Recovering from a natural disaster can be extremely difficult on all fronts - both on the physical and emotional side. What can be even more difficult, however, for most businesses, is a data disaster.

It is likely that you have prepared your business for disasters of all kinds. You have emergency kits to sustain the people inside of you need to shelter in place, you've practiced fire drills, you have insurance for flooding. but what happens if it is your infrastructure that is struck by the disaster?

There are many things that can trigger an infrastructure disaster, including things that you cannot predict. Things that can bring your data center to a halt. How can you protect yourself?

One of the best ways to keep yourself, your business, your reputation, and your data safe is to incorporate a disaster recovery plan (DRP) that has backup and redundancy built into it.

In fact, it is so important to so many businesses that the United States Government actually recommends creating a DRP plan: " An information technology disaster recovery plan (IT DRP) should be developed in conjunction with the business continuity plan. Priorities and recovery time objectives for information technology should be developed during the business impact analysis. Technology recovery strategies should be developed to restore hardware, applications and data in time to meet the needs of the business recovery. "

Here's what we classify a strong DRP:

Create A Sound Disaster Recovery Plan

Planning for a disaster might be difficult because you have to think about anything and everything that can go wrong AND THEN figure out how to tackle them. We suggest starting with the most basic (therefore, the most likely) situations and moving on from there.

You want to define what will keep your business running: emails, applications, computer equipment, and backups. You will need to determine how long you can go without other processes and create a chain of replenishment.

From there, you will be able to figure out who is responsible for declaring the disaster, how to keep your employees informed, and how you will communicate to your clients.

Carry Out The Plan

As soon as you have established a strong plan, you want to put all of the requisite steps into play and make sure that everything is implemented properly. Sometimes, you will have to anticipate new parts of the plan when you build new applications. It is always best for the project (in an agile sense) to build with the security team during your development phase.

You want to monitor your data recovery plan and update it if needed. Remember that you have to change it up and edit it as time goes by, which will result in fewer IT problems and less downtime if you do have a disaster.

Test Your Data Recovery Plan - Before A Disaster

If you take the time to write a data recovery plan, you may want to actually make sure it works. The sad truth is that not enough people do that. You are leaving yourself open for an even bigger disaster.

If you have a plan in place, test it. Simulate different circumstances a few times a year and see how your plan responds. You will be extremely thankful you that you did this when a real disaster does come.

Even better, you will be able to evaluate your plan and fix the areas where you spot weaknesses.

Back-Up Your Data And Store It For A Data Disaster

If there is a disaster, most people don't know that the data they store on site isn't completely safe, especially when a disaster occurs. That is why it is so important to store your backed up data offsite. Create a backup file of the data and transfer it (securely) to an offsite data storage center.

From there, keep backing up at least once a day.

Make Sure Employees Follow Suit

Many companies tell their employees to store data on the company's network and back it up - that doesn't mean that everyone does it. Some are too lazy and some just don't remember to do it.

Make sure that your employees have incentives to follow suit and, at least, back up desktops and laptops on site so that you can get it back in the case of a disaster or if the device gets damaged, stolen, or lost.

Regularly Update Your Virus Scanners

The security you use in your IT infrastructure is so important. You need to make sure that everything is protected against viruses, malware, and spyware. Protect your infrastructure as soon as you can and as regularly as you can by installing regular virus pattern updates as part of your data recovery plan.

This is one of the best steps you can take to stop a data disaster from occurring - and prevention is always the best policy.

No matter what, you need to remember that every single business out there, no matter how big or small it is or how much tech it really uses is vulnerable to experiencing a data related catastrophe. Arm yourself and your employees against disaster by working to put a disaster recovery plan into place. It will be one of the very best things you will ever have done for your company, even if you don't ever use it.

Our team takes pride in being the most experienced team of IT professionals in New Jersey. You can count on us to have solutions to problems that you may not have had luck with before. When it comes to data recovery in New Jersey, you simply cannot go to anyone better. We have technical support available to the public every day of the week: you’ll have the option to talk to an experienced technician if a problem arises.

