Thursday, January 1, 2009

Secrets of Microsoft new file system revealed by Data Recovery Engineer

Hi friends, let’s talk this time about the new concept in file manager that will be introduced by Microsoft in its new Operating system Windows Vista. The name of this new file administration is “WinFS”.

WinFS is a new file system that it’s being developed by Microsoft to be used in its new operating system Windows Vista. At the begining this name means Windows Future Storage, but now is only Windows File System. Acctually, there is no clear information about what “WinFS” is. Some people say that is a complete new file system and others say that WinFS is only an extension of the actual system because many of the file system work is done by NTFS.

Necessity
With the evolution of Internet and the information technologies, working with big volumes of information has increasingly become more common. Hard disks represent the first half of the storage for personal information. They are commonly used to store personal contacts, work documents, etc. These information items usually keep certain relationship levels among them. So, when you work with a large number of these items, it is very important to organize them and provide a flexible search mechanism based on their properties and content.

Architecture
WinFS is a storage platform to organize, search and share a wide diversity of information.
Instead of a traditional tree in NTFS to organize information, WinFS uses a direct acyclic graph of items (DAG). It is a set of stored items and their relationships whose physical storage is a relational database providing support to store any item hierarchy. Now it is possible to find items according to the value of their properties and even to the value of the properties of items related to them.The data-sharing capacities of WinFS come with a set of services such us synchronization, notification, a unified store and a common security model. The integration of these services to other technologies like Active Directory makes it possible for applications to share data in a flexible way.

Conclusions
WinFS data model expresses a set of modern storage concepts featuring a combination of the file system services and the relational system to provide a new powerful and enhancing storage platform. This actually elevates the file system conception to a higher level. The WinFS Item may be expressed in XML, object-oriented or tabular manner which allows the WinFS functionalities to be used in a variety of heterogeneous environments. In addition to this, WinFS features a powerful API to develop applications that use its potentialities. Due to its conception WinFS data model represents a step forward in the evolution of file systems and even of storage platforms.

Search and Recover Lost Microsoft Word Documents

If you type a lot and are using Microsoft Word as your text processor, you've made the right choice. Microsoft Word is arguably the most powerful, feature-rich and handy to use by complete beginners and advanced professionals altogether. It has unparalleled strengths in creating, formatting and modifying all types of documents, from simple memos to complex reports. When you save a document in one version of Microsoft Word, it can usually be opened in a different version without problems.

But what if the document you've spent so much time on just disappears? What can happen to it? First and most possible, you can simply delete it yourself by an accident. You might think that this would never happen to you because there is the Windows Recycle Bin, and even if it's accidentally emptied, you'll just go to the Internet and get a free undelete utility. Well, it does not work this way...

Here's what happened to my wife a couple of weeks ago. She was working on a chapter for her Ph.D. thesis, and sent it to a professor for review. Usually, she gets back a document with embedded comments by email. She saves an attachment from the email, overwriting the old one, and deletes it from her Hotmail account. But this time, things went the wrong way. She received her chapter by email and replaced the old document with the new one, only to find out that her supervisor got a copy of the old one! She opened the Recycle Bin and found out that the document was never deleted but instead, it was replaced, so it wasn't even in the Recycle Bin. She tried to find an email that she had sent earlier, but Hotmail does not store sent messages. She asked me to do something to recover the document, and I downloaded a couple of free undelete programs, only to find that there were several dozens of deleted documents with that same name. So, I failed to recover the most recent revisions.

This story did have a happy ending, as my wife's supervisor discovered the latest version of the document on her computer. But one thing that I learned from this story was never to rely on the Recycle Bin and free data recovery tools. To prevent this kind of things from happening, I decided to look for commercial alternatives.

I quickly discovered that there are many data recovery offers on the market. Most products mention recovering deleted or corrupted files and documents, and some tools promise recovery of files even from crashed or damaged hard drives. There are basically two types of data recovery products. They are different in how they find the lost files, and what they do to recover them. Simpler products, such as those free undelete utilities that I tried in my quest, deal with the file system. They simply scan the file system looking for records of files that are marked "deleted", and clear the mark. This is a fast and easy way to recover lost files, and it works sometimes, especially if you deleted a file just a minute ago.

These products, as I discovered from my own experience, fail to do their job if you have a complex case or if you are recovering a failed hard drive, or if the file system is damaged. If your document has been deleted some time ago or overwritten with another file, chances of successful recovery using these tools are slim.

The other type of products deals with your hard drive directly instead of scanning the file system, but such products are slow and expensive. I also found them extremely complex to use because they don't show the names of the deleted documents, let alone their content. These tools don't have access to the file system, and are unaware of the files' names, showing documents as "document_001.doc" at best, but more likely you'll see something like "~ocume1" instead of a proper name.

Then I found DiskInternals Word Recovery. It does an amazing thing by combining the best of the other data recovery products, while offering unprecedented efficiency dealing specifically with Microsoft Word documents such as .DOC and .RTF. It scans the file system and learns about the files that were deleted the way the free undelete tools do. Then, it goes further and scans the hard drive directly to locate Microsoft Word documents that are not shown in the file system. It uses a list of file signatures to detect the beginning and end of Microsoft Word documents, and extracts their contents and metadata on the fly. This method is said to work even if your hard drive is half dead!

DiskInternals Word Recovery synchronizes the results obtained with the file system scan with the results obtained by accessing the hard disk directly, presenting the most complete list of recoverable Word documents along with their file names, metadata and contents, and yields the best ratio of recoverability.

If I wanted to get the latest version of any Word document, I would simply use "On the Fly" filters that allow to only display files with specific title, written by specific author, or the files that contain certain text, are of a certain size, or are last saved on a specific date. The free version of DiskInternals Word Recovery allows full file preview to ensure you recover exactly what you want, and that you can recover the document in full with no garbage or missing parts.

DiskInternals Word Recovery if not free, but I for one am done with the free recovery tools. You can download and try an evaluation version for free from http://www.diskinternals.com/ , and only purchase if you see that DiskInternals Word Recovery does indeed deliver what others just offer: the complete recovery of your lost Microsoft Word documents.

Retrieve irreplaceable DVD video off 8cm discs

Did you just put a perfectly fine looking 8cm disc into your DVD camcorder, only to find that your camera does not see any video on it? Did your DVD camcorder inexplicably generate a "disc is unrecordable" error message one day?

CDRoller by Digital Atlantic Corp. ( http://www.cdroller.com ) will read the unreadable mini dvd, and gain access to inaccessible video data.

You accidently dropped your camera and had lost a precious footage of your child's birthday. The mini dvd looked like a blank in any computer or dvd player that you tried it in.

CDRoller does not use standard methods to access the troubled dvd media. Instead, it accesses discs directly, searching for the lost video data. Even if your DVD looks like a blank one, CDRoller may still be able to find the missing footages and convert them into standard MPEG files that are ready to play back with Windows Media Player.

Sometimes, you can not complete a disc finalization due to a low charge of battery in your camcorder. You attempt to replay unfinalized disc in DVD player, but mini DVD would not be recognized let alone, play. If you try to read such disc in your computer, you most likely won't get anything. Your PC may even freeze for a moment trying to access the disc data. You face the prospect of losing a whole DVD of priceless family video, including the last Christmas, a wedding or a trip to another country.

Fortunately, CDRoller retrieves a video files on the DVDs that were not properly finalized by Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, Canon and other DVD camcorders. The program supports a wide set of 8cm discs, including DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media types.

But what if you still want to make a new disc with recovered movies?

CDRoller not only finds and recovers the lost video on the mini DVDs, but it also makes a new discs that can be played back in the most DVD players. The program comes with built-in DVD-video burner, allowing you to watch the recovered movies on standalone DVD players.

CDRoller is available as a free evaluation download. Get your copy now at http://www.cdroller.com/htm/download.html, or read what others have to say on how it saved their important data by visiting http://www.cdroller.com/htm/success.html

Repairing Outlook Express Mail Database

There are a number of things that can and do go wrong with your email when you use Outlook Express frequently. The cure to the problem depends on the cause. This guide explains causes of these problems and outines solutions to fix your Outlook Express mailboxes.

There are known bugs in Outlook Express, and there are other programs in Windows running at the same time as you use Outlook Express. An application crash or a system failure or a sudden power outage can cause corruption in the mail database used by Outlook Express. Mailbox corruption can also happen because of a hardware malfunction or as a result of a virus infection. One can unintentionally delete an important message from Deleted Item.

A known issue in Outlook Express limits the size of its mail database to 2 GB. If you use Outlook Express frequently and don't put your mail to a number of different mailboxes, you'll hit the limit sooner rather than later. When you do, Outlook Express will be unable to access its mail database, and will fail to access your messages.

Corrupted and inaccessible hard disks are also a problem. While you could just format the corrupted drive and continue using it without a problem, all data stored on it, including Outlook Express mail databases, would be lost.

In order to recover to your email messages, you have to repair the damaged mail database. SoftAmbulance for Outlook Express made by http://softambulance.com/ can repair Outlook Express mail databases no matter what caused the damage. Virus attacks and system failures, crashed Outlook Express and corrupted hard drives are not a problem. Even if you can't access the drive, SoftAmbulance for Outlook Express can scan its surface sector by sector, locate, recover and repair corrupted Outlook Express databases.

