Veeam has released security updates for four security flaws in its Backup & Replication software.

Veeam Backup & Replication is the backup and recovery engine of Veeam Data Platform, and provides backup, recovery, and replication for virtual, physical, and cloud workloads.

The company claims to have 67% of Global 2000 firms as customers, including Shell, Airbus and Mondelez International, as well as Managed Service Providers (MSPs) offering backup services.

The vulnerabilities affect Veeam Backup & Replication 13.0.1.180 and all earlier version 13 builds – but not previous versions. In other words, the vulnerabilities affect 12.x and older.

The Veeam vulnerabilities explained

The first, CVE-2025-59470, has had its severity adjusted to high, with a CVSS score of 9.0. This vulnerability allows a Backup or Tape Operator to perform remote code execution (RCE) as the postgres user by sending a malicious interval or order parameter.

Previously rated as critical, its severity was downgraded thanks to the fact that Backup and Tape Operator roles are highly privileged and because security guidelines lowers exploitability.

CVE-2025-55125 is also rated high in severity, with a CVSS score of 7.2. This allows a Backup or Tape Operator to perform remote code execution (RCE) as root by creating a malicious backup configuration file.

The medium-severity CVE-2025-59468, meanwhile, allows a Backup Administrator to perform remote code execution (RCE) as the postgres user by sending a malicious password parameter.

Finally, CVE-2025-59469, with a CVSS score of 7.2, allows a Backup or Tape Operator to write files as root.

Backup systems are prime targets for hackers

Shane Barney, CISO at Keeper Security, said backup systems are a “consistent target” for cyber criminals largely due to the fact they have “broad access across infrastructure”.

"If an attacker gains control of one of these privileged roles – whether through credential theft, misconfiguration or insider misuse – vulnerabilities like this can be used to execute code and weaken an organization’s ability to recover from an attack,” he said.

All the flaws were discovered through internal testing and there's no evidence that they've been exploited in the wild. The company has now released a new version of the software, 13.0.1.1071, to address the vulnerabilities.

Organizations are advised to update immediately. However, they should also work to avoid the risks in the first place, said Barney, by tightly controlling and monitoring privileged access.

"Veeam acted appropriately by disclosing and patching the issue, but the broader lesson for organizations is that patching alone isn’t enough," he said.

"Backup operator accounts should be treated as the most sensitive class of privileged access, with strict access controls, continuous monitoring and minimal standing permissions. When privileged access is tightly governed, the real-world impact of vulnerabilities like this is significantly reduced."

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A third of UK organizations are failing to back up all of their sensitive data, hindering their ability to restore operations and ensure service continuity in the event of a breach.

Almost half of those surveyed by security firm Cohesity reported not backing up all their workloads, including virtual machines, applications, and unstructured data, while 38% aren’t applying consistent data categorization, backup controls, and policies globally.

Crucially, only 45% consistently follow the ‘3-2-1’ backup rule - three copies of data, stored on two different media types, with one copy kept off-site. The same number are failing to keep tamper-proof copies by using immutability across all their organizational backup data to ensure resilience against cyber attacks.

Fraser Hutchison, VP for Northern Europe at Cohesity, warned that enterprises need to sharpen their focus on backup strategies as failure to do so could exacerbate recovery in the wake of a cybersecurity incident.

"Most organizations now recognize the need to identify phishing scams or social engineering tactics; however, we can’t lose sight of what to do when disaster does strike. While complete prevention is near impossible, assurance of rapid recovery is fully within organizational control," he said.

"Our research shows that UK organizations still aren’t taking adequate precautions when it comes to data backups. By storing data on immutable platforms, they can ensure business-critical information remains beyond the reach of adversaries and that operations stay up and running, even when systems are compromised."

Sharpen up on backups

Last year, research from Beaming revealed that more than 800,000 UK firms had lost company data in the previous five years, at a total cost of more than £1 billion a year.

Businesses with between 10 and 250 staff saw the worst effects, while the most expensive data loss incidents occurred in the manufacturing sector, where the median cost was more than £60,000.

Backup strategies are now front of mind for many IT professions, alternative research shows. A survey from Kaseya earlier this year found 30% are losing sleep over lackluster backup and recovery strategies, with some pushing for a stronger focus on this area.

Complacency was also identified as a recurring problem for many enterprises, according to Kaseya. Nearly two-thirds (60%) of respondents said they believed they could fully recover from a data loss incident in the space of a day.

The reality of the situation was different, however. Kaseya’s research indicated that only 35% actually could.

Can AI solve the problem?

The boom in the use of AI is a mixed blessing, according to Cohesity. While a third of UK firms believe that generative AI adoption is progressing much more quickly than risk tolerance, 54% agree that AI capabilities are highly effective for anomaly detection and analysis.

Half of businesses, meanwhile, said they find AI tools useful for accelerated threat hunting and investigation.

"UK organizations are understandably concerned about the risks of AI technologies, with GenAI adoption still outpacing risk tolerance," said Hutchison.

"However, our research reveals some silver linings: AI is already augmenting previously time-consuming, manual security processes. By the end of next year, AI will play an increasingly central role in data security operations, enabling businesses to identify and respond faster to threats."

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Production was halted at more than a dozen Toyota manufacturing sites in Japan due to a server that ran out of disk space, the company has revealed.

Routine server maintenance on systems responsible for parts orders was conducted by staff last week, Toyota revealed.

During the maintenance process, accumulated data in a company database was routinely deleted and organized, Toyota said. However, “insufficient disk space” led to an error that caused its systems to shut down.

This incident had a knock-on effect as backup servers were running on the same system, preventing staff from performing a switchover and taking down systems completely.