Looking for the Best Computer Services in New Jersey? Call: (908) 332-5051

Data recovery is one of the scariest things you don't know about until it is too late. While most people don't keep all that much on their laptops, businesses and organizations have years and years of important information stored on something that could fail at any given time.

Sometimes, it doesn't even have to be a bunch of files - it can be one big file that was critical but it was deleted by mistake.

These things happen all the time and it can be quite frustrating to get your information back quickly, if you can get it back at all. However, data recovery is possible in some cases.

How much does data recovery cost?

There isn't really a "one size fits all" answer here and we can't even give you an estimate over the phone. The realities of data recovery are intricate and can require a bit of time before someone can even determine if they can help you.

As such, the cost of data recovery varies significantly. There are so many different types of hard disks, drives, USB drives, SD cards, and other storage options that require an IT professional to take their time when making an estimate or even providing an answer about if they can recover anything.

Is data recovery a lot of work?

Depending on the situation, data recovery can take quite a bit of work. Sometimes it can take just a few seconds. You are paying for the time, labor, and skills when you seek out someone to help with data recovery, so be sure to put everything into perspective.

Just like we can't tell you how much data recovery will cost, we also can't estimate how much work it will take without looking at your laptop or drive.

What is the data recovery process?

The process begins with an IT professional looking over your equipment to see if recovery is even possible. Once that is complete and you turn your device over to us, it can take a few business days to complete an evaluation and get it back to you. (If you have a flat rate IT plan with us, you will get it sooner.)

Once the data recovery specialists look at it and determine the next course of action, you should get a quote. We will tell you the cost and give you an estimate on the timeline.

Then, we get to work recovering what we can. We will work until we have exhausted all of our resources and recovered everything we could.

How long does it take to recover my data?

There is no set time, it can take a few minutes or a few weeks, depending on the level of complication. It can take as long as two weeks for certain companies, especially those that you have to mail your product to. Taking it to someone in your area will significantly cut back on the time you are away from your device.

Does the amount of data recovered change the price?

This is a common question and the answer is no - most often, the prices will be about the same because it requires the same amount of work.

Can I choose what data I get back?

Most customers probably don't need to get everything on their devices back - for example, those silly memes you saved probably don't mean as much to you as your family photos.

However, most data specialists won't pick and choose the data to recover, they will recover everything that they can. Still, it is important to mention what data is the most important to you so that we can define our goals and helps us target the most important stuff first. These drives can be delicate and working on them can degrade them - so sometimes we have to lose some data to save other data.

7. How do I get my data back?

Once you have paid for your services and we have discussed what was found, the data recovered will be placed on a new, healthy storage system and given back to you. In most cases, we cannot reload the data back onto the device that you gave us, mostly to protect you from having to go through the entire process all over again.

You can provide your own system for storage or we will include that in our price.

Once again, losing your data can be an absolute nightmare, especially for people who keep very important information on their computers. The best thing to do is plan ahead: have an IT company on retainer or as a monthly service so that you can get the help you need quickly.

At Dave’s Computers, our team of specialists has the skills and experience necessary to recover your personal data from all kinds of data storage devices. Not only that, but our recovery center is conveniently located in New Jersey so that you do not have to lose working time to shipping or travel.

We can recover deleted files from flash drives, thumb drives, external USB drives, hard drives/hard disks, RAID systems, and Apple / Mac devices. Regardless of the storage capacity, or the size of the device, you can depend on us to recover lost files and take care of your storage needs quickly and efficiently.

Our team takes pride in being the most experienced team of IT professionals in New Jersey. You can count on us to have solutions to problems that you may not have had luck with before. When it comes to data recovery in New Jersey, you simply cannot go to anyone better. We have technical support available to the public every day of the week: you’ll have the option to talk to an experienced technician if a problem arises.