In case of a message removed from Deleted Items, the fix is even simpler. When you erase a message from Deleted Items, it is not erased immediately. Instead, it is simply marked as erased; Outlook Express will not wipe or overwrite its content until the next scheduled compression is performed on its mail database. By default, Outlook Express only performs automatic database optimizations once every 100 runs or so; chances are high you'll be able to recover the deleted email before the optimization takes place.

SoftAmbulance for Outlook Express recovers deleted email quickly, easily and completely automatically.

A free evaluation version of SoftAmbulance for Outlook Express is available for download at http://softambulance.com/download.php

Repairing a damaged CD

Why compact discs get damaged. Compact discs are all plastic. Compact discs are even not sensitive to magnetic fields as in case floppy disks, which never used to retain data when even a slight magnetic field is crossed with floppies. Then what is the reason why CDs get corrupted?

CDs work on the principle of reflection of light. CD drives have a built in laser that is used to read data. When laser is focused on to the CD the beam get reflected to a point when there is some data on that are i.e. 0 or 1 the points where light beam lands back is different which symbolizes the bit value.

When something on the CD breaks the path of the laser light, something like dust particle or something else like a FINGER PRINT!!!. Finger prints are nothing but natural oil from skin that sticks to the surface in contact with the skin in a pattern of skin cells. This oil or say fingerprint helps in refraction of light and loss of data to the reading source i.e. laser.

When CDs don't run the reason is because something is interrupting the laser to read the shinny side of the CD. But I have important data what should I do now?

Most of the times it is because of dust or fingerprints, you need to clean the CD.
You can clean your CDs with plain water or a bit soapy water. And it is better to clean the CDs after some time. But this doesn't mean you should start putting your CDs in dishwasher or washing machine every week.

All you need to do is to wipe the shinny side of the CD with a clean moist cloth and try running it again make sure the CD is dry before you run it.

People say about using all different sorts of things to clean CDs like toothpastes, wax polish etc. but I would recommend you to buy some CD cleaning kit. But if you still want to go try, do let me know the results.

And one thing I must add is that DVD work on the same principle and are bit more sensitive to dust and fingerprints. You can also use the above mentioned procedure for DVDs. But you need to be careful with DVDs

Repair XLS

Feel free to download Recovery Toolbox for Excel, if your worksheets in Microsoft Excel format are in danger. Besides such threats, like viruses or unauthorized access to your personal information, worksheets can be damaged during their download. In some cases, it is rather difficult to redownload such files, the size of Microsoft Excel workbooks can be very large, therefore, these files may be unstable.

So, be ready to see an error, when opening files in Microsoft Excel format, it can happen to anyone. In such cases, you should not waste time and wait, xls file repair should be done as soon, as you can, it prevents further corruption. The root cause of data corruption is not so important, you may ask: How to repair xls or How to repair xls file when an error message appears? It should be noted, that either xls repair or repair .xls are rather complicated processes. Fortunately, Recovery Toolbox for Excel has built-in repair xls algorithms, that can efficiently repair .xls files with minimal user intervention.

Owing to its ease, Recovery Toolbox for Excel is accessible for all users, either for experts or for novices. You can read instructions, that describe the process step-by-step, but, usually users can go without it. All actions can be done intuitively, especially if you have a certain experience with Windows graphic interface. Recovery Toolbox for Excel is compatible with all supported versions of Microsoft Excel and Windows operating system. Repair xls file is much easier, than you think.

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Repair Excel

The information, stored in Microsoft Excel, may be valuable, therefore, you should protect it. Very often, Microsoft Excel worksheets contain tables, reports, diagrams and other critical documents. We believe, that such documents should not be lost, otherwise, it may provoke serious losses. Recovery Toolbox for Excel helps to avoid losses, if you could not prevent the corruption of worksheets.

Recovery Toolbox for Excel can restore Microsoft Excel even after virus infections, but, you should not lose time, the process of data recovery must be started without delays. Recovery Toolbox for Excel cannot guarantee, that all columns and images will be restored, but, you have more chances to succeed, if the process of data repair is started right after the first error message.

You can try this program right now to make sure, that repair Excel works and you can easily restore corrupted files of Microsoft Excel format. Do not worry, it will not have any consequences for corrupted worksheets, when Recovery Toolbox for Excel repair Excel file, this file remains unchanged and you can try another Excel repair tool.

The process of Excel file repair can be performed for free, please download demo version of this Excel fix and try to repair Excel files. It is much easier, than you think, Recovery Toolbox for Excel is known for its easy user interface, friendly either for professionals or for beginners. Despite its small size and ease, this Excel repair program features powerful data recovery algorithms, that permit to restore more information, than other solutions.

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Remote Backup

Preservation of computer files is essential for the proper functioning of businesses, and therefore, remote backup is becoming a more popular option for many businesses and individuals. One crash can destroy essential files, which, if not recovered, can damage your company's reputation and its ability to function. Remote backup is a relatively inexpensive and easy way to make sure that your files never get lost. Although the best remote backup programs require an investment, in the long run, it is much cheaper and more efficient than hiring an individual to back up your files regularly. Unlike computers, individuals can forget.

The best remote backup programs are internet based, have a high level of security and a good support service. Remote backup usually works on the internet, LAN or ICP/IP network. The remote backup program sends the data to your offsite server. These files can be sent according to a schedule you set, or can be backed up automatically. If you have automatic remote backup, the job is done when the computer is not in use, perhaps in the evenings when there is no one in the office.

Your remote backup program should have version control system, which will make sure your list of file is being continually updated. If you have different versions of a file, you can select which one you want to keep or choose to backup all of them, since a good remote backup program has a lot of memory.

Security is an important concern when considering which remote backup system to chose. The highest quality systems have up to 8 cryptographic methods to conceal your information from hackers. This feature is essential if you have valuable financial information about your customers. In spite of the codes used to disguise your data, you will be able to access the information easily without confusion.

Remote backup works in two parts called the client and the server. The client chooses files to be backed up and compresses them so they can be stored more easily. The server delivers the information to the client through the internet and can use several modems at the same time while handling myriad internet connections. The client marks selected files and stores them in the proper places. These transfers occur quite quickly and the clients are mapped to certain drives, meaning that they know exactly where to send the information. It is possible to exclude some files from remote backup that are not needed, and the user can always pick and choose which files to save.

Many remote backup programs provide bigger backup for little extra cost, if needed. As you company grows, so should your backup, so it is good to know that expansion will not mean a larger priced tag. Disaster recovery systems are also commonly available with remote backup programs, and they will help your computer get up and running again after a crash.

It is a good idea to research on remote backup to decide which program is the right one for you. Perhaps you and your spouse run a small travel agency from your home; you will need smaller backup, but as your company grows, you will need to expand the amount of backup you use. The highest level of security is recommended for small businesses and banks alike, because the average computer user might be more vulnerable to hackers than larger organizations which hire technical staff who are well versed in this area.

Many remote backup programs offer free trials and demos, and it is a good idea to take full advantage of these offers before investing in the right remote backup for your home or office.

Recovery Word files

Recovery Toolbox for Word is a solution for recovery Word, it repairs documents in Microsoft Word format. This MS Word repair tool processes damaged files in Microsoft Word format, in the same time, the reason of email corruption does not matter. Recovery Toolbox for Word works with all Word files, it is safe to open even infected files of *.doc format. If you'd like to recover Word file successfully, you should not wait, until these documents will be completely destroyed.

Try Recovery Toolbox for Word Microsoft Word text recovery, if you could not prevent an issue. Feel free to download demo version of Recovery Toolbox for Word, it costs nothing. Demo version helps to understand, how Recovery Toolbox for Word works and to estimate its data recovery engine. If you are not sure, that it is possible to reproduce Microsoft Word recovery without errors, you may contact our support department and get help. Our specialists quickly reply either to our customers or to demo version users.

We believe, that Recovery Toolbox for Word is very easy, no need to read instructions and user's guides, the process of data recovery may be done without any help. Recovery Toolbox for Word is an effective way for Word text recovery, now MS Word repair and recovery doc can be done in several minutes. Recovery Toolbox for Word recovery for Word permits to preview, which portions of text will be restored without errors, try it, when making a decision to purchase repair Word 2007. We are sure, that you will make a wise choice after testing of Recovery Toolbox for Word.

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Recovering Internet Explorer Passwords: Theory and Practice

Recovering Internet Explorer Passwords: Theory and Practice


1. Introduction
2. Types of passwords stored in Internet Explorer
2.1. Internet Credentials
2.2. AutoComplete data
2.3. AutoComplete passwords
2.4. FTP passwords
2.5. Synchronization passwords
2.6. Identities passwords
2.7. AutoForms data
2.8. Content Advisor password
3. Brief overview of Internet Explorer password recovery programs
4. PIEPR - the first acquaintance
5. Three real-life examples
5.1. Recovering current user's FTP passwords
5.2. Recovering website passwords from unloadable operating system
5.3. Recovering uncommonly stored passwords
6. Conclusion



1. Introduction
Nobody will likely dispute the fact that Internet Explorer is today's most popular Web browser. According to the statistics, approximately 70% of online users prefer to use just this program. Arguments about its pros and cons may last forever; still, this browser is the leader of its industry, and this is a fact that requires no proof. Internet Explorer carries several built-in technologies, designed to make average user's life easier. One of them - IntelliSense - is made for taking care of the routine tasks, like the automatic completion of visited webpage addresses, automatic filling of form fields, users' passwords, etc.