“Since these servers were running on the same system, a similar failure occurred in the backup function, and a switchover could not be made. This led to the suspension of domestic plant operations,” the car manufacturer said.

The outage lasted for over 24 hours in total, and systems were restored on 29 August after data was transferred to a server with larger capacity.

Toyota reiterated that the server outages were the “true cause” of operational disruption, following speculation that the incident had been due to a cyber-attack.

“We would also like to reaffirm that the system malfunction was not caused by a cyber attack, and apologize to all parties for any concern this may have caused,” it said.

Best practice was not followed

Manlio De Benedetto, director of systems engineering at Cohesity, told ITPro that the incident underlines the sometimes precarious nature of server maintenance and the necessity of a heightened focus on data resilience among IT practitioners.

“It looks like Toyota didn’t see this coming, and if they were monitoring it, then their team has not reacted to the critical issues in the right way,” he said. “In simple terms, the best practices are to know what you’re backing up, where from and where to.”

De Benedetto emphasized that organizations should employ stringent monitoring standards and robust countermeasures to ensure that maintenance processes don’t result in down-time and disruption for customers.

“Companies need to understand exactly which IT processes are the most important in the company and how they are related,” he added.

“We advise our customers to prioritize the systems in resilience categories. The highest category reflects the most important data, systems and processes, the loss or failure of which would cause the greatest economic damage.”

In this instance, he noted that the affected Toyota servers would be classified in the “highest resilience category” due to the risk that failure would bring production to a halt and incur significant costs.

In response to the incident, Toyota said it will conduct a thorough review of its maintenance procedures and “strengthen our efforts to prevent a recurrence”.  

What’s going on in Toyota’s tech teams?

This incident marks the third serious IT-related issue for Toyota in the space of three months. 

In May, the car manufacturer revealed that data belonging to more than two million customers in Japan was left “publicly available” for a decade due to a cloud configuration error.

Around 2.15 million customers are thought to have been affected by the leak, which lasted from November 2013 to April this year. 

In a statement at the time, Toyota said that the leak was caused by a “misconfigured setting” in its cloud environment. This incident was attributed to human error. 

Just weeks later, the firm warned customers in Asia and Oceania that their data may have been “publicly accessible” in a separate incident dating from October 2016 to May 2023. 

Exposed customer data included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, vehicle identification numbers, and registration details. 

Once again, Toyota attributed the leak to a cloud misconfiguration as a result of human error.

Zero trust data security provider Rubrik has announced it will acquire Laminar, an Israel-based data security posture management (DSPM) startup.

Rubrik said the addition of the Tel Aviv business will bring together cyber recovery and cyber posture across enterprise, cloud, and SaaS to create the “first cyber resilience offering of its kind”.

The acquisition will also see Rubrik leverage the Laminar team to create a new research and development center in Tel Aviv, Israel, adding to its existing hubs in Bangalore, India, and Palo Alto, California.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but sources speaking to TechCrunch, have suggested the deal could be worth upwards of $100 million, with some reports even suggesting as much as $200-250 million. 

In an announcement, Rubrik chief business officer Mike Tornincasa said the two companies “share a common vision that cyber resilience is the next frontier in data security”.

“Laminar’s technology, ability to execute, and vision make it a perfect complement to our strategy and innovative roadmap,” he said. 

“Together, our teams will create an integrated offering that gives customers the benefits of cyber recovery and cyber posture capabilities, and positions them to be resilient in their fight against cyber attacks.”

Launched in 2021, the Laminar platform pulls together cloud-native design with security expertise to help businesses increase the visibility of data and boost protection across fragmented environments.

Paired with its own security offering, Rubrik said this combination will help customers proactively improve cyber posture through visibility of data, as well as knowledge of who has access, and how it is being used – without having to deal with additional standalone tools.

The solution also promises an expanded focus beyond network and endpoint security to include cloud and data security, as well as the implementation of AI technology to prepare for more sophisticated attacks.

“There is a dark side to digital transformation in the form of shadow IT, and more businesses are realizing they can’t protect against what they can’t see—leaving them vulnerable to cyber attacks,” said Amit Shaked, CEO and co-founder at Laminar. 

“We have found synergy with Rubrik, a company that cares just as deeply about ensuring that customers are prepared against the inevitable. The combination of cyber posture and cyber recovery will help create a cyber resilient future where organizations can take on any threat, at any stage of the attack.”

Data protection has taken many forms over the years, with organizations transforming their approaches to best meet their changing needs. Be it to reduce the impact of a security incident, maintain constant uptime, or any of the myriad other reasons for modernizing a data protection strategy, businesses must find a solution that meets every one of their goals. This is something that’s often easier said than done, however.

All data protection is not created equal. The age of local-only backups is long over; while they still have their place, organizations are increasingly coming to appreciate the benefits of cloud-based backups and data protections. This doesn’t mean making a hard choice between the two. Approaching data protection from a hybrid cloud perspective is by far the optimal choice for most organizations, marrying the benefits of local and cloud infrastructure to bring the fastest, most secure backups to your business in a cost-effective way.

The consequences of bad backups

The cyber security landscape is forever in flux, with threat actors continuing to evolve their tactics to secure the biggest payout for their efforts. Ransomware continues to be the prevailing threat against businesses and despite the security industry, for many years, loudly repeating the need to implement the fundamental controls that help to prevent the majority of attacks.

Data from Recorded Future shows that in the second quarter of 2023, ransomware attacks were consistently higher than they have been at any other point in the past two years. The months of April and June 2023 both saw more than 400 organizations posted to ransomware victim blogs, and May’s figures, while not quite as high, were still well over 300. 

