Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Save your favorite stories and bookmarks; share stories and bookmarks

Savafav is a community driven site for publishing news, and popular content. You can save your favorite stories and bookmarks; share stories and bookmarks; and vote for your favorites!

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Over 100 sites to promote yourself, part 2!

Another list of over 100+ places to submit your site. The list includes bookmark sites, RSS feeds, Web 2.0 start pages among others. 99% of these will require that you have an account, so take the time and register. If you plan on utilizing these links more than once, registration is just a little pain for long term gain!

To use these links simply replace my URL with yours, and add an article title to the end of the line. Enjoy! ( I'm tired of editing these.. , so there may be an error or two :)

36. http://thoof.com/submit?link=YOUR-URL-HERE&title=

Monday, August 27, 2007

Phoenix Data Recovery Software is 3 times faster!

Following my recent post covering data recovery for hard drives, I stumbledupon a data recovery product called Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software. I will have a review of the product shortly. I am hoping to test their data recovery services on a hardware level. I'll keep you posted!

Stellar launches Version 3.0 of Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software
– The v3.0 of Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software has a new scanning & recovery engine that is three times faster and much more efficient.

Stellar Information Systems, the industry's leading and most advanced provider of data recovery products and services has announced the immediate availability of the latest version of their flagship product, v3.0 Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software, advanced recovery software designed for safe and non-destructive data recovery from hard disk or any removable media. This is the latest version of Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS. The new version is powered by a new engine that scans drives in an efficient manner and at a much faster speed. V3.0 also enables faster file recovery with improved data transfer speeds and the recovered files can be saved in compressed form.

The new user interface of the software makes it easier to use. This streamlined screen layout helps the user to spend more time in recovering the data and gives better results at a faster pace. The product has various important features such as File Preview, RAW Data Recovery, Create Image to name a few. With “File Preview” feature the user can view preview of files and hence get a fair idea about the recovery results.

The “RAW Data Recovery” feature helps to recover 300 different file types including MS-Office, web, images, movie, digital camera and application files, in spite of severe file corruption or overwritten.

The “Create an image” feature of the latest version creates an image of hard disk drive, floppy disk, CD / DVD storage media and logical drives. When there are bad sectors in the storage media, it becomes difficult and time consuming to scan and recover the data from the media. However, “Create an image” feature simplifies this and helps to scan the image at a faster pace with better results.

“The storage media is susceptible to crash due to various reasons. This is precisely where a post crash data recovery tool like Stellar Phoenix comes handy to recover data from an inaccessible or a partially accessible hard disk,” said Sunil Chandna, CEO, Stellar Information Systems Ltd.

“The advanced recovery process is capable enough to ensure that all the precious data are retrieved from the affected system. Stellar Phoenix can locate, recover and restore lost data from any severe file system corruption,” he further stated.

The pricing of the software starts from $99 and is available online as well as through the company's partner network across the globe. Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software is Vista compatible and available in five different software interface languages—English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

For more information on Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery please visit us at: http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm

About Stellar Information Systems

Stellar Information Systems Limited is an ISO 9001-2000 certified company specializing in data recovery and data protection services and solutions. The company was established in 1993 by a group of technocrats. Headquartered in Gurgaon, the company today has 11 branch offices across the country. Stellar is the only data recovery player having a Class-100 Clean Room facility to ensure effective recovery even in cases of media that is severely damaged. With over a decade of experience in this domain, Stellar has established itself as a market leader.

Over 1,00,000 satisfied customers across 137 countries including USA, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, U.A.E, Japan have reinforced their faith in stellar offerings. Company's widespread partner network around the globe ensures comprehensive pre-sales and post-sales support to our customers. Stellar's Data Recovery Solutions encompasses a wide range of software for almost any data loss situation ranging from accidental formats to virus attacks to software malfunctions. Its products support most major Operating Systems like Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, Linux, and Novell. Additional data recovery solutions from stellar include recovery from CD-ROM's, Digital Media Recovery, and E-mail recovery. Apart from this the company also provides data protection, data backup, and data eraser software.

