Hard Drive Recovery

You can recover your photos from a mac based computer system

Photos are the most fascinating possession of any person. The precious moments are captured in the camera for times to come. The mac based system is a user's delight as it provides utmost facilities to the users to edit and manage the photos. However, the photos in the mac based computer system is also prone to get corrupted and thereby become inaccessible. An updated backup is a sign of rescue in case the photos are not accessible. But in case a proper backup is not present, a mac photo recovery software is the best option to recover the inaccessible photos. The software throughly scans the hard drive to trace the lost and deleted photos.

Consider a situation wherein, you have gone for your brother's convocation party. As your parents did not go for the party you snapped as much photos as possible to show them back home. Back home, you transferred the photos from the memory card of the camera to the mac note book. After you saved your file on the mac note book, you had shut down the system. When you further logged in to the system to access the photographs to show it to your parents, you did not find your photos. Now your brother charged on you for damaging his precious photos. Now you thought to retrieve the photos from the memory card. But to your utter misfortune, your brother thinking that the photos are already saved on the system, reformatted to card and save new photos, which ultimately over wrote the older photos. Now you remain helpless with no clue of what to do next. You had tried your best to search the photos in other locations of your system but in vain. The photos from the system is lost for sure.

If this has been your pity condition, you can retrieve the photos from an updated backup. But it is not possible to have a proper backup all the time. In such condition, you can use mac photo recovery software to recover your lost and deleted photos.

Corrupt PST file cannot be imported - How to repair PST file to access my mails?

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Many times, process of importing a PST file becomes quite complex. Specially, when you are trying to import PST file of later version to a prior version of MS-Outlook. This inconvenience is caused because different versions of Outlook use different formats. Like, MS-Outlook 2003 uses UNICODE format whereas prior versions of Outlook uses ANSI format. Version incompatibility does not allows you to perform import process without any difficulty. To overcome such failures, make use of methods that help to overcome such problem. Otherwise, repair PST file with the help of a commercial Outlook PST repair tool.

Let's discuss an error message that appears when you make an attempt to import an Outlook PST file. And if the version of the MS-Outlook is earlier than MS-Outlook 2003, an Outlook PST file can't get imported and receives an error message that utters something like this:

“Properties for this information service must be defined prior to use.”

On clicking OK button, another error message gets received.

“The file path\filename.pst is not compatible with this version of Personal Folders information service. Contact your administrator.”

Root of the issue:
Above problem is caused because the Outlook PST file that you are importing is a file of MS-Outlook 2003. MS-Outlook 2003 PST files support Unicode format whereas prior versions of Outlook donot support Unicode format. In other words, version incompatibility is the main reason for the above error message. Because of version incompatibility, Outlook PST file gets corrupt.

Solution:
Follow the below mentioned steps to isolate above error message:

First of all, save your MS-Outlook 2003 PST file as Outlook 97-2002 PST file, and then try to export Outlook 2003 PST file to a new Outlook PST file by considering the following steps:

Select New from the File menu, and then select Outlook Data File. Perform this step in Outlook 2003.
Select Outlook 97-2002 Personal Folders File in the New Outlook Data File dialog box.
Type a name for your new Outlook PST file in the Create or Open Outlook Data File. After doing this, save the new PST file to a location like Windows Desktop.
Select OK to close the Create Microsoft Personal Folders dialog box.
Choose a new Personal Folders from the Navigation Pane. Then select Import and Export from the File menu.
Select Import from another program or file, and then select Next.
Select Personal Folder File (.pst), and then select Next.
Select Browse to select the Outlook PST file that is trying to export to an earlier version. Select Open.
Select Next.
From Select the folder to import from, select Personal Folders.
Select Include subfolders check box.
From the Import items into the same folder in box, select the PST file that is saved in step 3.
Select Finish.
Select OK after receiving the following error message:

You are importing data to a location that does not fully support Unicode. To avoid loss of multilingual data, it is recommended that you choose a location that supports Unicode, such as a Microsoft Office Outlook Personal Folders File.

Select OK to continue with the location that you have chosen.
For importing the new PST file to an earlier version of MS-Outlook, follow the below steps:

From the prior version of MS-Outlook, select Import and Export from the file menu.
Select Import from another program or file, and then select Next.
Select PST file, and then select Next.
Select Browse to locate and open the PST file that is saved from Outlook 2003. Then select Next.
From Select the folder to import from, select Personal Folders.
Select Include subfolders check box by clicking.
From the Import items into the same folder in box, select the PST file that you want to import.
Select Finish.

If by performing above steps you do not find any results, then go for a third party Outlook PST repair tools. Repair PST file with the help of these software.

Performing SQL database recovery after receiving MS SQL Server Error 8909

Wireless Information System for Emergency Resp...

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While working with large databases, one often had to compromise on performance and time when there was a requirement for using only specific data from the large repository of data. It was important to limit or filter results of the queries that returned entire datasets from the SQL Server database. To overcome this problem, MS SQL Server used the paging technique to efficiently organize the data into small and manageable pages. These pages fail to function properly in case of a database corruption and you might not be able to implement any of the paging methods which may require you to go for database recovery.