Data from HPE’s 2022 Getting ahead of modern data threats report tells an even bleaker story. A total of 91% of organizations were vulnerable to cyber attacks in 2021, and 47% experienced ransomware attacks on at least a monthly basis. In other words, a business’ data has never been more at risk than it is right now.

If a ransomware gang gains access to an organization’s data, there are any number of options available to them. They can encrypt it through ransomware payloads, steal it and hold it to ransom, a combination of the two, or simply wipe it all - perhaps to make a name for themselves. The typical ransomware scenario, however, sees cyber criminals encrypting important files, demanding payment in return for a decryptor. The reality is that very rarely is a full recovery possible using the criminals’ own decryptor key. Horror stories abound of victims paying ransom demands, only to realize the criminals put a lot more effort into developing the encryptor than the decryptor. It’s just one of the many reasons why paying the criminals is rarely the best course of action.

The most reliable and effective form of recovery from a ransomware or data-destruction incident is to preempt an attack and invest in a robust data protection and backup strategy. This will provide IT teams with a sense of certainty that they have everything they need to react and recover quickly in the event of a disaster.

Why hybrid cloud forms the backbone of any great recovery strategy

While backups form just one part of any organization’s data protection strategy, it’s still a hugely important piece of the puzzle. The traditional approach has been to store everything in a centralized location, keeping it close to the business. This can help hasten recovery times, but it can be costly and runs the risk of local disasters such as a flood or fire destroying everything that’s valuable. Backups hosted in the public cloud can be more scalable, remotely accessible, and more easily managed, but often lack the control organizations need and often incur high costs of retrieving data.

Hybrid cloud backups marry the best of both on-premise and public cloud backup models, making for the most reliable tool in a recovery war chest. At its most basic, it refers to keeping the data your business needs in both on-prem environments and in the public cloud too.

Hybrid cloud backups offer the greatest resistance to adverse fallout from cyber attacks and thus better value for money. Even if an attack on the on-prem storage infrastructure means data is destroyed, it will still be recoverable from the public cloud. This means that, in most cases, businesses can benefit from the speed of backing up from on-prem storage, but also default to downloading all the files they need from their public cloud should they need to.

Alternatively, for a more cost-effective approach, you can keep just the ‘mission-critical’ data on-prem for fast backups of the most important files and systems in the event of an attack, and keep everything else in public cloud storage to be retrieved at will. This minimizes the need for spending big to have everything in two places at once, while also making use of the marquee benefits of both on-prem and public cloud at the same time.

The data protection partner every business needs

The breadth of a business’ data estate can be intimidating. Choosing the right hybrid cloud backup partner can be crucial in creating a strategy that makes an attacker’s job as difficult as possible, while keeping operational costs low.

HPE GreenLake for Data Protection offers businesses the opportunity to meet all of their service-level agreements (SLAs) while keeping costs low and flexibility high. The setup means businesses can benefit from elastic scale and a pay-per-use structure, allowing them to spin up all the resources they need, when they need them, and only pay for what you use. 

HPE is also on hand to help guide you through the process, backing up all your data from edge to the cloud. Unlike other solutions, HPE GreenLake’s continuous data protection (CDP) allows customers to back up their data in a concurrent way, rather than choosing allocated, scheduled times to initiate backups. It means that no matter when an attack happens, you can be sure that your data is secure in a place that allows it to be utilized again in the most efficient way.

With years of experience in helping IT teams harness the power of hybrid cloud, HPE  GreenLake experts can help customers create the perfect backup strategy that works around the clock with optimum efficiency and flexibility. For those that want to fortify their defenses further, experts can also consult on complementary services like those from Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company and disaster recovery specialist, which remove the complexity associated with recovering from a cyber attack and restore normality in minutes.

For more information, visit Turn your data into intelligence with HPE GreenLake | HPE United Kingdom

UK manufacturing giant Morgan Advanced Materials confirmed some of its sites are still using manual processes as it struggles to restore its systems.

The company announced it was experiencing a “cyber security incident” on 10 January 2023 but did not offer many details about the nature of it.

Its wording of the event was strongly reminiscent of that used in typical ransomware attack disclosures, but the company has never confirmed if this is true. 

Morgan Advanced Materials said at the time that it launched an investigation, engaged third-party specialists, and enacted its incident response plan.

In a regulatory notice published on Friday, it said all sites are currently operational but are not fully restored.

“Morgan experienced a cyber security incident in January 2023, having detected unauthorized activity on the network. Immediate steps were taken to contain the incident, launch incident response plans, engage specialist support services, and embark on restoring systems. 

“All manufacturing sites are operational, although some continue to use manual processes as work continues to restore their systems.”

The company also said it expects recovery costs to reach “around £15 million”. These include “system recovery and specialist support costs, including IT asset impairment charges of £0.7 million”.

The latest expected cost of recovery is £3 million more than the £12 million sum it originally forecasted back in February.

Published in a regulatory update for investors, the admission caused the company’s shares to drop more than 5%.

In the same investor update, it also said “a small number of systems have proven irrecoverable and so we are accelerating the implementation of a new cloud-based ERP solution at the affected sites”.

“Whilst demand has remained strong during January, we are experiencing production inefficiency during the recovery period which, based on current estimates, could lead to adjusted operating profit for FY2023 being approximately 10% to 15% below our previous expectations.”

The company’s full-year results for the period ending 31 December 2022 revealed revenue and profit gains over 2021’s results. 

Morgan generated £1.1 billion in revenue last year, up from £950 million the year before, and recorded £151 million in profit - also up from 2021’s figure of £124.5 million.

On 2023’s results, the company said it expects to return to growth in the second half of the year, with the first half to be in line with 2022’s results, despite the expense of recovering from the cyber attack.