Many of today's websites require registration, which means, user would have to enter user name and password. If you use more than a dozen of such websites, you will likely need a password manager. All modern browsers have a built-in password manager in their arsenal, and Internet Explorer is not an odd. Indeed, why would one have to remember yet another password if it is going to be forgotten some time soon anyway? Much easier would be to have browser do the routine work of remembering and storing passwords for you. It's convenient and comfortable.

This would be a totally perfect solution; however, if your Windows operating system crashed or reinstalled not the way it's supposed to be reinstalled, you can easily lose the entire list of your precious passwords. That's the toll for the comfort and convenience. It's good just about every website has a saving 'I forgot password' button. However, this button will not always take your headache from you.

Each software developer solves the forgotten password recovery problem their own way. Some of them officially recommend copying a couple of important files to another folder, while other send all registered users a special utility that allows managing the migration of private data, and the third ones pretend they are not seeing the problem. Nevertheless, the demand creates the offer, and password recovery programs are currently on a great demand.

In this article, let's try to classify types of private data stored in Internet Explorer, look at programs for the recovery of the data, and study real-life examples of recovering lost Internet passwords.



2. Types of passwords stored in Internet Explorer
- Internet Explorer may store the following types of passwords:
- Internet Credentials
- AutoComplete Data
- AutoComplete Passwords
- FTP Passwords
- Synchronization Passwords for cached websites
- Identities Passwords
- AutoForms Data
- Content Advisor Password
Let's take a closer look at each listed item.



2.1. Internet Credentials for websites
Internet credentials mean user's logins and passwords required for accessing certain websites, which are processed by the wininet.dll library. For example, when you try to enter the protected area of a website, you may see the following user name and password prompt (fig.1 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie01.png).

If the option 'Remember my password' is selected in that prompt, the user credentials will be saved to your local computer. The older versions of Windows 9a stored that data in user's PWL file; Windows 2000 and newer store it in the Protected Storage.


2.2. AutoComplete Data
AutoComplete data (passwords will be covered further) are also stored in the Protected Storage and appear as lists of HTML form field names and the corresponding user data. For example, if an HTML page contains an e-mail address entry dialog: once user has entered his e-mail address, the Protected Storage will have the HTML field name, the address value, and the time the record was last accessed.

The HTML page title and website address are not stored. Is that good or bad? It's difficult to determine; more likely to be good than bad. Here are the obvious pros: it saves free space and speeds up browser's performance. If you think the last note is insignificant, try to imagine how you would have to perform several extra checkups in a multi-thousand (this is not as rare as it may seem to be) auto-fill list.

Another obvious plus is that data for identical by name (and often by subject) HTML form fields will be stored in the same place, and the common data will be used for the automatic filling of such pages. We will see this by this example. If one HTML page contains an auto-fill field with the name 'email', and user entered his e-mail address in that field, IE will put in the storage, roughly, 'email=my@email.com'. From now on, if the user opens another website, which has a page with the same field name 'email', the user will be suggested to auto-fill it with the value that he entered on the first page (my@email.com). Thus, the browser somewhat discovers AI capabilities within itself.

The major drawback of this data storage method comes out of its advantage that we just described. Imagine, user has entered auto-fill data on a webpage. If someone knows the HTML form field name, that person can create his own simplest HTML page with the same field name and open it from a local disk. To uncover the data entered in this field, such person will not even have to connect to the Internet and open the original WWW address.



2.3. AutoComplete Passwords
In the case with passwords data, however, as you might have guessed, the data will not be filled in automatically. Since auto-complete passwords are stored along with the Web page name, and each password is bound to only one specific HTML page.

In the new version, Internet Explorer 7, both AutoComplete passwords and data are encrypted completely different; the new encryption method is free from the shortcoming just described (if that can be classified as a shortcoming.)

It is worth noticing that Internet Explorer allows users to manage auto-fill parameters manually, through the options menu (fig.2 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie02.png).



2.4. FTP passwords
FTP site passwords are stored pretty much the same way. It would be relevant to notice that beginning with Windows XP FTP passwords are additionally encrypted with DPAPI. This encryption method uses logon password. Naturally, this makes it much more difficult to recover such lost passwords manually, since now one would need to have the user's Master Key, SID and the account password.

Starting with Microsoft Windows 2000, the operating system began to provide a Data Protection Application-Programming Interface (DPAPI) API. This is simply a pair of function calls that provide OS-level data protection services to user and system processes. By OS-level, we mean a service that is provided by the operating system itself and does not require any additional libraries. By data protection, we mean a service that provides confidentiality of data through encryption. Since the data protection is part of the OS, every application can now secure data without needing any specific cryptographic code other than the necessary function calls to DPAPI. These calls are two simple functions with various options to modify DPAPI behavior. Overall, DPAPI is a very easy-to-use service that will benefit developers that must provide protection for sensitive application data, such as passwords and private keys.
DPAPI is a password-based data protection service: it requires a password to provide protection. The drawback, of course, is that all protection provided by DPAPI rests on the password provided. This is offset by DPAPI using proven cryptographic routines, specifically the strong Triple-DES and AES algorithms, and strong keys, which we'll cover in more detail later. Since DPAPI is focused on providing protection for users and requires a password to provide this protection, it logically uses the user's logon password for protection.
DPAPI is not responsible for storing the confidential information it protects. It is only responsible for encrypting and decrypting data for programs that call it, such as Windows Credential manager, the Private Key storage mechanism, or any third-party programs.
Please refer to Microsoft Web site for more information.



2.5. Synchronization Passwords for cached websites
Synchronization passwords free user from having to enter passwords for cached websites (sites set to be available offline.) Passwords of this type are also stored in IE's Protected Storage.



2.6. Identities passwords
So are identities passwords. The identity-based access management mechanism is not widespread in Microsoft's products, except, perhaps, Outlook Express.


2.7. AutoForms Data
A special paragraph must cover the form auto-fill method, which constitutes a hybrid way of storing data. This method stores the actual data in the Protected Storage, and the URL, which the data belong to, is stored in user's registry. The URL written in the registry is stored not as plaintext - it is stored as hash. Here is the algorithm for reading form auto-fill data in IE 4 - 6:

===8<===========Begin of original text===========
//Get autoform password by given URL
BOOL CAutoformDecrypter::LoadPasswords(LPCTSTR cszUrl, CStringArray *saPasswords)
{
assert(cszUrl && saPasswords);

saPasswords->RemoveAll();

//Check if autoform passwords are present in registry
if ( EntryPresent(cszUrl) )
{
//Read PStore autoform passwords
return PStoreReadAutoformPasswords(cszUrl,saPasswords);
}

return FALSE;
}


//Check if autoform passwords are present
BOOL CAutoformDecrypter::EntryPresent(LPCTSTR cszUrl)
{
assert(cszUrl);

DWORD dwRet, dwValue, dwSize=sizeof(dwValue);
LPCTSTR cszHash=GetHash(cszUrl);

//problems computing the hash
if ( !cszHash )
return FALSE;

//Check the registry
dwRet=SHGetValue(HKCU,_T("Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\IntelliForms\\SPW"),cszHash,NULL,&dwValue,&dwSize);
delete((LPTSTR)cszHash);

if ( dwRet==ERROR_SUCCESS )
return TRUE;

m_dwLastError=E_NOTFOUND;
return FALSE;
}


//retrieve hash by given URL text and translate it into hex format
LPCTSTR CAutoformDecrypter::GetHash(LPCTSTR cszUrl)
{
assert(cszUrl);

BYTE buf[0x10];
LPTSTR pRet=NULL;
int i;

if ( HashData(cszUrl,buf,sizeof(buf)) )
{
//Allocate some space
pRet=new TCHAR [sizeof(buf) * sizeof(TCHAR) + sizeof(TCHAR)];
if ( pRet)
{
for ( i=0; i {
// Translate it into human readable format
pRet[i]=(TCHAR) ((buf[i] & 0x3F) + 0x20);
}
pRet[i]=_T('\0');
}
else
m_dwLastError=E_OUTOFMEMORY;
}

return pRet;
}


//DoHash wrapper
BOOL CAutoformDecrypter::HashData(LPCTSTR cszData, LPBYTE pBuf,
DWORD dwBufSize)
{
assert(cszData && pBuf);

if ( !cszData || !pBuf )
{
m_dwLastError=E_ARG;
return FALSE;
}

DoHash((LPBYTE)cszData,strlen(cszData),pBuf,dwBufSize);
return TRUE;
}


void CAutoformDecrypter::DoHash(LPBYTE pData, DWORD dwDataSize,
LPBYTE pHash, DWORD dwHashSize)
{
DWORD dw=dwHashSize, dw2;

//pre-init loop
while ( dw-->0 )
pHash[dw]=(BYTE)dw;

//actual hashing stuff
while ( dwDataSize-->0 )
{
for ( dw=dwHashSize; dw-->0; )
{
//m_pPermTable = permutation table
pHash[dw]=m_pPermTable[pHash[dw]^pData[dwDataSize]];
}
}
}
===8<============End of original text============

The next, seventh generation of the browser, is most likely going to make this user's data storage mechanism its primary data storage method, declining the good old Protected Storage. Better to say, auto-fill data and passwords, from now on, are going to be stored here.