Looking for the Best Computer Services in New Jersey? Call: (908) 332-5051

Yesterday I mentioned how important it is to ensure your disk drive is cool and that your fans are working properly. Cooling is an essential part of computing and something you need to keep a close eye on. That’s especially true for smaller form factors or laptops. But why? Why do you need to keep your disk drive cool?

Computer cooling is a huge subject and something of a passion of mine. We sell all sorts of cooling products here at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey and I have taken it as a personal mission to improve computer cooling for everyone. So what’s the fuss about?

Heat is a byproduct of energy conversion. In the case of computing, turning the potential energy of electricity into an electronic process. Whether that’s powering your computer processor to perform calculations, powering your RAM to store and retrieve data or your disk drive to read and write files. All computer components generate heat to one degree or another.

Computers and heat

Computer components are heat tolerant but only to a certain point. The hotter they get, the more susceptible to failure they are.

Heat damages electronics in a number of ways. It begins to break down the chemical bonds within components. Breaks down glues and adhesives. Causes components to expand and contract at different rates causing material fatigue and by altering the materials themselves to make them brittle or distorted.

All of these things can affect a disk drive and cause you to lose data which is why it is important to make sure they stay cool. They are able to cope with the heat a typical PC produces and then some but there are limits.

The cooler you can keep your computer, the less fatigue and heat damage takes place. Then, the normal lifespan of those electronics is able to keep them running for longer.

Keeping it cool

Fortunately, it is relatively simple to keep a hard drive cool. Make sure all your PC fans are working and are free of dust and debris. Upgrade your fans to larger ones if you can fit them into the case. Keep the air intake at the front of the PC clear of dust and debris and make sure air and enter freely.

Keep all of your computer as clean as possible as dust is an insulator and can raise the temperature of your PC. Make sure the exhaust ports can push hot air out freely too.

If your computer is close to central heat or a radiator, move it. If you have a high ambient temperature, consider an external fan pointing at the computer. Or upgrade those fans.

Backups are also important if your computer runs hot. You don’t want to lose your files just because you like your apartment or house to be warm!

If you have issues with cooling or want a cooling upgrade for your computer, bring it to our store in New Jersey. We can handle everything for you.

We talk a lot about backups here at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey. They are a cheap and easy way to keep your data safe and stops you needing our expert data recovery services. Rather than waiting for us to recover your data, you could do it yourself and be up and running again in no time.

Even if you’re making backups of your important data, I bet you’re making one of these three common mistakes.

Single backup

For business or critical personal data, a single backup just won’t cut it. It is a single point of failure and is almost as susceptible as your original data. To be truly effective, you need three copies of critical data. The original on your hard drive, a copy on a different medium and a copy either in the cloud or stored offsite.

Then, whatever happens, you have at least one copy of your data to work with. With cloud storage being so cheap, I tend to recommend a copy in the cloud and a copy on an external drive. Cheap, simple, secure.

Scheduling backups

Taking a single backup and then forgetting to do it again is another common mistake. That’s fine for static data that doesn’t change but not much good for data that is continually updated. If your data is updated frequently, you need to update your backup just as frequently.

For most businesses, a daily backup is sufficient. For home users, a weekly backup may work. Much depends on what you want to back up. As you can automate the entire process, it makes sense to do it as often as you need to.

Not verifying your backup

Creating backups is all very well but have you checked them? Have you made sure your files are accessible and that nothing is missing or corrupted? File copying is now very accurate but not infallible. Regularly testing your backups when any significant changes are made is essential. If you don’t check, you could be adding bad data to bad data and that isn’t good for anyone.

This may all sound like a lot of work for a simple data backup but it’s important if you value that data. We store more and more in digital format now so it pays to keep it all safe with backups and then to keep those backups safe.

If you have any questions about backups or data recovery, contact Dave’s Computers in New Jersey. We would be happy to help!