“Demand has remained robust coming into this year, particularly from our faster-growing markets,” said Pete Raby, CEO at Morgan Advanced Materials. 

“As previously announced, the cyber event we experienced in January has impacted sales and profitability in the short term, but our recovery is on track. We are also taking the opportunity to accelerate the modernization of our IT infrastructure.”

In February’s regulatory notice, Morgan said it expected its yearly profit to be cut by 10-15% as a result of the IT recovery, and its latest filing said its “outlook for full-year adjusted operating profit is unchanged from our guidance of 7 February 2023”.

We carry our phones with us all the time, and the pictures we take with our iPhone cameras capture the most important, funny, and spontaneous moments of our lives. Losing your iPhone photos can be devastating but—luckily—deleted photos can usually be recovered. Read on for our guide on how to recover deleted photos from an iPhone.

Here we will outline a range of steps you can take to recover your lost photos, everything from simply checking a special folder on your phone to employing some of the best data recovery software.

How to recover deleted photos from iPhone: Preparation

Throughout this guide, you will see references to recovering from backups. To recover your photos from a backup, you will need to create that backup in the first place. Ideally, you should set up automatic backups when you first buy your phone, but you can start backing up your iPhone at any time.

iCloud is the best cloud storage solution for your iPhone because it is already part of the Apple product ecosystem. You can set it up easily from your settings app without downloading anything extra, and it will work with all of your iOS devices, not just your iPhone.

Setting up iCloud backups on your iPhone is easy, and takes only five minutes of your time. Once you have set up iCloud backups on your phone, iCloud will automatically back up all of your data—including photos—every time your iPhone is connected to power and WiFi, and your screen is off.

You can now take and delete photos to your heart’s content, knowing that you can always revert to a backup from the cloud if you lose something important.

Step 1: Check your Recently Deleted folder

If you accidentally deleted a photo, it doesn’t disappear right away. Instead, it moves to an album of Recently Deleted photos, where it remains for 30 days before being permanently deleted.

If the photo was lost less than a month ago, navigate to your Photos app and scroll to the very bottom, where you will find the Recently Deleted album under Utilities.

If the photo in question is in this album, simply tap it, then tap Recover in the bottom right corner of the screen. Hit Recover Photo again in the pop-up dialog to confirm recovery. The photo will now be restored to its original photo album from before deletion.

Step 2: Recover your photos from an iCloud backup

If it's been more than 30 days, or if your photo was lost due to a technical error, you may not see it in the Recently Deleted folder. In that case, you might be able to recover your lost photos by reverting your phone to an iCloud backup.

Once you complete the steps in the guide, you will have reverted your iPhone to a backup from the past. Make sure you choose a backup date from before your photos were lost, and they should reappear in your photo library.

Step 3: Download AnyRecover’s iMyFone D-Back

If you did not set up iCloud backup, or if you would like to recover your photos without doing a full factory reset of your iPhone, your only shot at recovering your photos will be to use data recovery software.

We tested many data recovery programs and found that AnyRecover is the best data recovery software for most users, because it offers the highest chance of successfully recovering your data. AnyRecover offers a special product for iPhone users called iMyFone D-Back, which you can use to attempt to recover deleted photos on your iPhone.

Use the link above to navigate to the iMyFone D-Back download page, and click Free Download to begin.

Step 4: Install iMyFone D-Back

Your computer will now download the iMyFone D-back installer. Once it has downloaded, double click it and hit install in the pop-up window. Make sure you check the box in the bottom left that indicates you have read and agreed to iMyFone D-back’s license agreement.

Wait a few minutes while iMyFone D-back installs. Once the installation process is complete, you can run the program immediately.

Step 5: Begin data recovery

To begin, connect your iPhone to your computer using your USB charging cable. Now open iMyFone D-back and click the Recover from iOS Device tab on the left. The name of your iPhone should be displayed in the center of the screen if you did everything correctly. Hit Next to proceed.

On the next screen, you will be asked what kind of data you would like to recover. By default, iMyFone D-back will try to recover everything, including old contacts, photos, notes, and voice memos.

Since you are only trying to recover photos, uncheck Select All in the top right and then select Photos. This will make the next step go much faster. Click Scan in the bottom right corner to proceed.

Step 6: Scan your iPhone

iMyFone D-back will now scan your phone and attempt to recover deleted photos. This works because when you delete a photo on your phone, it does not actually disappear immediately—instead your phone will simply make that photo invisible and inaccessible to you.

The photo still exists on your hard drive in some form for a while, until it is randomly overwritten by another piece of data. If you deleted your photos recently, there is a good chance that they are still present on your phone, and iMyFone D-back will be able to recover them.

Be patient with this process. Scanning takes some time, and the more storage space you have on your phone the longer it will take since your entire hard drive gets scanned.

Step 7: Preview the list of recovered photos

Once the scanning process is complete, iMyFone D-back will present you with a preview list of recovered photos. Scroll through until you find what you are looking for. Since iMyFone D-back is paid software, you will need to purchase it to recover your photos. That said, you can see if the photos are still recoverable at this point before you pay.

Unfortunately, if you get to this step and the photos are still not there, it means they were likely permanently deleted. The older the deleted content was, the more likely it is that it was overwritten by something else, permanently erasing it from your phone.

If you do not see your photo on iMyFone D-back’s preview screen, then regrettably that particular photo is unrecoverable.

Optional: Purchase iMyFone D-back

If you saw your photos on the list in the previous step, that means they are still present on your phone and it is possible to recover them. However, you will see that the recover button in the bottom right corner of the screen is greyed out. This is because iMyFone D-back is paid software, and you will have to purchase it to recover your photos.