What is so special and interesting in this mechanism that made MS decide to use it as primary? Well, first of all, it was the encryption idea, which isn't new at all but still simple and genius, to disgrace. The idea is to quit storing encryption keys and generate them whenever that would be necessary. The raw material for such keys would be HTML page's Web address.

Let's see how this idea works in action. Here is IE7's simplified algorithm for saving auto-fill data and password fields:

1 Save Web page's address. We will use this address as the encryption key (EncryptionKey).
2 Obtain Record Key. RecordKey = SHA(EncryptionKey).
3 Calculate checksum for RecordKey to ensure the integrity of the record key (the integrity of the actual data will be guaranteed by DPAPI.) RecordKeyCrc = CRC(RecordKey).
4 Encrypt data (passwords) with the encryption key EncryptedData = DPAPI_Encrypt(Data, EncryptionKey).
5 Save RecordKeyCrc + RecordKey + EncryptedData in the registry.
6 Discard EncryptionKey.

It is very, very difficult to recover password without having the original Web page address. The decryption looks pretty much trivial:

1 When the original Web page is open, we take its address (EncryptionKey) and obtain the record key RecordKey = SHA(EncryptionKey).
2 Browse through the list of all record keys trying to locate the RecordKey.
3 If the RecordKey is found, decrypt data stored along with this key using the EncryptionKey. Data = DPAPI_Decrypt(EncryptedData, EncryptionKey).
In spite of the seeming simplicity, this Web password encryption algorithm is one of today's strongest. However, it has a major drawback (or advantage, depending which way you look at it.) If you change or forget the original Web page address, it will be impossible to recover password for it.



2.8. Content Advisor password
And the last item on our list is Content Advisor password. Content Advisor was originally developed as a tool for restricting access to certain websites. However, for some reason it was unloved by many users (surely, you may disagree with this.) If you once turned Content Advisor on, entered a password and then forgot it, you will not be able to access the majority of websites on the Internet. Fortunately (or unfortunately), this can be easily fixed.

The actual Content Advisor password is not stored as plaintext. Instead, the system calculates its MD5 hash and stores it in Windows registry. On an attempt to access the restricted area, the password entered by user is also hashed, and the obtained hash is compared with the one stored in the registry. Take a look at PIEPR source code checking Content Advisor password:


===8<===========Begin of original text===========
void CContentAdvisorDlg::CheckPassword()
{
CRegistry registry;

//read the registry
registry.SetKey(HKLM, "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\policies\\Ratings");

BYTE pKey[MD5_DIGESTSIZE], pCheck[MD5_DIGESTSIZE];
if ( !registry.GetBinaryData("Key",pKey,MD5_DIGESTSIZE) )
{
MessageBox(MB_ERR,"Can't read the password.");
return;
}

//Get one set by user
CString cs;
m_wndEditPassword.GetWindowText(cs);
MD5Init();
MD5Update((LPBYTE)(LPCTSTR)cs,cs.GetLength()+1);
MD5Final(pCheck);

//Check hashes
if ( memcmp(pKey,pCheck,MD5_DIGESTSIZE)==0 )
MessageBox(MB_OK,"The password is correct!");
else
MessageBox(MB_OK,"Wrong password.");
}
===8<============End of original text============

The first thing you may think about is to try to pick the password by using the brute force or dictionary attack. However, there is a more elegant way to that. You can simply remove the hash from the registry. That's it; so simple... Well, it's better to rename it instead, so that if you ever need it, you can restore it back. Some programs also let users check Content Advisor password, "drag out" password hint, toggle password on/off, etc.



3. Brief Overview of Internet Explorer Password Recovery Programs
It's worth noticing that not all password recovery programs suspect there are so many ways to recover passwords. Most likely, this is related to the fact that some passwords (e.g., synchronization passwords) are not often used in the real life, and FTP passwords are not so simple to be 'dragged out'. Here is a brief overview of the most popular commercial products for recovering passwords for the most popular browser on earth :)

Advanced Internet Explorer Password Recovery from the not unknown company, ElcomSoft - does not recognize AutoForm passwords and encrypted FTP passwords. Not to be excluded, the last version of the program may have learnt to do that. Simple, convenient user interface. The program can be upgraded online automatically.

Internet Explorer Key from PassWare - similarly, does not recognize certain types of passwords. Sometimes the program halts with a critical error when reading some uncommon types of IE's URLs. Displays first two characters of passwords being recovered. The advantages worth noticing are the Spartan user interface and operating convenience.

Internet Explorer Password from Thegrideon Software - not bad, but can recover just three types of Internet Explorer passwords (this is enough for the majority of cases.) Deals with FTP passwords properly. Version 1.1 has problems recovering AutoForm passwords. Has convenient user interface, which in some way reminds one from AIEPR. One can be totally overwhelmed with the beauty and helpfulness of the company's website.

Internet Password Recovery Toolbox from Rixler Software - offers some greater functionality than the previously covered competitors. It can recover encrypted FTP passwords and delete selected resources. However, it has some programming errors. For example, some types of IE records cannot be deleted. The program comes with a great, detailed help file.

ABF Password Recovery from ABF software - quite a good program with friendly user interface. The list of IE record types supported by the program is not long. Nevertheless, it deals with all of them properly. The program can be classified as a multi-functional one, since it can restore passwords for other programs also.

The major drawback of all programs named here is the capability to recover passwords only for user currently logged on.

As it was said above, the general body of stored Internet Explorer resources is kept in a special storage called Protected Storage. Protected Storage was developed specially for storing personal data. Therefore the functions for working with it (called PS API) are not documented. Protected Storage was first introduced with the release of the version 4 of Internet Explorer, which, by the way, unlike the third version, was written from scratch.

Protected Storage provides applications with an interface to store user data that must be kept secure or free from modification. Units of data stored are called Items. The structure and content of the stored data is opaque to the Protected Storage system. Access to Items is subject to confirmation according to a user-defined Security Style, which specifies what confirmation is required to access the data, such as whether a password is required. In addition, access to Items is subject to an Access rule set. There is an Access rule for each Access Mode: for example, read/write. Access rule sets are composed of Access Clauses. Typically at application setup time, a mechanism is provided to allow a new application to request from the user access to Items that may have been created previously by another application.
Items are uniquely identified by the combination of a Key, Type, Subtype, and Name. The Key is a constant that specifies whether the Item is global to this computer or associated only with this user. The Name is a string, generally chosen by the user. Type and Subtype are GUIDs, generally specified by the application. Additional information about Types and Subtypes is kept in the system registry and include attributes such as Display Name and UI hints. For Subtypes, the parent Type is fixed and included in the system registry as an attribute. The Type group Items is used for a common purpose: for example, Payment or Identification. The Subtype group Items share a common data format.

So, until very recent time, all programs for recovering Internet Explorer passwords used those undocumented API. That's the reason why one significant restriction was applied to the recovery work: PS API can only work with passwords for user that is currently logged on. When the system encrypts data stored in Protected Storage, besides everything else it uses user's SID, without which it is literally impossible (taking into account the current level of computers' calculating performance) to recover stored passwords.

Protected Storage uses a very well thought through data encryption method, which uses master keys and strong algorithms, such as des, sha, and shahmac. Similar data encryption methods are now used in the majority of modern browsers; e.g. in Opera or FireFox. Microsoft, meanwhile, quietly but surely develops and tests new ones. When this article is written, in the pre-Beta version of Internet Explorer 7 Protected Storage was only used for storing FTP passwords.

The analysis of this preliminary version suggests that Microsoft is preparing another 'surprise' in the form of new, interesting encryption algorithms. It is not known for sure, but most likely the new company's data protection technology InfoCard will be involved in the encryption of private data.

Thus, with a great deal of confidence one can assert that with the release of Windows Vista and the 7th version of Internet Explorer passwords will be stored and encrypted with fundamentally new algorithms, and the Protected Storage interface, to all appearances, will become open for third-party developers.

It is somewhat sad, for we think the true potential of Protected Storage was still not uncovered. And this is why we think so:
- First, Protected Storage is based on module structure, which allows plugging other storage providers to it. However, for the last 10 years while Protected Storage exists, not a single new storage provider was created. System Protected Storage is the only storage provider in the operating system, which is used by default.
- Second, Protected Storage has its own, built-in access management system, which, for some reason, is not used in Internet Explorer or in other MS products.
- Third, it is not very clear why MS have decided to decline Protected Storage in storing AutoComplete data and passwords. Decline it as a tried and true data storage, and not data encryption mechanism. It would be more logically proven to keep Protected Storage at least for storing data when implementing a new encryption algorithm. Without fail, there were weighty reasons for that. Therefore, it would be interesting to hear the opinion of MS specialists concerning this subject matter.


4. PIEPR - the First Acquaintance
Passcape Internet Explorer Password Recovery was developed specifically to bypass the PS API's restriction and make it possible to recover passwords directly, from the registry's binary files. Besides, it has a number of additional features for advanced users.

The program's wizard allows you to choose one of several operating modes:
- Automatic: Current user's passwords will be recovered by accessing the closed PS API interface. All current user's passwords currently stored in Internet Explorer will be recovered with a single click of the mouse.
- Manual: Passwords will be recovered without PS API. This method's main advantage is the capability to recover passwords from your old Windows account. For that purpose, you will need to enter path to the user's registry file. Registry files are normally not available for reading; however, the technology used in PIEPR allows doing that (provided you have the local administrative rights.)