There could be a number of reasons behind database corruption, such as virus attacks, power surges, improper shutdown etc. In such situations, you should take appropriate steps to recover your precious data from the corrupt database. If you are unable to recover the database, you should perform SQL repair by using a third party recovery software.

Sometimes the DBCC CHECKDB command may fail and return the following error message while performing a consistency check on one of your database tables:

"Table error: Object ID O_ID, index ID I_ID, page ID P_ID1. The PageId in the page header = P_ID2."

Most Possible Reasons:
This error may have occurred due to any of the following reasons-
There could be a mismatch between the page header of a requested page and some other page.
The database table on which the DBCC CHECKDB command was running may be corrupt.

When you try running DBCC CHECKDB using 'repair_allow_data_loss' option, it will show that the error is fixed even though it is not. When the DBCC CHECKDB fails to fix the error, you should try to perform SQL recovery through below mentioned resolution steps.

What You Need to Do:
These steps might help you solve the problem-
Check whether a hardware failure has caused the problem. You may be required to run hardware diagnostics.
Try using a backup to restore database to its original state.

If all the above mentioned resolution steps fail to solve the problem, you should take help of a reliable database recovery software in order to recover back your lost valuable data from the corrupt database. These software use efficient scanning algorithms that enable you to perform a faster recovery.

Solid State Drives Review

The hard drive of a computer is where information is stored and then accessed when needed. The more traditional storage device is the hard disk drive (HDD). It is essentially a moving disk, like a CD spinning in a player. The information is written onto it as it moves and in order to access that info again, it must spin again. The danger in moving parts is that they break down more easily than parts that don’t have to move. Solid state drives (SSD) have no moving parts and store information with flash technology. They are faster to write and read information and there is little danger of a hard drive malfunction.

SSD Drive

Solid state drives cost far more than HDD. An average SSD costs about $3 per gigabyte while HDD costs about $.10- $.30 per gigabyte. The difference in cost is expected to remain for the next several years. So this begs the question, is it worth it? SSD are mostly popular with the techies of the world, but for a normal everyday use, many find that it is an unnecessary component. Average computer users are more focuses on the capacity of the drive rather than the speed. Many don’t even know whether they have SSD or HDD. For mostly word processing and internet surfing an HDD is usually sufficient. But for those who are running multiple applications and downloading video at the same time, SSD will make a considerable difference in speed.

High end solid state drives can get up to 250 MB read rates and reach into the terabytes for capacity. But they can cost over $400. A tamer SSD will start at about $130. These SSDs can withstand between 350 and 1500 Gs before sustaining damage. They can get read rates as good as 250 MB/second. Write rates are sometimes enhanced with extra power and can get up to 1000 MB/second. Many read/write rates advertised cannot be trusted because in actual use the numbers can be much more random. Some companies will not even list read/write rates.

Solid state drives can decrease boot time to seconds. Some of the better boot times were as low as 20 seconds. CPU use is also something that differs from HDD. Random access time can get down to .2 milliseconds and use only 5% of the CPU. A file transfer of 1 GB takes under one minute in most cases. Watch out for what a SSD will do to your laptop battery usage.

Recovery of Lost Windows partition After MBR Corruption

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While booting the computer, you might encounter error messages like “Missing operating system”, “Error loading system”, and “Invalid partition table”. These messages are displayed when there is damage or corruption in the Master Boot Record (MBR). Located in the boot section of the hard drive, which is the first sector on the first platter, MBR contains the sequence of commands necessary to boot the operating system. It tells the computer’s BIOS (Basic Input Output System) the location of bootstrap code for the operating system. The MBR includes 4 partition tables of 16 bytes each. The partition table retains the information about size and location of partitions on hard disk. Anyways, MBR corruption leads to severe loss of your valuable data, which can be only recovered using an efficient third party partition recovery software.

Possible Causes:

Let us consider few prominent causes of MBR corruption that potentially result in partition loss. The corruption in the MBR can be caused because of the following factors:

· MBR damage due to partition table damage

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· Damage due to CIH virus
· Accidental deletion of partition
· EPBR corruption due to damage of Partition table
· Damage due to corruption of partition boot sector

At times, while booting the Operating System after hardware testing procedures in a MS Windows-based system, we find just blank screen with no messages. It signifies that the piece of code at the beginning of the MBR could not be executed properly, as a result even error messages could not be displayed. This is a very severe case of data loss as you are not at all able to communicate with the computer. It clearly demands to recover lost Windows partition and get back your inaccessible data.

Might be the Solutions

Image via WikipediaWe will now briefly discuss on different resolution methods for the damage of the MBR caused due to above discussed reasons.

MBR damage due to partition table damage
In this case, non of the partitions are detected and accessed by the Fdisk or the OS. The data can be recovered by patching the MBR partition table.