If you perform even a brief search for data recovery software, you will see thousands of returns offering hundred of products at no cost. With all of these options, how can Dave’s Computers charge for data recovery? Why don’t we just use these free programs?

There are some very good reasons why not all free data recovery software is worth using.

Limited data recovery

Many free programs will offer to recover a finite amount of data before charging you for the full product. That’s fine if you only lost a few files but not so good if you lost an entire drive. You are then almost held to ransom to pay up to $60 for a program you will very rarely use.

Limited options

These programs can be useful if you have deleted or overwritten data but not a lot else. If you have a faulty hard drive, your drive is making funny noises or won’t read the disk, they won’t help. In fact, they could make things worse. Data recovery depends on the data not being overwritten. Once overwritten it is very difficult to recover. Any failed attempts could render that data useless.

If your computer won’t boot

If hard drive failure or critical data loss is preventing your computer from booting normally, no free data recovery program is going to help. You will need to either rebuild your operating system and say goodbye to the data or bring it to Dave’s Computers for professional data recovery.

It won’t fix the underlying cause

If your troubles are being caused by overheating, malware, corrupted operating system, program that deletes files or something else, a data recovery program may be able to fix the symptoms but not the cause. Only a computer expert is going to be able to identify the root cause of an issue as well as recover your data.

You are the product

There’s a saying in the industry, ‘if a product is free, you are the product’. This generally means that if a product is provided free, there is a different type of cost involved. That could be data collection, profiling, endless nags to update or upgrade to premium or some other cost. There is a lot of good free software out there but there is also a lot of not-so good free software out there. Telling the difference isn’t always easy.

If you do suffer data loss and value that data, you are much better off using a professional. Dave’s Computers in New Jersey have a team of data recovery experts who are more than willing to help. Help us help you and don’t do anything until we inspect your drive!

While Dave’s Computers will always be around to recover your data, it would be better for everyone if you didn’t lose it in the first place. One easy way to do that is to treat your hard drives the right way. While designed to be reliable and robust, there are some practical things you can do to extend their working life.

Hard drives may be cheap but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to squeeze as much value as possible from them. If you’re interested in stretching the life of your drive to the max, follow some of these simple tips.

Reducing the chance of data loss

Hard drives, both HDD and SSD have an MTBF, Mean Time Before Failure, or around 100,000 hours. That sounds like a lot but the more you use them, the faster that time runs out. It isn’t a hard limit but more of a guideline of how long you can reasonably expect a hard drive to survive for.

To get the most out of that, try these longevity tips:

• Try to not move a desktop computer whenever possible. Sudden moves can damage HDD drives irreparably. SSD less so but you still need to be careful.
• Avoid overheating. Keep your computer clean, make sure all fans are working and use a temperature monitor to ensure nothing gets too hot. Heat is the enemy of electronics.
• Avoid high intensity applications such as bit torrent. Bit torrent and other seed programs utilize a lot of hard drive. It has to work very hard reading and writing which can and likely will, degrade its operating life over time.
• Turn on TRIM for SSDs. Solid State Drives do not need defragmenting as they have a built-in system called TRIM to manage that. If you install an SSD on your computer, make sure you never defragment it and that TRIM is enabled.
• Don’t defrag HDDs too often. Windows will tell you when you need to defragment your hard drive. Listen to it and don’t defrag unnecessarily. It puts a lot of pressure on a drive so should be only be performed on a schedule.
• Back up your important data now. Backups are only good if you plan in advance. You cannot back up a failed drive so you need to be prepared. Back your data up to the cloud and to a separate hard drive for maximum safety.

If you do suffer data loss, Dave’s Computer in New Jersey can help. Our data recovery team has vast experience in recovering data from dead drives and many other types of lost data. We would be happy to help!

RAID, or a Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a way of sharing data across multiple hard drives to enhance redundancy. It is usually used in business as a resilience measure but can also be used on home computers too. If you have three or more of the same hard drive, running RAID is a viable way of making sure you don’t suffer data loss.