You can buy iMyFone D-back on a monthly subscription for £40.48 a month, on an annual subscription for £48.60, or on a lifetime subscription for £56.70. It is worth noting that although the monthly plan is significantly more expensive, iMyFone D-back has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you only need to use it once, you can purchase a monthly plan and cancel within the first month to get your money back after recovering your photos.

Summary

Now that you have read our guide, you know how to recover deleted photos from your iPhone. Never lose your precious memories again by regularly backing up your phone to iCloud, and remember to check that Recently Deleted folder before you do anything else.

If you are really stuck, using data recovery software like iMyFone D-back is a great way to recover your deleted iPhone photos.

To learn more about programs that complement your iPhone, check out our guide to the best iPhone antivirus, and our iCloud mail review.

Whether you’ve accidentally deleted some contacts or you lose some data during an update, it’s important to know how to restore contacts on an iPhone. Luckily, Apple makes it simple to recover your lost contacts and provides you with a few different methods of doing so.

Knowing how to recover lost contacts on your iPhone can save you a huge headache. Some numbers might be easy to manually add back onto your phone. But when it comes to restoring the contact details of acquaintances or business contacts, this process isn’t so simple.

While you’ll learn some straightforward steps in this guide to recovering iPhone contacts, there are some scenarios where special software is needed. In that case, you’ll need the best data recovery software possible to retrieve your contacts, such as iMyFone which is purpose-built to recover deleted contacts, photos, messages and more on your iPhone.

How to restore contacts on an iPhone: Preparation

Before you get started, it’s a good idea to create a backup of your iPhone data. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong during the contact recovery process, this ensures you’ll easily be able to restore everything to your iPhone. You can do this through your free iCloud account, as described below, or you can choose to use a third-party cloud backup service.

Backing up your iPhone ensures that all your photos, contacts, and files are stored on the cloud and recoverable through your iCloud account at any time. So, if anything happens to your device, including damage, loss, or theft, you’ll be able to access these items again and restore them to your new device through your iCloud account.

Apple doesn’t provide a ton of storage on a free iCloud account. However, if you need more than the free 5GB, there are premium iCloud storage options available, from 50GB at $0.99 a month up to 2TB at $9.99 a month.

To create a backup of your iPhone, go into the phone settings from your home screen. Tap into the iCloud option and scroll to the iCloud Backup toggle. Tap on the toggle to turn it green. From now on, your iPhone will automatically back up your data to your iCloud storage on a daily basis.

Before you begin your contact restoration, tap the Backup Now option. Now all the data (including contacts) that are currently on your phone will be backed up to the cloud. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be able to easily restore your phone to its current state.

Step 1: Restore contacts directly on your iPhone

If your phone was already automatically synced to your iCloud account, restoring lost contacts directly through your phone is very straightforward. First, go to the settings icon from the home screen of your phone.

Tap into iCloud and scroll down to the Contacts toggle. Tag the toggle from the green to the gray position to turn off the automatic sync. A message will appear asking what you would like to do with contacts that were previously synced to iCloud. Tap the Keep on My iPhone option.

Now, tap the Contacts toggle back to green. When asked what to do with Existing Local Contacts, click Merge. This will restore any lost contacts back onto the device from your iCloud account.

Step 2: Log in to iCloud

If you need to restore contacts by syncing your iCloud backup to a new device, you can do so by logging into your iCloud account. This method is useful if your phone was lost, and you have logged into the same iCloud account on a new device.

Go to the iCloud login page on a browser. Enter your Apple ID and password. Once you’re logged in, click into the Account Settings under the welcome message. Scroll right down to the bottom of the page and click Restore Contacts from the list of options.

A pop-up box will appear with a list of archives. An archive is created every time your device is backed up to iCloud. Select the Archive under the most recent date before your contacts were deleted or lost from your iPhone. Hit the Restore button.

The restoration of your contacts to your iPhone might take a few minutes. You’ll get an email to your Apple ID email address to confirm the restoration.

Step 3: Export your contacts from iCloud

This method is useful if you have a new iPhone and have used a new Apple ID for it. Using this step, you can essentially download your backed up contacts from your old Apple ID and upload them to your device before syncing them to your new Apple ID.

From the iCloud home screen, select the Contacts icon from the list of options. Select all the contacts on the list by using Ctrl + A (or Command + A on a Mac).

Once all the contacts are selected, click the wheel in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Select the Export vCard option. A vCard file will be exported to the downloads on your computer.

You can send yourself this file as an email attachment to an email address that is logged into your iPhone. Download the file and click into it on your iPhone. The phone will display the list of contacts from the file. Hit Save and the contacts will be added to your iPhone contacts.

Summary

Whether you’ve lost your iPhone completely or accidentally deleted some important contacts, there are multiple ways to retrieve the contact records and restore them. In the case of a lost or stolen iPhone, you can even export contacts from iCloud and easily download them to a brand new device.

Knowing these retrieval methods brings peace of mind when you’re adding important business contacts to your phone. If you have lots of contacts and need extra storage to ensure regular backups, check out this iCloud cloud storage review to see if it’s worth the monthly subscription for you. You might also like to check out the best iPhone antivirus options for keeping your phone’s data safe, too.

Forgetting to save your work in an Excel spreadsheet before closing can be an exasperating experience. Knowing how to recover an Excel file, therefore, is invaluable to avoid having to start again from scratch.

Losing unsaved work is not always down to human error, computers are known to shut down with warning on occasion. Furthermore, with exceptionally large and complex spreadsheets. Excel may even crash.

Regardless of whether the lost file was a brand new document or a spreadsheet you have previously saved, recovering it should still be possible. This guide includes instructions on how to recover an Excel file on Windows 11.