User's registry file name is ntuser.dat; its resides in the user's profile, which is normally %SYSTEMDRIVE%:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%, where %SYSTEMDRIVE% stands for the system disk with the operating system, and %USERNAME% is normally account name. For instance, path to registry file may look like this: C:\Documents and Settings\John\ntuser.dat

If you have ever been a happy owner of Windows 9x/ME, after you upgrade your operating system to Windows NT, Protected Storage will providently save a copy of your old private data. As a result of that, Protected Storage may contain several user identifiers, so PIEPR will ask you to select the right one before it gets to the decryption of the data (fig.3 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie03.png).

One of the listed SIDs will contain data left by the old Windows 9x/ME. That data is additionally encrypted with user's logon password, and PIEPR currently does not support the decryption of such data.

If ntuser.dat contains encrypted passwords (e.g., FTP sites passwords), the program will need additional information in order to decrypt them (fig.4 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie04.png):
- Logon password of user whose data are to be decrypted
- Full path to the user's MasterKey
- User's SID

Normally, the program finds the last two items in user's profile and fills that data automatically. However, if ntuser.dat was copied from another operating system, you will have to take care of that on your own. The easiest way to get the job done is to copy the entire folder with user's Master Key (there may be several of them) to the folder with ntuser.dat. Master Key resides in the following folder on your local computer: %SYSTEMDRIVE%:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Microsoft\Protect\%UserSid%, where %SYSTEMDRIVE% stands for the system disk with the operating system, %USERNAME% - account name, %UserSid% - user's SID. For example, path to the folder with a master key may look as follows: C:\Documents and Settings\John\Application Data\Microsoft\Protect\S-1-5-21-1587165142-6173081522-185545743-1003. Let's make it clear that it is recommended to copy the entire folder S-1-5-21-1587165142-6173081522-185545743-1003, for it may contain several Master Keys. Then PIEPR will select the right key automatically.

Windows marks some folders as hidden or system, so they are invisible in Windows Explorer. To make them visible, enable showing hidden and system objects in the view settings or use an alternative file manager.

Once the folder with user's Master Key was copied to the folder with ntuser.dat, PIEPR will automatically find the required data, so you will only have to enter user's password for recovering FTP passwords.

Content Advisor
Content Advisor passwords, as it was said already, is not kept as plain text; instead, it is stored as hash. In the Content Advisor password management dialog, it is enough to just delete (you can restore the deleted password at any time later) or change this hash to unlock sites locked with Content Advisor. PIEPR will also display your password hint if there is one.

Asterisks passwords
PIEPR's fourth operating mode, which allows recovering Internet Explorer passwords hidden behind asterisks. To recover such password, simply drag the magnifier to the window with a **** password. This tool allows recovering passwords for other programs that use IE Frames as well; e.g., Windows Explorer, some IE-based browsers, etc.

We have reviewed the basic Internet Explorer password recovery modes. There is also a number of additional features for viewing and editing cookies, cache, visited pages history, etc. We are not going to cover them in detail; instead, we are going to look at a few password recovery examples done with PIEPR.



5.1. Three Real-Life Examples.
Example 1: Recovering current user's FTP password
When opening an FTP site, Internet Explorer pops up the log on dialog (fig.5 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie05.png).

If you have opened this site and set the 'Save password' option in the authentication dialog, the password must be saved in Protected Storage, so recovering it is a pretty trivial job. Select the automatic operating mode in PIEPR and then click 'Next'. Locate our resource in the dialog with decrypted passwords that appears (the site name must appear in the Resource Name column.)

As we see, the decryption of current user's password should not cause any special difficulties. Oh, if the password is not found for some reason - don't forget to check IE's Auto-Complete Settings. Possibly, you have simply not set the program to save passwords.



5.2. Three Real-Life Examples.
Example 2: We will need to recover Web site passwords. The operating system is unbootable.
This is a typical, but not fatal situation. The necessity to recover Internet Explorer passwords after unsuccessful Windows reinstallation occurs just as often.

In either case, we will have user's old profile with all files within it. This set is normally enough to get the job done. In the case with the reinstallation, Windows providently saves the old profile under a different name. For example, if your account name was John, after renaming it may look like John.WORK-72C39A18.

The first and the foremost what you must do is to gain access to files in the old profile. There are two ways to doing this:
- Install a new operating system on a different hard drive; e.g., Windows XP, and hook the old hard drive to it.
- Create a Windows NT boot disk. There are many different utilities for creating boot disks and USB flash disks available online. For instance, you can use WinPE or BartPE. Or a different one. If your old profile was stored on an NTFS part of your hard drive, the boot disk will have to support NTFS.

Let's take the first route. Once we gain access to the old profile, we will need to let the system show hidden and system files. Otherwise, the files we need will be invisible. Open Control Panel, then click on Folder Options, and then select the View tab. On this tab, find the option 'Show hidden files and folders' and select it. Clear the option 'Hide protected operating system files'. When the necessary passwords are recovered, it's better to reset these options to the way they were set before.

Open the program's wizard in the manual mode and enter path to the old profile's registry file. In our case, that is C:\Documents And Settings\ John.WORK-72C39A18\ntuser.dat. Where John.WORK-72C39A18 is the old account name. Click 'Next'.

This data should normally be sufficient for recovering Internet Explorer passwords. However, if there is at least a single encrypted FTP password, the program will request additional data, without which it will not be able to recover such types of passwords:
- User's password
- User's Master Key
- User's SID.
Normally, the program finds the last two items in user's profile and fills that data automatically. However, if that didn't happen, you can do that by hand: copy ntuser.dat and the folder with the Master Key to a separate folder. It is important to copy the entire folder, for it may contain several keys, and the program will select the right one automatically. Then enter path to file ntuser.dat that you have copied to another folder.

That's it. Now we need to enter the old account password, and the recovery will be completed. If you don't care for FTP password, you can skip the user's password, Master Key, and SID entry dialog.



5.3. Three Real-Life Examples.
Example 3: Recovering uncommonly stored passwords.
When we sometimes open a website in the browser, the authentication dialog appears. However, PIEPR fails to recover it in either automatic or manual mode. The 'Save password' option in Internet Explorer is enabled. We will need to recover this password.

Indeed, some websites don't let browser to save passwords in the auto-complete passwords list. Often, such websites are written in JAVA or they use alternative password storage methods; e.g., they store passwords in cookies. A cookie is a small bit of text that accompanies requests and pages as they go between the Web server and browser. The cookie contains information the Web application can read whenever the user visits the site. Cookies provide a useful means in Web applications to store user-specific information. For example, when a user visits your site, you can use cookies to store user preferences or other information. When the user visits your Web site another time, the application can retrieve the information it stored earlier. Cookies are used for all sorts of purposes, all relating to helping the Web site remember you. In essence, cookies help Web sites store information about visitors. A cookie also acts as a kind of calling card, presenting pertinent identification that helps an application know how to proceed. But often cookies criticized for weak security and inaccurate user identification.

If the password field is filled with asterisks, the solution is clear: select the ASTERISKS PASSWORDS operating mode and then open the magic magnifier dialog. Then simply drag the magnifier to the Internet Explorer window (fig.6 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie06.png).

The password (passwords, if the Internet Explorer window has several fields with asterisks) is to appear in the PIEPR window (fig.7 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie07.png).

But it's not always that simple. The password field may be empty or that field may indeed contain *****. In this case, as you have guessed by now, the ASTERISKS PASSWORDS tool will be useless.

We can suppose, the password is stored in cookies. Let's try to locate it. Choose the IE Cookie Explorer tool (fig.8 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie08.png).

The dialog that appears will list the websites that store cookies on your computer. Click on the URL column header to order the websites list alphabetically. This will help us find the right website easier. Go through the list of websites and select the one we need. The list below will display the decrypted cookies for this website (fig.9 http://www.passcape.com/images/ie09.png).

As the figure shows, in our case the login and password are not encrypted and are stored as plain text.

Cookies are often encrypted. In this case, you are not likely to succeed recovering the password. The only thing you can try doing in order to recover the old account is to create a new account. Then you will be able to copy the old cookies in a text editor and replace them with the new ones. However, this is only good when the worst comes to the worst; it is not recommended to use it normally.

Don't forget also that just about all pages and forms with passwords have the 'Forgot password' button.




Conclusion
As this article shows, recovering Internet Explorer passwords is a pretty simple job, which does not require any special knowledge or skills. However, despite of the seeming simplicity, password encryption schemes and algorithms are very well thought through and just as well implemented. Although the Protected Storage concept is over 10 years of age, don't forget that it has proven the very best recommendations of the experts and has been implemented through three generations of this popular browser.

With the release of the next, 7th version of IE, Microsoft is preparing fundamentally new schemes for protecting our private data, where it uses improved encryption algorithms and eliminates shortages peculiar to Protected Storage.

In particular, the analysis of the preliminary beta versions of Internet Explorer 7 has revealed that autoform password encryption keys are no longer stored along with data. They are not stored, period! This is a little know-how, which is to be estimated at its true worth by both professionals and end users, who, finally, will benefits of it anyway.

But the main thing is, the release of the new concept will eliminate the major drawback peculiar to Protected Storage, which is the possibility to recover passwords without knowing the additional information. Better to say, was enough for a potential hacker to gain physical access to the contents of a hard drive, in order to steal or damage passwords and user's other private data. With the release of Internet Explorer 7, the situation will somewhat change.