RAID is a system of striping or mirroring to share data between multiple hard drives. Files are split between them and will appear on two drives. We will use RAID 5 which uses striping with a parity bit. This means that data is shared across two drives and then enough mathematical data is created on the third, the parity bit, for the operating system to rebuild the data should it be lost on one of the other drives.

If you don’t want to back up your data to external storage and the cloud, using RAID is a good way to avoid data loss. It is not foolproof though. RAID obviously depends on the health and reliability of your hard drives. Should two fail, you will still lose your data.

You will need to be running Windows 10 Professional and have three or more identical hard drives for this to work.

RAID in Windows 10

Setting up RAID in Windows 10 uses the Storage Spaces application built into the operating system. It takes much of the hard work out of configuring RAID and does most of the work for you.

1. Install all of the hard drives into your computer and let it boot into Windows 10.
2. Back up everything you cannot afford to lose just in case.
3. Type ‘Storage Spaces’ into the Windows Search box.
4. Select Create a new pool and storage space. Windows will check all drives for compatibility and list them in the next window.
5. Select all the drives you want to include in your RAID setup.
6. Select the RAID type under Resiliency by selecting the drop down menu. Select Parity for RAID 5.
7. Set the drive size under Size. It should default to the correct setting so you may not need to do this.
8. Select Create Storage Space.
9. Wait for the process to complete and you should then see a single drive in Windows Explorer.
10. Type ‘Manage Storage Spaces’ into the Windows Search box for details on your array.

Now any data you store on your disk will be striped across three disks. Two data parts and a parity part. If you lose one disk, data can be recreated once you replace it. Lose two disks and things become trickier but not impossible to recreate your data.

If you do lose two RAID disks, you may want to bring them to Dave’s Computers in New Jersey before trying to recover them yourself. We are data recovery experts and will ensure you don’t lose any more data than absolutely necessary!

It’s easy to accidentally delete data. We have all done it and we will all do it again. The data recovery guys here at Dave’s Computers are always busy but some of the jobs we do are unnecessary as you could easily do it at home. That doesn’t mean we won’t do it, of course we will but some of this stuff is easy.

The specific steps you take depend on what has happened. For example, if you accidentally deleted some files fairly recently, it could take seconds to recover them. If you did it a little while ago or have used the computer a lot since, it may take a little longer. Don’t worry, if you can’t recover your files, we can!

Recover deleted files in Mac OS

The easiest thing to try first is to look in the Trash. This is where all your deleted files (that aren’t too large) will sit for a while before being cleaned. If you recently deleted files, you should look here first.

Double click the trashcan icon and work through the files in the list. If you see your files, right click and select Put Back. Your files will be replaced where they were originally and you will be able to use them normally.

If your files aren’t there, we can use Time Machine. If you use Time Machine that is.

As long as you have Time Machine set up, we can use that to recover deleted data.

1. Select Time Machine and then Enter Time Machine.
2. Select the arrow and navigate the various snapshots until you find the file you need.
3. Select the file and then Restore.

Your file will be returned from whence it came and will be usable as before.

If you deleted music or a movie, you can use iTunes to recover it.

1. Open iTunes and search in Trash and in Media.
2. Recover it if you find it or re-download it from iTunes.

Even though you have deleted something from iTunes, if you have paid for it you can just download it again. iTunes trash works the same was as it does in Mac OS. It keeps recently deleted files and will periodically delete those as it goes.

If you cannot find your files and you either cannot find it in Time Machine or don’t use Time Machine, bring your Mac to Dave’s Computers in New Jersey. Our data recovery experts should be able to recover the files and restore them as if nothing happened!

Today I’m going to walk you through how to check the health of your disk drive. A very common cause of data loss is disk drive failure. This is something we have covered before here at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey but is so important it is worth going over again. As the main data storage medium for our customers, we get to see all kinds of hard drives in all kinds of states.