Further details can be found at:
India helpline: +919213955509
USA (Tollfree): +1-866-978-0600
UK (Europe): +44-207-993-2293
Site: www.stellarinfo.com

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Hard Drive Revival! Get Your Data Back!

Is there anything worse than a dead hard drive, when you boot up the computer as you usually do every day, only to see that dreaded hard drive failure message?
It's either hardwrae failure, software, or the computer itself. What dto do about it?

Software
The most common hard drive data loss problems originate from corruption of the master boot record, FAT, or directory. Those are software problems which can usually be taken care of
with a combination of tools like Fdisk /mbr to refresh the master boot record followed by a reboot and Norton disk doctor or similar drive repair programs.

Hardware
The most common hardware problems are a bad micro controller (onboard microchip), a bad
drive motor, or a bad head mechanism.

To narrow down the source of the problem;
1. Can the BIOS see and identify the hard drive correctly? If not, then the hard drives onboard controller is bad. (or a bad\loose drive cable)

2. Does the drive motor spin and maintain a constant velocity? This indicates that the drive motor is functioning.

3. If the drive surges and dies, the most likely cause is a bad controller (assuming the drive is cool). An electronic signal gate that allows the drive to control the motor may not be staying open. The drive needs a new PC controller board.

4. Do you hear any clicking and clattering when the machine is turned on and initialized (but before the system attempts to access the hard drive). Head clatter would indicate that the
spindle bearings are worn or even damaged.

5. There is always the possibility that the controller you are using in the machine has gone to controller heaven.

Scenario 1
If the drive spins
Try booting to the A:> prompt from a floppy, run Fdisk and check to see if Fdisk can see a partition on the hard drive. If Fdisk can see the partition, that means that it can access the drive and that the controller electronics are functioning correctly. If there is no head clatter, it may be just a matter of disk corruption which commonly occurs when a surge hits your machine and overwhelms the power supply. An electro magnetic pulse can wipe out the master boot record, and file allocation tables. Fdisk can fix the master boot record, and Norton Disk Doctor can restore or rebuild the file structure and Directories.

Scenario 2
The drive spins but Fdisk can't see it.
Try the drive in another system and repeat the test to confirm that Fdisk can't read through the drives onboard controller. If it sees it in another system, then your machines hard drive interface is bad. You can try an upgraded or replacement controller card like a Promise or CMD Technologies (there are others) in you machine after disabling the integrated controller in the BIOS, but if the integrated controller went bad, it may just be symptomatic of further failures and you'd be wise to replace the motherboard. Trying the drive in another machine also eliminates the variable that your machines 12 volt power output being bad.

Scenario 3
The drive spins, but makes clattering and clicking sounds
If you get head clatter but a constant velocity on the drive motor (no surging), you might try sticking the hard drive in the freezer for about 12 hours (in a airtight, dry, sealed freezer bag). This is an old trick from back in the days of the MFM/ESDI driver era. This can cause the drive components to shrink enough to make the track marker align with the tracks. We don't see that kind of platter spindle wear much anymore, but back in the old days, the balancing and bearings weren't as good. Still, under the right circumstances, it might help. It would depend on how old the drive is and how many hours of wear have occurred. You have to be quick to get your info off the drive when it works. Back then, the drives were much smaller, so there wasn't so much to copy. So, go after the important data first. and do it fast! You may only get a few minutes of access.

Scenario 4
The drive doesn't spin
Either the onboard controller is bad or the motor is bad (assuming you did try the drive in
another machine). It's time to hit the net and local independent shops to see if you can locate another drive of the same make and model that's good. Since the drive is probably an older drive and no longer in distribution, your best bet is to find an identical used drive. If you know
someone with the same make and model, you might be wise to try and persuade them to sell you their drive with an offer of providing them with a free upgraded drive. If you can locate
an identical drive, start with the controller replacement ... this is the simplest and least invasive. If swapping the controller doesn't produce the desire result, you can tear into the drive and swap the motors. While you have both drive opened up to accomplish this, scrutinize the platters, heads and armatures. You might even hook the drive up and power it from a system with both drives attached. This way, you could see anything that deviates between the actions of both drives when they are initialized. Swapping patters is unlikely to produce any positive result. They are a balanced system like the tires on your car and I suspect that the balance will be different for each drive as will other variables.