Meanwhile, we will only have to wait impatiently for the advent of Windows Vista and IE 7 to take a closer look at new encryption mechanisms used in the next generation of this popular browser.



This document may be freely distributed or reproduced provided that the
reference to the original article is placed on each copy of this document.
(c) 2006 Passcape Software. All rights reserved.
http://www.passcape.com

Recovering Digital Pictures from Hard Disks and Flash Memory Cards

Today, most digital pictures and family photo albums are stored electronically on a computer. These electronic images are much more vulnerable than traditional paper albums. Images could disappear from your PC if the system is attacked by a virus. An entire photo album can be deleted or corrupted by faulty software. Digital pictures can disappear from a memory card if you remove it from the camera when it saves your most recent snapshot, or if the operating temperature is too hot or too cold for that particular memory card. Is this a problem? Not at all! You can always restore lost pictures easily with Magic Photo Recovery!

Magic Photo Recovery (http://www.magicuneraser.com/) recovers lost and deleted images completely automatically. An easy step-by-step wizard recovers digital pictures lost or deleted from hard disks, digital cameras, memory cards and a variety of storage media in a quick and effortless manner. Deleted a photo from your computer or removed it from your digital camera? No problem! Magic Photo Recovery will scan the entire disk or memory card to locate and recover every picture you deleted. Formatted a memory card or repartitioned the entire hard drive? No problem! Magic Photo Recovery recovers images from disks and flash cards even if they were repartitioned and reformatted several times. Magic Photo Recovery recovers images deleted from the Recycle Bin or lost after a system failure, reads pictures from formatted or corrupted memory cards, and can even recover digital pictures and RAW files directly from the camera!

The improved recovery algorithm carefully analyzes the entire disk or memory card sector by sector, locates lost or deleted digital images, and restores them onto the same or different media. Thanks to the new recovery method, Magic Photo Recovery can recover digital pictures that no other program can even see! The recovery algorithm featured in Magic Photo Recovery 2.0 carefully analyzes the file system, the disk and the recoverable images in order to determine the original names and locations of files being recovered.

Magic Photo Recovery is quick and easy to use. The convenient wizard guides you through the recovery process in a step-by-step manner. In fact, you can even recover your pictures by just clicking a single button! No prior experience with data recovery, and no special skills or outstanding technical abilities are needed. Just launch Magic Photo Recovery and see the magic!

Convenience features include a full-featured image browser and viewer, and the ability to filter recoverable images by their size, resolution or pixel dimensions.

Tired of empty promises? Tried of other recovery tools that only made things worse? Magic Photo Recovery features a complete full-size preview and a full-featured image browser that allows you to see the recoverable files before you make a purchase decision! Simply download the free evaluation version (http://www.magicuneraser.com/), and you will immediately realize the difference!

Recover Formatted NTFS Drives

If you have accidentally formatted a hard drive or partition, you will get an empty disk with no files on it. Don't consider your files lost just yet! If you didn't put any new files on the formatted partition, you can easily recover all of your original files complete with the original directory structure by using widely available un-format tools that are often available for free. But there is a good chance to recover the formatted partition even if you saved a few files on it, or even installed Windows onto it! Just don't attempt running a free un-format tool at this stage, as it will most probably just destroy what's been left of your files.

How is this even possible? To answer this question, I have to cover the way the formatting works. If you are in a rush to recover your work, skip this section completely and go to the recovery software recommendation part.

Windows needs to format your disks in order to prepare it for keeping data such as files and folders. When Windows formats a disk, it does not wipe off its entire contents as you might believe judging from the time it takes to complete the formatting. Instead, it simply creates new, empty file system records at the beginning of the disk. The lengthy time is spent on checking the disk for errors to ensure that every sector on the disk can read and write correctly, marking the bad ones in the file system. Once again, unless you perform a low-level format from the system BIOS (and you'll never do that), all the original information is left intact on the hard disk. The formatted disk appears blank because there is no record in the newly created file system about the files and directories that were originally stored on that disk.

There are two approaches to recovering the formatted disks. The first approach is employed by the many free un-format utilities that simply return the original file system in place of a new one. This approach works if you have just formatted the disk and didn't write anything onto it; if you formatted the disk with the same type of file system (FAT or NTFS), and if you used the same cluster size. You have to meet all of these conditions in order for the free tools to work. Otherwise, you'll get something worse than an empty disk: a corrupted one.

If you weren't that careful when choosing the matching parameters to format your disk, you have no choice but the second type of recovery software: the data recovery tools. Before you begin installing data recovery software, please note that you don't want to write anything onto the disk you are about to recover. So be careful not to save the data recovery product onto that disk, and not to install it there. Otherwise, you are taking the risk of overwriting your original files.

If your original file system (not the new one!) was NTFS, download and install 1st NTFS Recovery from http://ntfs-recovery.com, run the installed application and select the formatted partition when prompted. That's it! 1st NTFS Recovery will take care of the rest.

Is it that simple? In a word, yes. 1st NTFS Recovery scans the formatted disk looking for files. It has special algorithms to detect Office documents, digital pictures, ZIP and RAR archives, so your chances of getting back the valuable stuff are pretty high.

After 1st NTFS Recovery is done with recovering your files, it proceeds to restoring the formatted disk to its original state. You don't have to do anything but click the Next button on a disk recovery wizard!

Recover Deleted Files and Repair Corrupted Disks with SoftAmbulance

Deleted files? Corrupted documents? Lost data? Call for SoftAmbulance! No need to wait for even a minute – download your copy right now and fix your disk problem in just seconds! SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor is designed for people like you and I – no programming skills or hi-tech geekness required.

Deleting a document by accident is easy. That can happen to anyone, and happens regularly to everyone who's using their computer for anything but computer games. Thanks to the intuitive, easy-to-use interface of Microsoft Windows, it is now very easy to format a hard disk. The problem is, how do you un-format it? The all-mighty and user-friendly Windows won't do anything about it.

Even if you are extra-cautious and don't usually click "OK" when asked to agree with the total loss of your data, data corruption and hard drive crashes tend to happen regardless. Sometimes the corruption is so severe that you cannot even access your disk or partition, let alone read your files.

Did you experience a hard drive failure? No access to disks or partitions? Suspecting virus attack or hardware failure? Stop messing around and call for an ambulance! SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor restores your hard drives health and cures your files and data completely automatically. It won't require you to read any "Data Recovery for Dummies" books or take a college class learning how to fix your PC. SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor will just ask you which disk or what files you need recovered, and works completely automatically after that, pursuing complete restoration of corrupt files and data.

Under the hood SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor has a complex and powerful data recovery engine. It's not just another free undelete tool or a clone of Windows check-disk. Being a much more complex and way more robust recovery product, SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor combines check-disk and undelete functionality, but does it much better and more reliably. Instead of relying on the possibly corrupted file system to find deleted files, SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor scans the entire hard drive surface to locate every file that can be restored. It's designed to rescue as much data as possible even if your hard drive went amuck and file system is barely breathing.

SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor is a perfect data recovery tool for the rest of us. A simple, intuitive wizard guides you through entire recovery process by asking you multiple-choice questions. It's not a math exam, not even an algebra test! Just select the damaged disk or the drive that contains deleted files to recover, and SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor will start working on that drive automatically. Deleted files, corrupted data, lost documents and broken file systems not a problem with SoftAmbulance Partition Doctor. Download your copy right now from http://www.softambulance.com/

Recover Deleted Excel Spreadsheets

Today, Microsoft Excel clearly possesses dominant market share in the spreadsheet product market. Its proprietary XLS format is compatible throughout the range of Microsoft Excel versions, and is a de facto standard at home and in the office. It is hard to overestimate the number of spreadsheets and the amount of important data stored in XLS files all over the world. But what if your computer's hard drive fails and you lose access to all spreadsheets? Or what if you simply delete an XLS spreadsheet on which you've spent hours of work?

Don't panic! Everything may not be lost just yet, and you may be able to recover all information without a sweat. To maximize your chances of successful recovery, minimize your activity on the computer where the lost files were. While you cannot be completely sure that Windows does not write anything on the disk that stores your lost files, the goal is essentially to limit disk write operations until you get back all important data from that disk. Any data that's written on a disk that contains deleted or inaccessible data on it can, and probably will, overwrite the deleted files on the disk and destroy information that was stored in them.

Anecdotally, one of the worst things you can do is looking for a tool that will undelete or recover your XLS files, installing and trying out such tools in action. On a typical PC, any Web page you open in a browser will cause several file writes to a hard drive, reducing your chances of successful data recovery. Any program that you download or install is also written to your hard disk. Finally, as not all products are equal, running a wrong type of data recovery application bears an unacceptably high risk of losing your lost Excel spreadsheets forever.

DiskInternals Excel Recovery is designed specifically to find and recover Microsoft Excel XLS spreadsheets safely and securely, no matter how badly your hard drive or the file system are damaged. If you simply deleted an XLS file, DiskInternals Excel Recovery will look up the file system to find all XLS files that were deleted recently, and test each file for the possibility of successful recovery. In bad cases or if your hard drive crashed or the file system is corrupt, DiskInternals Excel Recovery will scan entire hard drive's surface in order to locate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that aren't marked in the file system. The product uses a list of signatures associated with Microsoft XLS file format in order to detect precisely the beginning and end of each and every Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on your hard disk, extracts and validates their contents and metadata on the fly. This method works even on disks that are completely inaccessible in Windows!