I’ll show you how to check your drive status so you can pre-empt drive failure before you lose any data. You can then replace the drive and copy your data across and hopefully, you will never need Dave’s Computers’ data recovery services.

Be SMART

Most newer hard drives will use Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting (SMART) which is built into the drive’s firmware. This is designed to monitor drive status and alert you if any errors occur. Your computer may have software pre-installed that will alert you of any issues or you can use Windows Event Viewer to see them.

If you suspect your drive has problems by it slowing down, losing data or saying it cannot read or write, it’s time to check it out.

1. Type ‘cmd’ into the Windows Search box, right click Command Line and select Open and Administrator.
2. Type ‘wmic’ and hit Enter.
3. Type ‘diskdrive get status’ and hit Enter.

You will see a very simple return under Status. If everything is fine, you will see OK in the window. If there are potential problems, you may see ‘Pred fail’ or other message, it’s time to dig a little deeper.

1. Download the standard Crystal Disk Info tool from here.
2. Install and start the program and give it time to run its tests.
3. Select each disk in turn to see detailed stats.

If you see Good, your drive is fine. If you see Caution or Bad, you need to back up your data in case you lose it. The drive is still repairable but vulnerable to data loss.

Repairing a bad drive

If all you see are read or write errors, you can potentially fix those yourself. From within Windows, you can use the built-in disk checking utility. Mac have their own Disk Utility which can achieve the same goal. The process takes a long time, a few hours on average, so run it when you have the spare time.

If you closed the command line window from above, we need to reopen it.

1. Type ‘cmd’ into the Windows Search box, right click Command Line and select Open and Administrator.
2. Type ‘chkdsk /r’ and hit Enter.

Leave the process to run without doing anything on that drive. So if you see errors on your main C: drive, run it overnight without touching your PC. If it’s a secondary drive, you can use your PC but don’t read from or write to that drive.

If the disk utility finds any errors it will try to fix them itself. If you’re fortunate, further tests will be clear. If you’re not, you may need to consider bringing the disk to us here at Dave’s Computers or replacing it.

We spend entirely too much time trying to recover computers from data loss here at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey. It is way more common than it should be and is easily preventable when you know how. In an effort to help all our customers learn how to prevent data loss I have put together this quick rundown on the most common causes of it.

The idea is to get you to think about how you keep your data and how you protect it. The more you know, the easier it should be to prevent data loss.

Here are the most common causes of data loss that we see here at Dave’s Computers.

Not backing up your data

This is more a symptom rather than a cause but still results in data loss. Not taking regular backups of your data is the most common way you lose it. While computers are definitely more reliable than at any time previously, failures still happen and by the time your hard drive fails, it will already be too late.

Not paying attention to warnings

Depending on your computer and the type of hard drive you have, you should see warnings before a drive fails. If you use Windows, Event Viewer should warn you of read/write or I/O errors on your hard drive. If your drives are SMART enabled, you should see SMART errors popup that warn you of potential errors or issues with your drive.

I’ll get back to it

See an error or lose a file but are busy with something else? Think ‘I’ll get back to it’ and then forget all about it? Both are common ways you will lose data. The more you use your computer after you lose something, the lower the chance we have to recover it. Hard drives write dynamically and could easily overwrite the piece of data you lost before we can recover it.

Thinking it will never happen to me

The final very common cause of data loss is  thinking ‘it will never happen to me’. It will at some point so you may as well prepare for it. Hard drives have a finite lifespan referred to as ‘MTBF’ or Mean Time Before Failure. This is often measured in thousands of hours but most home or small business users have no idea how long their particular hard drive has been in use.

There is a saying that is relevant across all walks of life. ‘Prepare for the worst and hope for the best’. Taking a backup can be done in less than 20 minutes and doesn’t need to be done very often unless you’re a business. Both Windows 10 and Mac have built in backup utilities so you don’t need to buy or install anything.

If you want to know how to use these backup utilities, visit Dave’s Computers in New Jersey. We will be happy to help!