Although, if you have permanently deleted the Excel file from your files and the Recycle Bin, unfortunately data recovery software may be the only way to retrieve it.

The good news is, you can take a look at the best data recovery software, to get an deep dive on the best tools to help recover your deleted data.

Step 1: Check your OneDrive version history

Your first port of call should be OneDrive, in case you were saving your Excel files to the cloud. Your files will be automatically saved at regular intervals, and OneDrive even stores the version history for you. This means if you accidentally overwrite or delete data on your spreadsheet, you can quickly restore a previous version of the file. 

The first step is to head over to OneDrive on your desktop browser and locate the file where your file is saved. Right click on the file and click Version History. Look for a previous version of the spreadsheet that was saved before the overwrite and hit Restore. Another option is to download the previous version of the spreadsheet and save it as an entirely separate file.

Step 2: Check the file history

If you’re using a Windows device and have File History enabled in your settings, you can recover a lost Excel file directly through your desktop. This step is useful for when you have overwritten large amounts of data in your workbook and want to restore a previous version.

Open Windows Explorer and locate the file you want to restore. Right-click on the file and click the Restore Previous Versions option.

A new window will pop up with a list of all the stored previous versions of your file. Click the most recent version before the accidental overwrite and hit Restore. The file will automatically update to the previous version that you selected.

Step 3: Open Excel on your device

You can also recover lost workbooks and spreadsheets directly through the Excel program on your desktop. First, open Excel on your device and open up any existing workbook file.

In the panel on the left-hand side of Excel, click File and then Open. Under the Recent option, you’ll see a list of all the workbooks you recently worked on in the panel on the right-hand side—including any you forgot to save.

Scroll through the recent files until you locate the unsaved workbook you need to recover. The timestamp to the right of the document titles in the list will help you identify when the file was created or last worked on.

Once you locate your lost workbook, simply double-click to open it up—and make sure to save it first thing.

Step 4: Click on Recover Unsaved Workbooks

If you can’t see your workbook in the list of recent files in Excel, there is another option. When Excel is open, on the left-hand side, click File and then Info. Click the Manage Workbook icon, then click Recover Unsaved Workbooks.

This will pull up a file explorer with a list of files that you created but didn’t save. Once you locate your lost workbook in this window, simply double-click to reopen the file and begin working on it again.

Step 5: Save your recovered file

Once you have recovered your lost Excel file, it’s a good idea to immediately save the file to your desktop or to OneDrive to avoid this scenario happening again.

To save the file to your desktop, click File at the top of your Excel toolbar, then click and Save As before selecting This PC. When the file explorer opens up, use the left panel to select the location or folder where your file should be stored. Name your document in the File Name field before hitting Save.

Alternatively, you can save the file to OneDrive by selecting OneDrive instead of This PC. This will open up a window where you can enter your OneDrive login credentials before redirecting you back to Excel to choose a folder, name your document, and save it to OneDrive.

Summary

It can be a stressful moment when you realise that you’ve lost an important Excel file or a spreadsheet that you’ve spent a lot of time on. If you’re working between multiple workbooks, it’s also an easy mistake to overwrite lots of critical data in a spreadsheet.

Luckily, Microsoft has made it fairly straightforward to recover an Excel file, whether it has never been saved at all or you just need to find a previous version of a saved spreadsheet.

Please note this review and our verdict of the product is based on version 10.2.0.0 as reviewed in March 2022. A new version - 10.5.0.0 - was released in September 2022. We will publish a review of the latest version in due course, but have updated some areas of this article (pricing etc.) for clarity in the interim.

With over 25 years of experience and over 3 million customers, Stellar Data Recovery stands as a leading data care corporation that enables you to recover lost or deleted data and to repair corrupted files. We’ve written this Stellar Data Recovery review to help you find out if one of the best data recovery software in the world suits your needs.

Stellar Data Recovery review: Snapshot

Stellar Data Recovery’s Toolkit and Technician software solutions recover data from storage media, crashed systems, damaged or lost partitions, RAID subsystems, and virtual machines. It works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and supports unlimited formats, such as NTFS (New Technology File System) and FAT (File Allocation Table). Its basic interface and powerful data care solutions fare well against its competitors, AnyRecover and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Technician, with positive customer reviews on Google and TrustPilot­.

The free version of Stellar Data Recovery is packed with many features that are available in the paid subscription, such as the Preview feature and the Deep Scan feature. Deep scan is more comprehensive than a regular scan, but the free software is limited to restoring only 1GB of recoverable data. (AnyRecover’s and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard’s free versions can recover up to 100MB and 2GB of data, respectively.)

AnyRecover is the overall better pick as it is faster, costs less, and has more features than Stellar Data Recovery. Nevertheless, Stellar Data Recovery Toolkit and Technician software can provide value for money and deliver adequate solutions for your data recovery needs.

Score: 4/5

Read on for our full and detailed review.

Stellar Data Recovery’s competitors

Stellar Data Recovery: Key features

Stellar Data Recovery has a basic interface that is very straightforward to use, even for those without any tech expertise. The software’s Preview feature, which can be buggy at times, enables you to view recoverable files and choose the ones you want to restore to a specified location on your hard drive.

If the first quick scan is unsuccessful, the Deep Scan feature can provide a more comprehensive search of your storage media. You can specify the file types you wish to recover to make the scanning process faster. While Deep Scan delivers better results than a quick scan, it can take several hours to finish scanning your storage media.

Stellar’s data recovery features can handle various file systems and formats, hard drives and external storage drives, virtual machines, and RAID arrays. You can scan and restore documents, folders, emails, audio files, photos, and videos. It can recover data from formatted devices or crashed systems, and enable you to create a bootable USB recovery drive to retrieve data from a non-booting Windows computer.