Last but not least
Data Recovery Services
There's always Ontrack Corp. who will attempt to recover your info starting at $500 and up . They do not repair or return the drive either.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Internet Bandwidth and all it's mysteries... Explained

Internet Bandwidth and all it's mysteries... Explained

Most hosting companies offer a variety of bandwidth options in their plans. So exactly what is bandwidth as it relates to web hosting? Put simply, bandwidth is the amount of traffic that is allowed to occur between your web site and the rest of the internet. The amount of bandwidth a hosting company can provide is determined by their network connections, both internal to their data center and external to the public internet.

Network Connectivity
The internet, in the most simplest of terms, is a group of millions of computers connected by networks. These connections within the internet can be large or small depending upon the cabling and equipment that is used at a particular internet location. It is the size of each network connection that determines how much bandwidth is available. For example, if you use a DSL connection to connect to the internet, you have 1.54 Mega bits (Mb) of bandwidth. Bandwidth therefore is measured in bits (a single 0 or 1). Bits are grouped in bytes which form words, text, and other information that is transferred between your computer and the internet.

If you have a DSL connection to the internet, you have dedicated bandwidth between your computer and your internet provider. But your internet provider may have thousands of DSL connections to their location. All of these connection aggregate at your internet provider who then has their own dedicated connection to the internet (or multiple connections) which is much larger than your single connection. They must have enough bandwidth to serve your computing needs as well as all of their other customers. So while you have a 1.54Mb connection to your internet provider, your internet provider may have a 255Mb connection to the internet so it can accommodate your needs and up to 166 other users (255/1.54).

Traffic
A very simple analogy to use to understand bandwidth and traffic is to think of highways and cars. Bandwidth is the number of lanes on the highway and traffic is the number of cars on the highway. If you are the only car on a highway, you can travel very quickly. If you are stuck in the middle of rush hour, you may travel very slowly since all of the lanes are being used up.

Traffic is simply the number of bits that are transferred on network connections. It is easiest to understand traffic using examples. One Gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. One gigabyte is equal to 1,024 megabytes. To put this in perspective, it takes one byte to store one character. Imagine 100 file cabinets in a building, each of these cabinets holds 1000 folders. Each folder has 100 papers. Each paper contains 100 characters - A GB is all the characters in the building. An MP3 song is about 4MB, the same song in wav format is about 40MB, a full length movie can be 800MB to 1000MB (1000MB = 1GB).

If you were to transfer this MP3 song from a web site to your computer, you would create 4MB of traffic between the web site you are downloading from and your computer. Depending upon the network connection between the web site and the internet, the transfer may occur very quickly, or it could take time if other people are also downloading files at the same time. If, for example, the web site you download from has a 10MB connection to the internet, and you are the only person accessing that web site to download your MP3, your 4MB file will be the only traffic on that web site. However, if three people are all downloading that same MP at the same time, 12MB (3 x 4MB) of traffic has been created. Because in this example, the host only has 10MB of bandwidth, someone will have to wait. The network equipment at the hosting company will cycle through each person downloading the file and transfer a small portion at a time so each person's file transfer can take place, but the transfer for everyone downloading the file will be slower. If 100 people all came to the site and downloaded the MP3 at the same time, the transfers would be extremely slow. If the host wanted to decrease the time it took to download files simultaneously, it could increase the bandwidth of their internet connection (at a cost due to upgrading equipment).

Hosting Bandwidth
In the example above, we discussed traffic in terms of downloading an MP3 file. However, each time you visit a web site, you are creating traffic, because in order to view that web page on your computer, the web page is first downloaded to your computer (between the web site and you) which is then displayed using your browser software (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) . The page itself is simply a file that creates traffic just like the MP3 file in the example above (however, a web page is usually much smaller than a music file).

