Some Tips For Minimizing Chances Of Performing Tape Data Recovery

Tape backups are still being used in many parts of the globe for storing important backup by business users. Despite the popularity of Compact Discs and DVDs, tapes are often used as storage media for their cost-effectiveness for saving per MB of data. Still, just like any other storage media, tape drives, backup tapes or tape backup files might just fail. Although, there are number of tape data recovery software available in the market today, but it’s always better to be preventive. Here are some tips on minimizing the chances of a tape from getting corrupt:

Verify tape data at regular intervals- There are many backup software that offer the option of “read after write” to verify that your data is validated and verified. Although, this process might be time consuming, but for crucial files, it is important to do a full verification regularly.

Store one copy of tape data off-site- Saving a copy of data on an individual storage media will help you ensure that your data is preserved. Primarily used platforms often experience corruption due to some untimely disaster. Therefore, the best way to ensure safety of data is to keep a copy of tape data off-site.

Store your tape records appropriately- With tapes saved on site, you can keep your important tape copies stored in a stable environment, away from extreme temperature, humidity and electro-magnetic rays.

Keep rotating tapes- Instead of using the same tape again and again, keep using multiple tapes. Use ‘n’ number of tapes for storing your data. Keep rotating their shifts, for example use tape 1 on first day, tape 2 on second day and then use tape 1 again on third day. This prevents the tapes from being used extensively, thus prevents them from getting corrupt.

Forecasting expiry- Tapes are usually entitled to be used from 5000 times to 500000 times depending on the kind of tape being used.

Maintenance of Tape- Clean your tape drives periodically, make sure that the alignment of the drive is checked every 12 to 18 months. Most of the business sends the drive backup to the manufacturer when it starts to display problems.

Perform routine checkups- Keep testing your tape media at regular intervals and its backup copy for restore processes. For example, check whether you can restore the data from these media to different server or another partition or folder on the same server different from the one where the original information is store.

Other than all the tips given above, it is important to know that you cannot assume your technology is never going to fail. Electronic media is prone to failure and corruption and therefore their proper maintenance and testing is always important. However, if you lose your tape data somehow, we recommend you to switch to Tape Data Recovery tools for professional help. These tape data recovery utilities are devised to recover your data from corrupt, damaged and inaccessible tape media, so that your backup data stored in tape media can be utilized for the purpose it is kept. Tape recovery software can be used to recover data from all types of tape cartridges like DLT, LTO, AIT, DAT, etc.

Restore Deleted Files In Case Of Corrupt Hard Drive

Hard disk corruption issues are so common that even a home user knows how to get rid of these problems. Hard disk drive comprises mainly of the following three items, which are:

• Platters- These are coated with magnetic substance and spin at a high speed under hard disk’s actuator arm.

• Actuator Arm- The arm moves backwards and forwards over the surface of each platter.

• Copper Wire- At the end of actuator arm, a small copper wire is present.

The computing machine sends a pulse through the copper wire at the end of actuator arm, it changes the state of the magnetic surface of the platter as it passes under it. This way the files, which were stored on the computer are encoded into the magnetic substance. Hard drive disk failures might occur due to numerous natural or artificial reasons; what more with the increasing issues regarding hard disk; you can also browse through data recovery tips to fetch some information on hard disk preventive measures.

You can attempt to write the hard disk or formatting the partitions in order to avoid any kind of data loss or data corruption that might result to be harmful. It might be also because of infection or corrupt files that are saved in the hard disk, which might trigger the hard drive to damage. Although, creating backups of the data in hard disk is often suggested, but not everyone thinks of updating the databases.

In order to Restore Deleted Files due to corruption of hard disk might vary for different operating systems or file systems, since their make and production standards are kept different. Additionally, the file systems are different in every operating system. However, you can check yourself it can quickly restore deleted file:

1.Install Windows (or any other operating system) on another (external) hard drive

2.Run Scandisk/CHKDSK utilities from other operating system on bad drive (Important- don’t use similar operating system disk repairing utilities)

3.Scan the bad drive with anti-virus (First, create a backup)

4.Create a backup of critical files over the temp drive

5.Boot from clean floppy, FDISK bad drive, reboot

6.Boot from clean floppy, format bad drive

7.Install Windows on repaired drive

8.Restore backup files to the repaired drive

9.However, keep a temporary backup drive incase bad drive has hardware failure

With this, your bad hard drive will get back into working condition. It is suggested, that under any circumstances, user must not run any repair utility such as ScanDisk or Chkdsk from the same operating system. As they might remain unable to repair the hard disk and there is a chance that your file might become irrecoverable. However, if after following the above process, the issue with the hard drive persists. Then use an advanced and intuitive restore deleted file software to recover data and repair bad hard disk drive. Using such software the deleted or missing file can be recovered without any problem. Such software can be installed on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2003, or Windows 2000 operating systems to recover deleted data.