Introducing Bluetooth....

In this article I will talk about Bluetooth. You must be thinking what is this Bluetooth? Is it something related to cosmetics or something related to teeth or may be something…

Well to begin with, Bluetooth is a new technology named after the 10th century Danish king Harald Bluetooth Blatand who ruled part of Scandinavia in 960 AD .He helped unite his part of the world. As the name implies that Bluetooth would be the technology to unite the mobile world.

Bluetooth device is the revolutionary device launched by L.M Ericsson, to integrate its phone with all Internet enabled devices. Two L.M Ericsson telephone employees, the Swedish born Sve Mattison and his Dutch colleague, Jaap Haartsen, originally designed Bluetooth technology in 1994.

The term Bluetooth refers to an open specification governed by the Bluetooth special interest group (SIG) for wireless personal area networks (PANs). This technology provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers and digital cameras via a secure, low cost, globally available short-range radio frequency.

Lets look at some examples where we can use Bluetooth technology.

Nowadays, you have to either manually enter the names and phone numbers of all your contacts or in other advance way you can use a cable to connect your phone and PC and can run some application to synchronize the contact information.
With this new technology you could see this happens automatically, without your involvement, whenever phone will come in the range of PC data will automatically updated.

With Bluetooth there are so many exciting applications like, nowadays whenever you come to office, you have to do so many setup to get to start to work, like you have to connect your notebook to USB port, you switch it on, then your notebook gets boot up and after that only you are able to log in. All this process takes some of your time. Now think about the situation where you walk into the office switch on the notebook and get ready to do work. This is possible with Bluetooth, it makes your notebook to start communicating with your server via radio signals, not require you to connect it to the USB port.

Even car manufacturers are not left behind; car manufacturers such as BMW, Lexus and Toyota have equipped some of their models with Bluetooth car kits. This allows you to use the features of your cell phone through the car’s audio system while the phone itself stored in the trunk for instance.

Now the question arises, how the Bluetooth technology works?

The Bluetooth system consists of an RF (Radio Frequency) transceiver, baseband and protocol stack. It uses radio standards to enable file-sharing and data transfers between devices like PDA and desktop. These radio frequencies are present in all directions and their range varies between 10cm to 10m, further it can be extended to 100m depending on the power class of the product, again this power transmission rates varies in many Bluetooth products depending on the power saving features available in particular unit, bandwidth requirements, transmission distance, etc.
Because this Bluetooth technology uses radio signals, the walls in our house will not impede a Bluetooth network. Also we can control devices in the different rooms very easily.

Bluetooth operates in globally available low radio frequency at 2.4 GHz and supports data speed of up to 721 Kbps, as well as three voice channels.

To make use of Bluetooth technology you have to make sure the new device which you buy is Bluetooth compatible, Bluetooth compatible devices comes with software to configure Bluetooth to share data by implementing specific profiles, these profiles will determine what type of information or resources the device can store.

When you want two new Bluetooth device should communicate, first you have to introduce them to share data, this is known as pairing (authorizing the device to communicate with each other).

It is also possible to configure the devices to have password protection, so that other people cannot take part in your communication. One more thing is also there, you can set up the device to constantly announce their presence to the device in its range, and the connection can be automatically establish.

Stop Hard Drive Crashes

If you experience a hard drive crash, it doesn’t take much to make a bad situation even worse. In the event of a hard drive crash, in most instances, the data is completely recoverable at first. However, as part of human nature, we often try to avoid the high costs associated with hard drive data recovery in order to find some sort of “quick fix” to a very serious problem. In this report we will go over some of the symptoms of a hard drive crash and the things you can try in the event of a suspected hard drive crash, along with things you should avoid.

What Noise Is The Drive Making?

The first thing to take into account is whether or not the hard drive is making any unusual noises. Often times when there is a problem with the read or write head within the drive or a firmware issue in the logic board a “clicking” sound will be heard. If this is the case, then you should immediately power down the system and refrain from reapplying power. Same thing goes for any unusual sound, whether it’s grinding, squealing, or sounds like a “laser gun”. See samples in the upper left column.

If any of these occur you should immediately power the system down, don’t even attempt to go through the normal shut down procedure, just pull the plug. Unfortunately in the situations listed above, there is little that you can do to recover the data yourself. If the failure is mechanical, unless you have a clean room, fully equipped with the right tools and a trained technician there is nothing that can be done. Even hard drive manufacturers avoid this line of work, and many who do offer data recovery services are only sub-contracting the work out to an established data recovery firm.

Never Ever Open Your Hard Drive

If the data on a hard drive has even the most minimal value to you, then it is imperative that you do not open the drive. We often get calls or e-mails from people who felt they had the right equipment and know-how to perform something as serious as a head replacement. Once they’ve removed the hard drive’s protective case, we often times ask them not to send the drive in, because more often than not, the damage is irreparable. Working with the internal components of a hard drive requires at least a Class-100 clean room. A clean room does not mean a room that you just vacuumed and dusted (believe it or not people say that to us all the time). A clean room is a special work area in which air quality is heavily controlled and it is vital to hard drives during the manufacturing or assembly process. The air in the room is regulated in term of air particles, temperature and humidity. A Class-100 clean room means there exists no more than 100 particles that are larger than 0.5 microns in one cubic foot of air. Opening a hard drive in air meeting anything less than the standard listed above will mean certain death for your hard drive and any data contained therein.