The product matches the results obtained with the file system scan against those obtained by scanning surface of the hard disk, and displays the complete list of recoverable Excel spreadsheets along with their file names, metadata and contents, giving you the best possibility of successful recovery.

If you only need to recover the latest version of an Excel spreadsheet, you can use "On the Fly" filters that allow to only showing XLS files with specific title, created by specific author, or the files that contain certain text, are of a certain size, or are last saved on a specific date. The free version of DiskInternals Excel Recovery allows full file preview to ensure that you can recover exactly the files you need.

Download and try an evaluation version for free from http://www.diskinternals.com/. You only need to purchase when you see for yourself that DiskInternals Excel Recovery provides you complete recovery of your XLS files in your particular circumstances.

Recover Damaged Mail and Data in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is the de-facto standard for office communication. A typical office employee's entire workflow consists of tasks, contacts, and email exchange in Microsoft Outlook. But what happens if one day a system crash happens, or a hard drive fails, or some malware targets and corrupts your Outlook data? Does this mean the end of the day for your entire office?

Are you betting on the chance that corruption is unlikely to happen? Consider the following. In a typical office environment, Outlook PST and OST files that contain all email, tasks, appointments and contacts are the files accessed most frequently. Computers read and write to these files all the time during the working day, except for the lunch break. If there is one file that is likely to be damaged or corrupted during a power outage, that would be an Outlook storage container. If Windows crashes at the moment Outlook was accessing a PST or OST file, the corruption will occur almost inevitably. If that happens, Microsoft Outlook will not be able to access that data, and it will report a corrupt database.

Modern hard drives are made to barely survive through the warranty period. Chances of hard drive failure increase exponentially after about 3 years of use. Don't let a hard drive failure to get you unprepared!

Power outages, black-outs and brown-outs are becoming all too common. A UPS can save you from power outages, firewalls can protect against viruses and malware, and regular backups will get you back on track if the unpredictable happens. But what if the backup is a few days old, and you're in the middle of something important? What if you cannot afford to lose several days of work? Consider repairing the corrupt Outlook database to save you days of work!

Outlook has a built-in recovery mechanism. If Outlook detects corruption in a PST or OST file, it rejects the file automatically, not allowing you to continue your work.

Microsoft provides another level of recovery in the form of a special Inbox Repair Tool to recover corrupt databases called ScanPST.exe. It claims to recover corrupt Offline Folders (*.ost) and Personal Folders (.pst). Unfortunately, this level of data recovery can only cope with small problems, and frequently fails if more serious damage is done to the database. Even worse, sometimes its recovery attempt produces files even more damaged than the originals. Microsoft warns that using that tool can result in data loss.

If everything else fails, refer to a third-party solution such as Recovery ToolBox for Outlook http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/outlook.html. The product maximizes your chances of successful data recovery of your mailbox files with all email folders, tasks, appointments, contacts and any other data stored in the PST and OST files. Unlike many similar tools, Recovery ToolBox for Outlook can repair PST and OST files that are seriously damaged, and can even deal with the harsh consequences of running Microsoft ScanPST.

Recovery ToolBox for Outlook allows you to access PST and OST files directly, bypassing Microsoft Outlook completely. It implements its own algorithm of accessing Microsoft proprietary formats and optionally converting data into a set of regular .eml files. The toolbox is not limited to just data recovery, allowing you to convert your *.pst and *.ost files into a set of *.eml and *.vcf files, or convert *.pst files into *.ost format.

Download your copy from http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/outlook.html and keep it installed on all PCs in your office and at home to be able to get back to work instantly in case of an unpredictable event!

RAR repair software tool

A great number of our customers use file compression on a daily basis. RAR archiver is very popular and it is often used, when sending large files within your local network or outside.

However, in some cases it is safer to send unpacked files, because file compression is not always stable and this way of forwarding files may lead to their corruption. If you have just downloaded a file of RAR format and you see an error or corrupt rar, when trying to open this document, you may need Recovery Toolbox for RAR.

This rar repair tool helps, when users are unable to download large files one more time due to any reason, for example, when your Internet traffic is limited. Moreover, you may need a single document from the whole archive, that is why, redownload is irrational. The program for rar repair, fix rar and repair rar works with all tools, that can create files of RAR format, all compression rates are supported. Your archive may be protected with a password, it is unimportant, password-protected files are easily processed. Please note, that Recovery Toolbox for RAR is not a crack of any kind, users should enter the password, when opening compressed files, you are not allowed to use Recovery Toolbox for RAR for illegal purposes. Recovery Toolbox for RAR will easily extract documents, if it is possible. In some rare cases, RAR archives may be seriously damaged, it may lead to impossibility for Recovery Toolbox for RAR to retrieve some files from corrupted documents of RAR format. Do not hesitate to drop us an email, if something about rar fix, repair rar file or fix rar file is not clear, we welcome feedback with regard to rar recovery software and rar fix tool from our customers.

Professional Data Recovery Services

Even though hard drives are built to last and endure a lot of things, crashes are something that hard drives don’t handle well. Although the loss of data is something to be expected - data recovery ensures that your hard drive doesn’t fail you when you need it the most. No matter how great a hard drive is built, failure is bound to happen one day.

When your hard drive crashes or you lose all of your information, there are things you can do to get back your data. The best way to get back your data, is to take your hard drive to a specialist in your area or send it off to a company. This way, tests can be ran on it and the specialists there can recover your data, which may require rebuilding your hard drive.

If this happens, and you lose all of your data, you should never try to fix the hard drive yourself unless you know exactly what to do. At this stage, professional data recovery services aren’t just a luxury - they are something you must have. The process for data recovery is time consuming, and requires both tools and a clean work environment.

Even though you may know quite a bit about computers and hard drives, data recovery is something that is best left to professionals. They have all the equipment and knowledge to recover files, without bringing more damage to the hard drive. They can also recover any type of file that was on your hard drive, even preview the files before they recover them.

Professional services can also offer you the emergency boot media. This methods allows you to recover any data from computers that cannot boot Windows due to a failure, virus, damage to the hard drive, or loss of data. Normally, this method can bring everything back to your hard drive, in a matter of minutes.

Professional data recovery specialists offer a variety of services and skills to help you recover any data that you have lost. They work with hard drives on a daily basis, and know everything that they can and can’t do. Professional services have the time to put into the recovery process, as they do it for a living.

Anytime your hard drive crashes or you experience a loss of data, you can always count on professional data recovery services to retrieve your data. Even though it may appear there is no hope for your lost files - professional data recovery services can make it happen.

Although data recovery can fix your hard drive and restore your data and information in most cases, you should still create a backup of your information. It isn’t hard to create a backup, and you should always backup your data at least once a week. With the proper data backup, you can keep on going with your operations while your crashed hard drive is being repaired - which won’t slow you down a bit.

Preventing And Reversing Data Loss

One of the most stressful times that a simple student or employee may encounter is a loss of an important file on the computer. It can be a day of doom if you are due to submit your paper or make a presentation and at the worst possible moment your file is deleted. Thus, data recovery may be the answer you are looking for. Data recovery is technology that will help you to salvage lost data. First things first, you may want to take out your rolodex and try calling your tech-savvy friends to help you out. In case you have no more choice, you just might have to spend a little bit to get yourself a data recovery software or a specialist to help you out.

1. Determine What's Wrong:

- your computer will not start at all
- blue screen of death
- your computer boots up, but files are missing or are corrupted
- your computer opens up but you cannot seem to find some of your other drives

2. Weird Sounds

Before doing anything, try to hear if there are any sounds coming from your hard drive like a weird scratching, scraping or ticking. If you do hear something like it, then it is enough to conclude that your hardware may be physically damaged. The only possibility for you is to take your computer to a data recovery service where experts might be able to get your data off for you. Of course, this would entail a lot of time and money, so you may want to weigh the value of the data you lost before going a step further.

3. Do-It-Yourself Data Recovery Tips:

- Acquire and download software to help you out
- Not all software is free
- Attach your hard drive to another computer if your computer has only a single drive. This is to provide enough space to store all your data
- If your computer has a rollback safety feature, try and roll back to a previous saved state to restore damage

4. Possible Causes Of Damage:

- Lightning strike
- Virus
- Hard drive failure
- Accidental deletion of data
- Water/fire damage
- Improper software installation overwriting important data

5. Be Prepared - Make Backups

Having back-ups is the only solution to your data loss problems. They come in various forms:

- Virus protection software
- Personal firewall
- CD backup
- DVD backup
- RAID hard drive

6. Back-Up Tips

- Try investing in backup software of good quality and performance. Products that leave you secured from data loss disaster or further computer file crashes are always a good investment.
- Double check the restore capability. The software should have features that guarantee that while the product is performing your back up it checks all the data down to the level of bits and bytes.
- Double check the capability of your back up medium. Invest on the best back up software you can get and at the same time, for the purposes of prevention, start manually and diligently backing up your data regularly.
- Do an inspection of your hard drives from time to time. Always be on guard of viruses and spywares that can possibly crash your hardware. Defrag your computer regularly to correct errors and check bad sectors as soon as they are detected.
- Be sure you conduct a proper documentation of what transpired during the data loss disaster, what you have observed, as it progresses and the things you attempted doing to give your files the first aid. This will help the data recovery expert to track the problem and recommend the best solution for your problem.