Damage due to CIH virus
In this case, the virus dumps random data in the first 2048 sectors of the hard disk. MBR which is located in the first sector of the hard disk also gets corrupted in this process as a result, non of the partition is detected and accessed by the OS. This type of damage requires expert's advice.

Accidental deletion of partition
In this case, a partition is deleted accidentally by the use of Fdisk or Windows Disk Administrator. The MBR and the partition table remain valid while the pointers to the partition are removed from the partition table thereby, the deleted partition is not detected. The corrupted data can be recovered by adding an entry for the deleted partition in the partition table.

EPBR corruption due to damage of Partition table
In this case, none of the partitions described in the corrupt EPBR can be accessed. The corrupted data can be recovered by rebuilding a valid logical partition chain.
Damage due to corruption of partition boot sector
In this case, the primary FAT32 partition is assigned a drive letter but cannot be accessed. The corrupted data can be recovered by repairing the partition boot sector.

The above mentioned procedures may help you resolve the issue with your corrupt MBR. In many cases, it may happen that after following the above steps you are still not able to interact with your computer, which compels you to go for Windows data recovery. There are many third-party Windows data recovery software available in the market. Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery software recovers the lost data in the case of MBR corruption.

DBCC CHECKDB Cannot Fix Serious Database Corruption in SharePoint

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Microsoft SharePoint Server is a product of Microsoft that enables you to create collaborative enterprise environment and easily share your business-critical data. It uses robust SQL Server database that is very reliable. SQL Server offers advanced tools to check database integrity and fix any kind of corruption to the database. These SharePoint recovery utilities are totally safe and easy to use.

DBCC CHECKDB utility supports various parameters that help you recover SharePoint data in different scenarios. For instance, when you run DBCC CHECKDB on a SharePoint database that does not have severe corruption; you may get the following message-

“DBCC results for 'database_name'.
Service Broker Msg 9675, State 1: Message Types analyzed: 14.
Service Broker Msg 9676, State 1: Service Contracts analyzed: 6.
Service Broker Msg 9667, State 1: Services analyzed: 3.
Service Broker Msg 9668, State 1: Service Queues analyzed: 3.
Service Broker Msg 9669, State 1: Conversation Endpoints analyzed: 0.
Service Broker Msg 9674, State 1: Conversation Groups analyzed: 0.
Service Broker Msg 9670, State 1: Remote Service Bindings analyzed: 0.
Service Broker Msg 9605, State 1: Conversation Priorities analyzed: 0.”

However, if database is corrupt and it requires SharePoint database recovery, you might get the below error message while running DBCC CHECKDB command-

“DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.
Msg 8968, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Table error: DBCC PAGE page (1:11368905) (object ID 0, index ID 0, partition ID 0, alloc unit ID 0 (type Unknown)) is out of the range of this database.”

This error occurs when DBCC CHECKDB cannot handle database corruption. If corruption is serious, alternative recovery mechanisms are required. The most efficient recovery solution is to restore database from backup. However, this recovery method works only if backup is valid and updated.

If you do not have a usable backup, SharePoint recovery software becomes need of hour. These tools are designed to thoroughly scan entire database and extract all unusable items from it.

SQL database recovery applications are able to work in all corruption scenarios, including virus infection, database structure corruption, and more. They are incorporated with highly-interactive user interface and thus do not demand sound technical skills to recover damaged database.

External Hard Drives - Upgrade Your Computer with an External Drive

When you run out of storage space on your hard drive it doesn’t mean that it is time for a new computer. When you need to transport large amounts of information you don’t have to burn a stack of CDs that get out of order and require extra time to access. An external hard drive is portable and can implement your computer by a terabyte. They work for both PC and Mac, desktop and laptop. Every computer of any size can accommodate at least one portable hard drive. And some systems that have multiple ports can have several of them.

External HDD

There are several types of external hard drives. The desktop model requires a separate power adapter and though it can be transported from place to place, is designed to be on top of a desk where it has access to power. Drives for laptops are designed to draw power through the connector cable whether it is plugged in or running on battery power. These "pocket drives" are small enough that they fit into the palm of your hand or in your pocket, purse, or briefcase. Some are so small you can stuff it into your pants pocket.

The capacity of desktop model external hard drives is available all the way up to 2 TB. Some models contain two units of 2 TB drives for a total of 4TB. That is enough space to hold all of the books of four large libraries. Laptop models are available in up to 1 TB, but most range between 640-500 GB. Solid state drives are also available, but mostly in laptop models. They are extremely expensive and cost is based on the capacity of the drive. The capacities of SSD external drives are limited to 256 GB. SSD offer some shock resistant attributes that can be handy in a laptop external drive, but much of the power and speed of an SSD is wasted if it is connected by USB 2.0 as the drive transfer rates are so much faster than USB is capable of.

External hard drives can connect to your computer via USB, FireWire, and eSETA. Even wireless USB and iSCSI are available, but rarely. Some companies market their drives based on speed. While 5,000 rpm is quite speedy, it will not make much of an impact on noticeable performance unless it is directly connected to the motherboard. Speed may of more interest to you if you plan on putting it in your desktop later.