Both the Stellar Toolkit for Data Recovery and the Technician’s RAID Data Recovery Tool also enable experts to retrieve data from broken RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) arrays.

Stellar Repair for photos and videos, included in some plans, can repair damaged JPEG and other photo file formats, and fix corrupted video file formats. The software can extract thumbnails from corrupted images and repair blurred, distorted, pixelated, or grayed-out photos. The Video Repair Tool fixes 17+ file formats of broken video files in Mac and Windows systems.

Stellar Data Recovery: What’s new?

Stellar Data Recovery has evolved over the years, adding new features to address challenges in the data care market. The latest version of the Technician and Toolkit editions—Version 10.2.0.0—was released in January 2022.

The free version of Stellar received a much-needed upgrade in September 2021 to improve data recovery results in encrypted volumes, such as BitLocker and FileVault, and in virtual and 4K sector drives. The free software also received a new file preview design and additional user interface enhancements.

Stellar Data Recovery: Pricing

Stellar Data Recovery offers a free software version, and its paid subscriptions include the Toolkit for Data Recovery and the RAID Data Recovery Technician.

Be aware that the cost of the Stellar’s software can be confusing, as different pages on the Stellar website mention different pricing subscriptions. Sticking to the pricing on the Buy Now pages shows that the Toolkit software costs £215 for a one-year subscription and £429 for a lifetime subscription (Updated prices as of December 2022: £249 for one year and £509 for lifetime).

The Technician software is £142 for a 1-year subscription and £285 for a lifetime subscription (Updated prices as of December 2022: £169 for one year and £339 for lifetime). Both can be installed in up to three systems, and the license usage is for technicians, corporate, and annual maintenance contract (AMC) service provider companies.

Stellar has a 30-day money-back guarantee refund policy for the annual subscription.

Testing Stellar Data Recovery

It’s vital for customers to find data recovery software that is easy to use and works quickly and effectively to recover lost or deleted data. We tested several aspects of Stellar Data Recovery, such as installation, ease of use, scan speed, and data recovery, to establish whether the software was reliable and worth the price.

How quickly can you install and use Stellar Data Recovery?

We visited the Stellar Toolkit for Data Recovery page and downloaded the software, which took less than three minutes to complete. It took about six minutes to install the software, but the installation may be faster or slower depending on your device. During the installation, the software displayed a video instruction highlighting how easy it is to recover data using Stellar. Finally, a browser page with information was launched after the install process was complete, showing how data recovery is simple to set up.

The software met our objective on download and installation speeds, which means you can start using Stellar in a few minutes.

How easy is it to use Stellar Data Recovery?

Stellar Data Recovery’s minimalist interface is very straightforward to use. There were options to search for all data or to focus on documents, folders, emails, and multimedia files. You’ll find that the user experience is satisfactory.

How fast are Stellar Data Recovery’s scans?

We found that Stellar’s quick scan can be completed in about 5 minutes, depending on the folder or drive you’ve selected. Deep scans were very slow overall, showing the expected completion time would be several hours. According to Stellar, turning off the Preview feature during scans can significantly speed up scan time. They also recommend selecting the file types you wish to recover to narrow down the search.

Regardless, we did not expect the software to take as long as it did to conduct the deep scans, and this may be frustrating for you if you are in a hurry to get your files back.

How does Stellar Data Recovery perform in recovering data?

Finally, we checked how well Stellar Data Recovery would perform in recovering our deleted data. We ran the quick scan first. Once it finished, we ran the deep scan and found the software could operate in the background without using up too many computer resources. As expected, the deep scan found more files than the quick scan, and we were able to select a few, click restore, and select the drive where the recovered files would be stored.

All of the data in our test was recovered, though this may not always be the case in some situations, for example, if you used erasure software to delete your files.

Alternatives to Stellar Data Recovery

While Stellar Data Recovery’s software features are impressive, AnyRecover and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Technician would be viable alternatives for your data recovery needs. EaseUS focuses on providing user-friendly software for people who don’t have enough tech expertise, and it can handle different file systems and formats to help you recover your lost or deleted data. However, Stellar Technician and AnyRecover are more affordable than EaseUS. Stellar’s Toolkit software has a more extensive set than EaseUS even though they are similarly priced.

AnyRecover is the overall top performer of the software listed above. It’s fast and costs less than the other two while still providing value for money, with great features, extensive file format support, and data recovery capabilities. Stellar has a better free software version, however, as AnyRecover’s free version can scan your device but it can’t recover the data without a paid subscription.

Stellar Data Recovery: Final verdict

Stellar Data Recovery is a reliable option that can handle most of your data recovery and care needs. It’s easy to access, download, and start using before paying for a subscription, and the free version offers up to 1GB free data recovery. Its basic interface is straightforward to use for non-tech experts, and you can begin recovering your data in three simple steps.

While it was easy to install and use Stellar Data Recovery, the deep scan capability was slow, and the Preview feature stopped working well at times. Nevertheless, all of the data in our test was recovered.

Bottom line, Stellar Data Recovery is competitively priced, and its feature set makes the software a valuable option to consider. The company offers comprehensive support, with email, online, and technical phone support, making Stellar Data Recovery one of the best data recovery solutions on the market.

Further reading

Learn more about backing up your data using the best cloud storage software for businesses. We also provide details on the best password recovery tools.

Organizations are prone to data losses due to disasters, human error, hardware and software failures, cyberattacks, and more. CrashPlan offers an online cloud backup and recovery solution for multiple endpoints, giving you peace of mind by protecting your business data from various risks. We’ve conducted this CrashPlan review to check whether the software is a viable alternative to the best data recovery software solutions on the market.