PC Crash! How To Find The Best Data Recovery Consultant

Everyone’s PC crashes now and again. So what can you do after that dreaded crash? Hire a Data Recovery Consultant.

You wouldn’t let somebody throw away important documents or files of yours, would you? Well, don’t let your computer get away with that either. Even if your business has backup files, your data is still at risk of deletion. That is why it’s nice to have a Data Recovery Consultant on your side.

When your hard drive crashes, it can be a scary thing. What if you lose data you never had time to backup? What if you need that data to be recovered immediately? What if typical restoration procedures aren’t working? Accidents happen, but something like this is not as easy to shrug off as spilled milk. So before that dreaded PC crash, why not make a game plan? Personally restoring your hard drive data is not an ideal option but a Data Recovery firm or consultant can pull a “Hail Mary” for you.

Still not convinced you should put matters into other people’s hands? Well, simply put, there are compelling advantages to leaving repair up to a consultant. First, skilled experts are going to do a much better job; they have experience under their belts and will know about several different kinds of data loss and restoration. Not to mention, they have the proper tools, equipment and software devices required for repair – things you would have to invest in yourself otherwise. And if your data recovery needs are for a business, then there is the old adage “time is money” you may want to keep in mind. A consultant can save you time.

Avoid the risk of losing sensitive and important data and also avoid the headache of trying to restore that data by a deadline!

Hire a consultant.

But how do you go about finding a data recovery firm? A firm’s services can be expensive and the risk of data loss can still be high if you do not research a firm beforehand. Contact a service provider and find a convenient, but reputable company to turn to. A consultant may cost a lot more than sending your drive out to a firm, but at least repair can be on your own turf. Weigh the costs and benefits and decide what is best – either way, your data is probably safer in an expert’s hands and not your own.

The Internet is also a great way to find out about a firm’s personnel and services. Often you can even read recommendations by other clients. But don’t just research a firm from afar; go ahead and make time to have a chat with employees so you can be assured of their qualifications.

Outlook Express Recovery Made Easy

Microsoft Outlook Express is by far the most popular email client. It comes pre-installed with Windows; it is free, convenient, and advanced enough for those stepping up from Web-based email.

The main advantage of Outlook Express over Webmail is the ability to keep your complete communication history for years to come. If you've used Outlook Express for some time, you've probably accumulated a huge pile of archived messages. But imagine that archive becoming suddenly unavailable to you, and you'll know how much you have to lose!

Why would that happen? Outlook Express keeps email messages in a proprietary-format database, which in turn is stored in DBX files, each DBX file representing an email folder. Once these files reach a certain size, they tend to break. Another reason for losing an Outlook Express email archive is file or data corruption that can result from a simple crash of the Outlook Express application. If the crash happens while Outlook Express is writing to a DBX file, that file will inevitably fail.

Can you do something to get your email archive back? With Microsoft tools, probably not. There's no easy way to recover corrupt Outlook Express databases in Windows. But all is not lost! Meet Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express (http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/outlook_express.html), an easy tool to recover corrupt Outlook Express databases!

Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express can repair Outlook Express databases that are slightly corrupt or even badly damaged, salvaging everything that can be recovered. The tool does not use Outlook Express to access the database. Instead, it employs its own advanced mechanisms to read and repair DBX files. Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express protects your email from accidental deletion and corruption. Repair corrupt databases and un-delete zapped mail even if it has been removed from "Deleted Items" in just a few clicks!

Deleting email in Outlook Express does not actually erase the message - not yet. Your deleted messages first come into the "Deleted Items" folder. They will be stored there indefinitely - unless you delete them from that folder, that is. But once you delete email from "Deleted Items", there is no easy way to get it back if you need to!

Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express is ready to help you with messages removed from the "Deleted Items" folder. If you accidentally delete a message from "Deleted Items", don't do anything in Outlook Express! Just close the program, and run Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express. It'll scan your Outlook Express database looking for messages that were deleted but can still be recovered. Once the scan is complete, it just takes a few clicks to recover your mail.

Ever wondered what's inside of those DBX files? Use Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express to open and navigate these files without Outlook Express, or use it to convert DBX files into a set of standard .eml and .vcf files.

Don't risk losing your email archives! Download Recovery ToolBox for Outlook Express from http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/outlook_express.html and protect your email against accidental loss!

OST to PST convertor

Besides mailbox recovery, Recovery Toolbox for Outlook is an easy way to convert the data. For example, if your mailbox is stored on Microsoft Exchange Server, it is not accessible offline, from your home PC. Now you have a solution, Recovery Toolbox for Outlook can easily convert OST format to files with PST extension, that can be opened offline.

PST files may be burned to a CD or forwarded to any other PC within your local network, there are no restrictions with this. Now your mailbox does not depend on your mail server, PST files may be backed up to any removable media, this measure will be a good addition to other measures that should protect your PC. Try Recovery Toolbox for Outlook and enjoy an effective tool for file conversion, convert ost pst and convert .ost to .pst, demo version of this program for ost pst conversion and ost to pst is available for free.

Documents and instructions are not needed, in the most cases, OstToPst conversion is performed by all users from the first attempt.

How to convert .ost to .pst? However, our engineers are ready to respond all requests with regard to ost recovery, ost to pst conversion and convert ost to pst within 24 hours. Feel free to forward us your opinion with regard to Recovery Toolbox for Outlook and osttopst, it is very important for us. All emails are carefully reviewed by support department and within reasonable time. You can also compare Recovery Toolbox for Outlook with other data conversion solutions. An innovative data conversion engine features considerable benefits with other programs. Recovery Toolbox for Outlook ost to pst converter works with all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Windows.

OST to PST convertor

Besides mailbox recovery, Recovery Toolbox for Outlook is an easy way to convert the data. For example, if your mailbox is stored on Microsoft Exchange Server, it is not accessible offline, from your home PC. Now you have a solution, Recovery Toolbox for Outlook can easily convert OST format to files with PST extension, that can be opened offline.

PST files may be burned to a CD or forwarded to any other PC within your local network, there are no restrictions with this. Now your mailbox does not depend on your mail server, PST files may be backed up to any removable media, this measure will be a good addition to other measures that should protect your PC. Try Recovery Toolbox for Outlook and enjoy an effective tool for file conversion, convert ost pst and convert .ost to .pst, demo version of this program for ost pst conversion and ost to pst is available for free.

Documents and instructions are not needed, in the most cases, OstToPst conversion is performed by all users from the first attempt.

How to convert .ost to .pst? However, our engineers are ready to respond all requests with regard to ost recovery, ost to pst conversion and convert ost to pst within 24 hours. Feel free to forward us your opinion with regard to Recovery Toolbox for Outlook and osttopst, it is very important for us. All emails are carefully reviewed by support department and within reasonable time. You can also compare Recovery Toolbox for Outlook with other data conversion solutions. An innovative data conversion engine features considerable benefits with other programs. Recovery Toolbox for Outlook ost to pst converter works with all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Windows.

Offsite Data Backup or Online Storage, which solution is the most suited to you

Most people still think that backing up to an offsite environment is the same solution as moving files to an online storage system. If you want to know what the differences are, so you are able to make an informed decision, please read on.

Online file storage is a means for moving your digital photos, music, movies and projects off your computer via the internet to a remote storage facility, so you can access them from anywhere, share them with friends. Online file storage works by giving you and thousands of other people storage space on large internet servers. This storage is basically used as an extension to your local storage.

A typical example of use would be anybody how has non-critical data such as MP3, MPG, JPEG files who would wish to store data remotely in case of drive failure or loss and may also wish to share said files with friends. Please note this form of data storage is for file data only and would require manual transfer via ftp. Online storage is ideal for a home user looking to secure or store data offsite.

Offsite Backup is a commercial offering, originally used buy large corporate organizations who could afford high bandwidth connections ensuring their data is backed up to third party locations with highest emphasis placed upon security. As the cost of internet connectivity has greatly reduced, offsite secure backup services have become available to smaller businesses. I am sure you can appreciate, if a company, business or organization was to lose data, it would not know who its customers are, who owes money to whom, therefore creating many more challenges than a home user losing their MP3 collection would face.

It is not just an issue of moving file data to a remote location, there are many other factors a company has to address, such as:

What type of data has to be backed up – most companies will have a database in one form or another such as, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle or Lotus Notes which will be running 24 hours a day. A backup solution must contain agents for backing up the databases in question whilst the database is running and must support multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Novel, Linux and Unix etc.

Security – The data to be backed up is “sensitive” and you would certainly not wish to share this data. Before data is backed up it must be encrypted to the highest levels possible, levels used by your bank or the military for example. Your data must be stored whilst still in the encrypted state ensuring only you have access.

Data Backup can create a large manpower overhead, so your offsite solution must be totally automated requiring no human intervention, set and forget.

The hardware must be dedicated for backup and resilient as possible with no single points of failure and then for good measure this whole infrastructure must be replicated in real time to a second datacenter.

All the above factors will ensure your business data is backed up and available for restore regardless of data disaster.

In summary, online storage, great for home users storing MP3, Video and file data. Offsite data backup is a must for business use.

To find out more information about secure offsite data backup solutions, please visit

www.perfectbackup.co.uk