Data can be lost due to many different reasons. Power spikes, Accidental reformatting, virus attacks and hardware malfunction are just some of the situations where you will find yourself looking for a data recovery solution.
This past weekend I was updating a Symantec Antivirus Corporate 10 installation to the new Symantec Endpoint product. Endpoint includes some client management tools that will reduce this clients concerns of unauthorized software installs and system changes. They are a medium sized financial firm with a Windows Server based network and 10 clients. This client previously used a tape backup system to do their data backup/restores and after taking over the I.T. management for this company I pursuaded them to go with Datashield Online backup and it has proven itself a number of times.
For some reason Dell shipped the new 160GB server with a 12GB system partition and we ran out of room there quickly. In the midst of extending a Windows Server 2003 hard drive partition for the Symantec End Point install, the process locked up. There was nothing I could do but reboot and upon rebooting the system would only do a partial boot and then reboot again ... and again ... and.
This is where the importance of a Data Recovery Plan shows up. At the end of tax season and with the potential for 8 employees billing at over $60.00 per hour the loss could be substantial! We kept the old Windows 2000 server and made minimal file and network changes. The data structure had not changed as soon as the partition extension failed I began to put contingency plans into effect. Within 15 minutes the Windows 2000 server was reconnected to the network and the Datashield Professional Data Restore was underway. If the recovery of the Windows 2003 system did not happen by Monday at 9am then the W2K Datashield data restore estimation put us on track to be live with the Windows 2000 server in 12 hours barring any network slowdowns or other 'stuff'. Plenty of time to be back online for Monday morning at 8:00 am. The first step in the recovery process was to determine the cause of the failure in order to apply the correct solution path. In this case it was not hardware and the hard drive partition tables (C:\ and D:\) were still visible and D:\ was recoverable. C:\ would not boot because the repartitioning software I chose rewrote a unique boot.ini file and the custom boot cd would not work either.
Having worked with data recovery I have some experience with partition corruption and data extraction and after investigating many promising partition/boot recovery programs I decided to go with an opensource program because they gave me the answers straight up, no double talk, no false promises, easy to order and delivered in 30 seconds. (oh..and it was free!)
I was able to recover both partitions on the Windows 2003 Server and went live at 9pm Sunday night. The data was intact and the Windows 2000 Server was at the ready in case there was some peripheral damage or other issues.
Remember that having your Data backed up is just part of the plan. Make sure you have a well thought thru contingency strategy in place. Document the details including usernames and passwords for critical resources, what data is stored where, what to do do 'IF" etc... Give the plan to 2 or more trustworthy people and make sure they understand the importance of your plan in terms of Business continuity and Security - the wrong information in the wrong hands can be a bad thing. More on Disaster Recovery at a later date....
This past weekend I was updating a Symantec Antivirus Corporate 10 installation to the new Symantec Endpoint product. Endpoint includes some client management tools that will reduce this clients concerns of unauthorized software installs and system changes. They are a medium sized financial firm with a Windows Server based network and 10 clients. This client previously used a tape backup system to do their data backup/restores and after taking over the I.T. management for this company I pursuaded them to go with Datashield Online backup and it has proven itself a number of times.
For some reason Dell shipped the new 160GB server with a 12GB system partition and we ran out of room there quickly. In the midst of extending a Windows Server 2003 hard drive partition for the Symantec End Point install, the process locked up. There was nothing I could do but reboot and upon rebooting the system would only do a partial boot and then reboot again ... and again ... and.
This is where the importance of a Data Recovery Plan shows up. At the end of tax season and with the potential for 8 employees billing at over $60.00 per hour the loss could be substantial! We kept the old Windows 2000 server and made minimal file and network changes. The data structure had not changed as soon as the partition extension failed I began to put contingency plans into effect. Within 15 minutes the Windows 2000 server was reconnected to the network and the Datashield Professional Data Restore was underway. If the recovery of the Windows 2003 system did not happen by Monday at 9am then the W2K Datashield data restore estimation put us on track to be live with the Windows 2000 server in 12 hours barring any network slowdowns or other 'stuff'. Plenty of time to be back online for Monday morning at 8:00 am. The first step in the recovery process was to determine the cause of the failure in order to apply the correct solution path. In this case it was not hardware and the hard drive partition tables (C:\ and D:\) were still visible and D:\ was recoverable. C:\ would not boot because the repartitioning software I chose rewrote a unique boot.ini file and the custom boot cd would not work either.
Having worked with data recovery I have some experience with partition corruption and data extraction and after investigating many promising partition/boot recovery programs I decided to go with an opensource program because they gave me the answers straight up, no double talk, no false promises, easy to order and delivered in 30 seconds. (oh..and it was free!)
I was able to recover both partitions on the Windows 2003 Server and went live at 9pm Sunday night. The data was intact and the Windows 2000 Server was at the ready in case there was some peripheral damage or other issues.
Remember that having your Data backed up is just part of the plan. Make sure you have a well thought thru contingency strategy in place. Document the details including usernames and passwords for critical resources, what data is stored where, what to do do 'IF" etc... Give the plan to 2 or more trustworthy people and make sure they understand the importance of your plan in terms of Business continuity and Security - the wrong information in the wrong hands can be a bad thing. More on Disaster Recovery at a later date....
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