The Freezer Method

There has been a long running wive’s tale about putting your hard drive in the freezer when it crashes in order to revive it just long enough to pull your data off of it. We’ve run this test for fun on many occasions in different scenarios with junk test drives that we have in our lab. So far we have yet to see this actually produce any positive results. In fact, in one instance we actually began to see the formation of tiny microscopic ice crystals on the platter themselves, which is a definite crash waiting to happen.

See the problem with this theory is, drives are not completely sealed. Regardless of what you’ve heard or read, nearly all hard drives have a tiny breather hole (usually marked with a label that says DO NOT COVER). This hole not only aids in cooling but it also helps to equalize air pressure in the drive when the platters are spinning. On the other side of this hole is a filter, which keeps dirt and debris from getting inside the drive. However, this filter does not stop heavy amounts of moisture (especially in flood situations) or moisture vapor (such as found in a freezer). This moisture vapor has been known to settle on the platters when the drive warms there is really nothing you can do about it. Then when the drive is powered up, the read/write head resembles an airplane flying into a mountain.

In closing, If you’ve experienced a hard drive crash, it is imperative that you consider the value of the data, before you consider the money you might save by doing it yourself. Data recovery is a specialty, and it requires a number of specialized tools, skills and software to complete successfully. Many times you run the risk of taking data that may be perfectly recoverable and destroying it permanently. If you have any questions, it is best to consult with a recovery firm first. Most reputable data recovery companies will perform a free diagnostic and evaluation on most standard IDE hard drives. Many will even include a list of the recoverable files with that evaluation before you proceed. In some cases, we even work with our customers on a payment plan to help ease the burden of the recovery costs. Of course the best way to avoid all of this is to simply backup anything and everything of value

How RAID Data Recovery Works

RAID data recovery is probably one of the most complex processes any data recovery firm can perform. More often than not, the problems are compounded by the actions of the client prior to sending the drives in for recovery. Many users feel that it is important to try and recover the data themselves or repair the array through various system utilities, and this may be fine if the data is not critical. However, it has been our experience that when you have a RAID failure that has resulted in substantial data loss, more often than not, somebody’s job is on the line if that data is not recovered. The biggest piece of advise this article can provide in the event of a RAID failure: LEAVE IT ALONE!

IT professionals have a lot of pressure placed on them when a catastrophic system failure occurs. It is their job to make sure that all systems are up and running. Many times, out of panic, troubleshooting processes are initiated in order to correct the problem. Often times these processes only make a bad situation even worse, and in many instances they can render the data unrecoverable. Let’s keep in mind what this data can consist of in an average corporate environment. You are probably dealing with information that cost many hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars in labor and resources to create. Much of the data probably can’t be duplicated. The intellectual value alone could be in the many millions of dollars. Corporate executives really don’t care to hear about how the failure occurred, or what unbelievable string of events led up to the server crashing. They don’t care to hear the technical jargon as you try to explain to them what happened, and hope they understand that it wasn’t your fault. They only want to know one thing…”why was this data not backed up, and how can we get it back?”

Instead of taking chances on your own, call a data recovery professional. RAID data recovery can be expensive, but in most cases it is much less costly than trying to recreate the data that has been lost, and getting the data back may save someone’s job. There is a set procedure that most data recovery professionals follow when it comes to performing any recovery work. These procedures are followed and expanded upon when dealing with a RAID recovery. The first step of any RAID recovery is to make sure all of the drives are functional. In order to properly complete the recovery it is essential that all drives are fully functional (this is especially true with a RAID 0). This may involve taking any physically damaged drives into the clean room, in order to make the necessary repairs so that they function normally again. Once that is completed the next step is to make complete sector-by-sector clones of every drive. This is not “Ghosting”, but a very low-level process that allows the recovery technician to work around bad sectors, and have complete control over how the drive functions. During the cloning process, the original source drive that you sent in, is put in a “write protect” mode so that no data can be written to that drive. This insures that the original source data is not altered in any way.

Once the cloning process is complete, the original drives you sent in are set off to the side and are no longer touched. The actual recovery process is performed on the cloned copies, so nothing that is done during recovery can make the situation worse. After the drives are cloned, they will be loaded into a system and destriped. Destriping is like taking the scattered pieces of a puzzle and putting them together neatly. Simply stated, destriping is taking the data scattered among the multiple drives that make up array and placing it onto a single destination drive. From there we have a single drive in which we can complete what we would consider to be a “normal” recovery. We can complete this process even at the multi-terrabyte level. If the damage to the stripe is not too severe, in most cases a complete rebuild of the directory structure and all associated data can be completed.

As mentioned earlier, RAID data recovery can be expensive. Typically a RAID recovery can be priced around $500 per drive and up. A number of factors influence the cost, such as RAID type, file system, total size, situation of failure, etc. ACS Data Recovery is one of the few companies that do not charge an evaluation fee on complex RAID systems. Even though the initial price tag of a RAID recovery may be shocking, many times the costs involved in recovering the data are not even 1% of the data’s overall value. So if you are reading this article and you haven’t suffered a RAID failure, what are you waiting for? Back up your data NOW.