Anglia Computer Support provide a range of IT services designed for small and medium sized companies in the Anglia region. We offer competitive rates for pay per visit or contract support that includes Installation and repair of PCs and servers, Printers, Network equipment. and Internet connections. We also offer Web site design and hosting sevices. ...

Recovering lost data

We recently had a customer who needed to recover some files that had been deleted by user who had been dismissed for misconduct.Unfortunately, we weren't called until a week after the files were deleted. to make matters worse, a "friend" had attempted to recover the lost information and was unable to do so but while he was on site, he deframented the customers hard drive for them. This almost certainly ruined any chance of recovering the data.After 2 days of scanning the customers computer, we had roughly 300,000 file fragments to sort through. We did recover enough data to prove a misconduct case against the user but over 95% of the data had been permanently erased.our chances of recovering data would have been much higher if the company had taken a few simple steps.1. As soon as you discover you may have lost important data, check to see if its in the recycle bin, if its not there, turn the computer off. 2. Evalute your options, is the data backed up or printed anywhere? Is the data really important enough to justify paying for professional data recovery? What is the impact to the business?3. if you decide you really need the data to be recovered, use a professional company, friends may be well intentioned (and cheap) but they rarely have the experience or tools needed to recover data.The best solution is to always make sure that information that is important is backed up and remember to check that you backup copies can be recovered

Do you Back up important data

We have had quite a few calls last month from customers who have lost data from thier computers.In some cases it was from being a bit over enthusiastic with the delete button but many were because of computer failure. If the computer dies but the hard drive is still ok, we can often just copy the data onto a new computer. It doesn't take long and is relatively cheap to do.Two cases stand out and in both cases the result was a serious problem that could have been avoided. The first was a business user who had accidentally deleted all his company data from his computer, the second was a student in his final year whose hard disk had failed losing his coursework including his final dissertation notes. Neither of these customers had made a backup of their important data.It is possible that we can recover at least some data for these customers but in both cases it is a very expensive process requiring specialist equipment and a lot of time. Yet the problem could have been avoided for the sake of a few pounds.For home users, memory sticks are cheap and readily available, even my local supermarket sells them. Simply copy the "my documents" folder onto the memory stick and if the worst should happen, at least you have a copy of the important things. Remember to store the stick in a secure place, it will probably contain personal data that could be very valuable to a thief.For the business user, there are a range of options but the main considerations should be reliability and security. Backup your data at least once a week, make sure the backups are kept in a secure place and test them at least every 6 month to make sure you can recover your data.

Trading Since

2000