A web page may be very small or large depending upon the amount of text and the number and quality of images integrated within the web page. For example, the home page for CNN.com is about 200KB (200 Kilobytes = 200,000 bytes = 1,600,000 bits). This is typically large for a web page. In comparison, Yahoo's home page is about 70KB.

How Much Bandwidth Is Enough?
It depends (don't you hate that answer). But in truth, it does. Since bandwidth is a significant determinant of hosting plan prices, you should take time to determine just how much is right for you. Almost all hosting plans have bandwidth requirements measured in months, so you need to estimate the amount of bandwidth that will be required by your site on a monthly basis

If you do not intend to provide file download capability from your site, the formula for calculating bandwidth is fairly straightforward:
Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size x 31 x Fudge Factor
If you intend to allow people to download files from your site, your bandwidth calculation should be:

[(Average Daily Visitors x Average Page Views x Average Page Size) +
(Average Daily File Downloads x Average File Size)] x 31 x Fudge Factor

Let us examine each item in the formula:
Average Daily Visitors - The number of people you expect to visit your site, on average, each day. Depending upon how you market your site, this number could be from 1 to 1,000,000.

Average Page Views - On average, the number of web pages you expect a person to view. If you have 50 web pages in your web site, an average person may only view 5 of those pages each time they visit.

Average Page Size - The average size of your web pages, in Kilobytes (KB). If you have already designed your site, you can calculate this directly.

Average Daily File Downloads - The number of downloads you expect to occur on your site. This is a function of the numbers of visitors and how many times a visitor downloads a file, on average, each day.

Average File Size - Average file size of files that are downloadable from your site. Similar to your web pages, if you already know which files can be downloaded, you can calculate this directly.

Fudge Factor - A number greater than 1. Using 1.5 would be safe, which assumes that your estimate is off by 50%. However, if you were very unsure, you could use 2 or 3 to ensure that your bandwidth requirements are more than met.

Usually, hosting plans offer bandwidth in terms of Gigabytes (GB) per month. This is why our formula takes daily averages and multiplies them by 31.

Summary
Most personal or small business sites will not need more than 1GB of bandwidth per month. If you have a web site that is composed of static web pages and you expect little traffic to your site on a daily basis, go with a low bandwidth plan. If you go over the amount of bandwidth allocated in your plan, your hosting company could charge you over usage fees, so if you think the traffic to your site will be significant, you may want to go through the calculations above to estimate the amount of bandwidth required in a hosting plan.

This document was compiled from various public sources. If you have authored any of the content within, please DO contact me! Thank you!

Think outside the box! With 3 Terabytes of desktop RAID storage!

The 3ware Sidecar is an external RAID desktop solution which expands the storage capacity of PCs, the Apple Mac Pro and Power Mac G5 (PCI Express version). It is essentially a portable desktop storage power house and bottom-less pit for data storage.

read more | digg story

Thursday, August 23, 2007

100+ Sites you can use to promote yourself!

I recently authored an article to help attract visitors to your blogs and posts. The article is here.
From that article, I have compiled over 100 links to social bookmarking sites and similar places to post your news to the world. These are of course free, and other than taking the time to register on all of them, they can greatly help you attract genuine readers and visitors!
Don't forget to also use ping services! (there are many, but pingmyblog covers them all)

PC and Tech Tips

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Save your favorite stories and bookmarks; share stories and bookmarks

Over 100 sites to promote yourself, part 2!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Phoenix Data Recovery Software is 3 times faster!

About Stellar Information Systems

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Hard Drive Revival! Get Your Data Back!

Friday, August 24, 2007

Internet Bandwidth and all it's mysteries... Explained

Think outside the box! With 3 Terabytes of desktop RAID storage!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

100+ Sites you can use to promote yourself!

PC and Tech Tips Archives