24Aug
A summary of enterprise storage trends
24 Aug 2018
Website Enterprise
Storage Forum recently surveyed IT professionals working in businesses
throughout the UK in order to both gauge their plans for the next two years and
form a better understanding of their current practices. The resulting report,
published on the 21st August, contains a number of important
findings. Here’s a summary of what we found the most interesting:
Backups still aren’t
as important as they should be
Yes, when it comes to the importance of backing up data and
having an effective data
recovery plan in place, we’re biased. Whilst you’d be hard pushed to find a
more partisan opinion than ours, though, it’s still objectively correct to
state that data loss...
23Aug
How big data and connected cars could change drivers’ lives
23 Aug 2018
Thanks to improvements in mobile technologies, devices of
all kinds are able to share information with one another seamlessly. Cars are
one such device and, whilst the majority of cars currently on the road are not
connected to the cloud, this is certain to change over the next few years.
Manufacturers have adapted finance models to make their products more
affordable and, perhaps more importantly, are becoming increasingly more aware
of how valuable the data collected by their vehicles could be.
It’s important to state that, whilst connection is vital to
the highly-anticipated rollout of fully autonomous cars (and this will
certainly revolutionise the way we travel) the focus of...
17Aug
Can you recover data from a water-damaged drive?
17 Aug 2018
Hard drives and water, like cats and dogs, do not mix well. Sadly, whether
due to an accidental spillage, a burst pipe or flood, they regularly come into
contact with one another.
In many cases, this will be of little concern to those affected. We almost
all have some type of data that is important to us, but when data loss has been
caused by something which has resulted in more pronounced and widespread damage, its loss will pale in
comparison to the importance of repairing damaged properties, vehicles and
other items. To those whose livelihoods are invariably linked to their data,
however, losing it is understandable a pressing concern. Good news: lost data can be recovered… but...
13Aug
Intel unveil world’s densest and ‘totally silent’ SSD
13 Aug 2018
Whilst the use of SSDs in data centres is certainly growing (we've recovered data from thousands of enterprise SSDs),
their lower power consumption and cooling costs are still offset by the fact
that they store less data than enterprise HDDs and are more expensive. But
could that be about to change?
Intel have unveiled an SSD capable of storing 32TBs of data
(three times the amount of data held in the U.S. congressional library,
according to their press release) and that produces no sound whatsoever.
The Intel® SSD DC P4500 also utilises a dramatically
different design to previous SSDs: it’s roughly the size of a 12-inch ruler
(the type many readers might remember using in scho...
08Aug
The data recovery process summarised
08 Aug 2018
Recovering data from a failed, damaged or mismanaged piece of storage media can be a
complex process. By identifying the problem, the most appropriate solution and
the tools that will be required before beginning the recovery process, however,
the whole thing becomes a lot more manageable.
For this
reason, each piece of media – whether an SSD, RAID array, smartphone or
anything else – that arrives in our lab goes through the same robust
ISO-approved four-stage process; ensuring that we’ve identified the best
possible means of recovering the data present on it.
Data recovery process step one: the initial
assessment
Before any
data can be recov...
03Aug
SSDs are about to get a lot cheaper, reports suggest
03 Aug 2018
Whilst there's no denying SSDs have become far more
commonplace over the last decade or so (SSD Data
Recovery is a search term that regularly leads people to our website)
they're still not quite as ubiquitous as initially expected.
This, though, could be about to change: the price of solid
state drives (SSDs) are set to fall significantly in the latter half of 2018, a
market research firm has claimed.
DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, have precited that
the cost of NAND Flash will fall by 10 per cent in successive quarters in the
second half of 2018. Historically, the opposite has been true with prices
driven up by manufacturers purchasing cells in preparation f...
19Jul
Tips for freeing up some data storage space
19 Jul 2018
Did you know that the amount of digital data stored in the
world is doubling every two years? How about the fact that more than 90% of the
data we store is only accessed and used within the three-month period that follows
its creation? In short, chances are that most of us will either need to clear
out our hard drives or invest in some extra storage at some point.
Here then are our top tips for those that need to store more data:
1. Do a data audit
Like we’ve said previously, 90% of all data is only accessed
within the first three months of its existence. To put it another way, you may
not need 90% of all of the data you have stored on your...
13Jul
New high-density storage media uses unusual materials
13 Jul 2018
According to several experts, society is on the verge of a data storage crisis. Research has suggested that the total amount of data
stored worldwide is doubling every two years. Additionally, more than 90% of
the data we create is only accessed within the first three months of its
existence before going on to spend the rest of its days accruing metaphysical
dust. In short, we need media with significantly greater storage densities than
those currently on offer – but how will we achieve this?
Fortunately, several means of increasing the density of
existing technologies have emerged in recent years, as have new and innovative
means of storing data. Notable examples of the former inc...
12Jul
New version of ransomware shows the problem’s getting worse
12 Jul 2018
It may have already been the reason that thousands upon
thousands of people around the globe have lost access to their data, but ransomware shows no signs of abating. In fact, it’s becoming more effective.
Having begun to infect the storage media of unsuspecting
users in January of this year, GandCrab ransomware quickly gained notoriety
following it becoming ne’er-do-well’s virus of choice. Those who were inclined
to do so could simply purchase the malware via the dark web and then proceed to
infect unsuspecting targets with just a few clicks. This, of course,
effectively opened up cybercrime to nefarious individuals who otherwise lacked
the technical knowledge required to hold oth...
06Jul
Why your hard drive’s clicking
06 Jul 2018
Clicking hard drives cause so much panic that they spawned
the term ‘click of death’. Whilst a clicking hard drive is never good news,
though, it isn’t necessarily a reason to panic.
There are multiple reasons why a hard drive can click and
although this invariably means there’s a problem, it isn’t necessarily always
the extremely problematic mechanical kind people usually expect (though we’d
still recommend powering down immediately, just in case).
It’s entirely possible that the clicking sound is being
caused by a firmware issue rather than mechanical failure, for example. In such
instances, it will not be necessary to replace any parts of the drive and the
process of recover...