Incorporate a Disaster Recovery Plan

Nordural ehf's backup system needed to incorporate a Disaster Recovery plan that would reduce the backup window from ten hours to two-three hours.

A Disaster Recovery Plan is a coordinated activity to enable the recovery of IT/business systems due to a disruption. Disaster Recovery can be achieved by restoring IT/business operations at an alternate location, recovering IT/business operations using alternate equipment, and/or performing some or all of the affected business processes using manual methods.

It was essential that Nordural's backup system incorporate a trustworthy Disaster Recovery plan that would reduce its backup window from ten hours to two-three hours. In addition to this, Nordural wanted a Disaster Recovery plan that restored the company's most critical servers to bare metal restore in less than two hours.

Nordural's decision to select the SecurStore Remote Backup Service highlights the strength and flexibility of managed services.

Remote backup (sometimes also referred to as online backup) is a service that provides users with an online system for backing up and storing computer files. Remote backup service providers are companies that provide a software program and space on a server that their client's data is stored on.

The software program will run on a client’s computer and (typically) once a day; compress, encrypt and then send the client's data to the remote backup service providers' servers to be stored

With SecurStore, Nordural had the assurance that all their requirements would be met - from a fast critical restore, to remote backup at multiple locations, to a simple and effective interface for the IT people at Nordural.

"We chose the SecurStore Remote Backup Service because it gives us all round backup and recovery services for our needs, with 24x7x365 support" said Emil Hilmarsson, IT Manager Nordural. SecurStore also provided Nordural with the option of assigning which data is 'critical; and which is 'important' data by using Long Term Storage with the use of Backup Lifecycle Management system that manages data during all backing up and archiving processes.

Backup Lifecycle Management differentiates data into varying levels of protected data: current critical data, which is stored on-line for fast recovery; and archivable data that may be needed at a later time but is not likely to be accessed in the near future.

Alexander Eiríksson, President of SecurStore, confirmed, "The agentless architecture of SecurStore Remote Backup Service allows us to implement the service with minimal interference to Nordural's existing computer systems. Moreover, because the service is pivoted around providing backup and recovery for geographically dispersed locations, it perfectly compliments Nordural's multi-site locations, remote or otherwise. This provisioning enables Nordural to remotely back up laptops even when workers are away."

At each customer site, a single client discovers all servers, desktops and laptops connected to the local network, and automates the backup of all local data assets.

How to recover lost photos ?

It happens all too often. You're downloading your latest snaps from your digital camera, and the computer freezes. After you restart and try again, there appear to be no pictures in the camera. Or perhaps the photos were on your hard drive and you deleted them accidentally, or you didn't have a backup and your hard drive failed.

Whatever the cause, there is no reason to panic. The computer may no longer be able to find your pictures, but it's unusual for a fault to completely wipe them from the storage card or disk. With the aid of some inexpensive data recovery software, you're almost certain to be able to get your photos back.

There are many data recovery programs on the market, but for photo recovery I strongly advise using software specifically designed to recover digital images. This kind of software has several benefits, not least the ability to show a preview of every recovered image. Often, data recovery tools find files that look like they might have been a digital image, but aren't. The preview feature saves you wasting time recovering files that turn out to be junk.

Another advantage of specialised photo recovery software is that it looks only for photo image file types. It knows what JPEG and other image files look like on disk. This improves the chances of a successful recovery, and reduces the number of junk files that are found.

Modern data recovery software is easy enough to use that anyone can do it. You just start the software and tell the program where the drive containing the missing images is. The software scans the drive looking for the patterns that it recognizes as photo image files. When it has finished, it will display a list of files, with thumbnail images showing the content. All you have to do is select the photos you want to recover, and safe them to a safe place on your hard disk.

How To Recover Lost or Deleted Data Files: Data Recovery Software Information ?

Have you heard of data/file recovery? The definition of the term Data Recovery is "..Making previously lost or damaged data available again.." A data recovery software or method can help us recover destroyed data e.g. an accidentally deleted file. It happens all the time. You delete an important file on your PC and send it to your recycle bin by mistake. You realize what you've done only after you've cleaned the contents of the recycle bin.
 

What do you do now ?

That file you deleted was so important. Fortunately there are lots of methods (Data Recovery Methods) and software (Data Recovery Software) available to help you get your lost files back.

Let's start by mentioning some possible reasons for the loss of data:

* You accidentally delete an important file. Then you immediately shred the contents of your recycle bin

* During today's system crash some files just disappeared and cannot be located or accessed
 

* You format your hard drive but then you remember those important .zip files previously stored in the newly formatted empty medium.
 

* A power outage prevented some files from being written to the hard disk. 

* Data loss can also occur due to physical damage of the storage media. For example the surface of your CD-ROM may be scratched off or your hard disk may suffer from all kinds of possible mechanical failures.

..and the list goes on.
 

Is Data Recovery Important?

Data recovery is a very misunderstood concept. A lot of people may not even be aware of the existence and the importance of data recovery. Maybe they think of it on a personal level. The truth is, lost data causes financial disasters to companies all over the world. The cost associated with computer downtime and lost data is enormous (several million dollars) for businesses.
 

How to deal with data loss?

Losing files is easy but recovering them can be difficult. If the loss was due to physical damage then you need someone with experience, a hardware technician or something. It wouldn't be wise to try to overcome hardware failures alone unless you are a professional.

Now, if the loss of data was due to logical failure or human error then the solution is data recovery software. The data recovery software should be able to:

- Undelete files even after you've shred the contents of your recycle bin
 

- Recover files after you've been infected from a malicious threat (trojan, worm or other virus)
 

- Recover files from reformatted hard disks or after your system crashes or your hard disk fails
 

- Recover all types of files (all kinds of documents, images, music, videos, email messages, zipped files etc)
 

- Recover data from all types of storage mediums (hard disks, external drives, CD-ROM, usb drives, floppy disks etc)
 

- Recover files easily and successfully. Should be user-friendly allowing someone with no data recovery skills to use it
 

- Take/create backups of critical system files or files you choose

The best way to avoid data loss is to start taking backups of your important storage mediums. Either create backups of data on CD-ROMS or use an external drive or zip drive to back up your critical files. If you want to go further look for software that automates the process of backing up and storing your data. These programs are kind of "set and forget". You set it up to take backups every hour or every day or month etc. and let the software do the rest.