computer system. You install few test updates for Windows 7 RC (for example, KB970421 or KB970424), After this, when you try to boot the computer, it goes to ‘Startup Repair’ and gives the below error message on screen:

 

 

missing or corrupt ndis.sys”

 

 

You cannot access the data stored thereafter.

 

 

Cause

 

 

The test updates corrupted Windows 7 RC installation. One or more Windows system files are corrupted.

 

 

Solution

 

 

Following are the solutions that you need to consider to fix the discussed issue:

 

  • Try to boot the computer is Safe Mode. If this works, you can start command prompt as an administrator to run sfc /scannow command. The command can repair and fix system file corruption issues.

  • If this fails and the problem persists, you need to perform a clean re-installation of operating system. Since the process deletes all the existing files and folders of primary partition, you should use your backup to restore them.

 

On occasion, you cannot restore from the available backup. Such situations necessitate you to use an effective data recovery utility to recover seemingly irrecoverable data. data recovery software are high-end applications based on the fact that data once deleted can be recovered until overwritten. These tools serve as suitable partition recovery products with advanced features and options.

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