CrashPlan review: Snapshot

CrashPlan is a top backup and recovery software tool that rivals other data recovery solutions. It can store data continuously and maintain multiple file versions to enable the user to track file changes and restore the data they wish to get. The software comes with a 30-day free trial of the pro version to test out its features, but you need to register and provide billing information before you can use it. Nevertheless, registration is fast.

There are two business versions available: a Small Business plan and an Enterprise plan. The Small Business version offers secure and encrypted data backup and restoration. The Enterprise plan provides extra features such as Legal Hold, which is used to store data needed for legal proceedings. Enterprise plan users can also migrate their data from different devices.

CrashPlan’s biggest rivals are IDrive and Backblaze. IDrive has better features and better online reviews than CrashPlan and Backblaze. Backblaze is the most affordable of the three, but it has a limited feature set.

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for our full and detailed review.

CrashPlan’s competitors

CrashPlan: Key features

CrashPlan’s continuous data backup feature protects businesses from data loss as all recent files are uploaded to the cloud or to external drives. The files are stored in multiple backup sets to guarantee their survival in case of a disaster or any other data risk issue. The files are also verified to prevent the uploading of corrupted data.

From laptops to smartphones, all devices are protected through CrashPlan’s endpoint protection feature. The software offers unlimited storage, and files can be backed up or recovered from various devices. Furthermore, users can migrate their data from one device to another with the Enterprise software. If you have a data preservation policy to respond to litigation—known as a legal hold—you can configure data retention settings in CrashPlan’s Enterprise software to maintain the device files needed to comply with a legal case.

CrashPlan’s file versioning feature stores new copies of your data when you make changes to the original files. Versioning can help track document revisions, enabling you to restore previous versions if need be. CrashPlan can recover deleted files, restore files to their original folder location, or keep data available for as long as you want. Moreover, you can customize how many versions should be kept and how long they remain in storage.

Ransomware attacks have become a problem worldwide, and CrashPlan’s ransomware recovery feature enables you to restore your files without paying ransom to a cybercriminal. CrashPlan’s archive maintenance tool checks backups for data corruption and self-heals the affected data blocks by requesting good versions of the data from the source. Maintaining good data copies ensures ransomware hacks don’t cripple business operations.

CrashPlan uses military-grade 256-bit AES data encryption at rest and in transit and offers passwords and identity authentication features to secure your data. Encryption helps if your business deals with patient data. You can sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) through CrashPlan’s customer support team to show you are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which requires that you protect electronic patient records.

We noted a few drawbacks to using CrashPlan. One was the need to register to access the free trial, and you have to sign in on the browser and on the software application before using CrashPlan. Another issue was the lack of support for a mobile app. Finally, upon launch, CrashPlan started compiling files without warning and before we had checked the settings.

CrashPlan: What’s new in 2022?

CrashPlan has received several updates every month from last year till now. Code42 app version 8.8.1, build 36—the final software upgrade for 2021—was released in December. In January 2022, CrashPlan received security updates and performance and stability improvements. In February 2022, the software received further updates to resolve backup issues created by changes to parent company Code42’s cloud infrastructure. It improved performance and stability and fixed the failure to transfer settings to new devices.

In March 2022, updates in version 8.8.3 fixed a subscription renewal problem and boosted security, performance, and stability.

CrashPlan: Pricing

CrashPlan has a 30-day free trial for the full premium software experience with no obligation to become a paying subscriber. Regardless, you have to provide your billing information before you can access the free version. After the trial ends, the company will begin charging you. There is no cost to install or restore files. CrashPlan offers two pricing plans: the CrashPlan for Small Business plan at £8 per endpoint, per month, and a custom price for the Enterprise plan.

Payments are only done monthly because the cost is charged per active backup device. Users cannot pay in advance nor can they pay per year.

Testing CrashPlan

Data backup and recovery software should be easy to use, offer secure file management, and have fast upload and download speeds. We tested CrashPlan on these factors by checking the ease of downloading and using the software, the ability to manage data safely, and the duration of uploading and restoring files.

How easy was it to download and use CrashPlan?

Getting CrashPlan’s free trial software was not as straightforward as we expected. Unlike its rivals, you have to create an account and provide billing information first. We encountered a problem with the bill registration and received an error code from the system after finalising the purchase. We had to repeat the process four times before the payment went through.

Installation took about five minutes to complete. Once we finished installing the software, we had to sign in again, which was a minor nuisance. CrashPlan then began automatically compiling data before we had checked the settings to select the files we wanted to back up. We couldn’t find a pause button, but we were able to go into the settings and stop the process. Aside from these challenges, the interface was easy to use, and we were able to access the settings and choose our preferences.

How did CrashPlan perform in managing data securely?

A backup service must guarantee data safety, so we tested CrashPlan’s security features. It requires you to sign in repeatedly, which ensures the right people are gaining access to the stored data. CrashPlan uses two-factor authentication, and we had to download an authenticator extension on Google Chrome to generate a code to log in to the CrashPlan software. Once we logged in, we could access the files we needed and restore them by selecting the destination folder, which is what we expected.

How fast was CrashPlan in uploading and downloading files?

Data management speeds are crucial in backing up files in real-time or restoring them. We uploaded 446.1MB, and it took seven minutes. We added more files to get it to 1.2GB, and we were surprised that it took over 20 minutes to upload the data. While this upload speed is disappointing, CrashPlan functions in the background without using too much of the computer resources, thereby keeping your files up-to-date.

Download speeds were faster than expected based on the slow upload speed. CrashPlan restored a 257MB file in about 28 seconds. That means you can get your backed-up files quickly when needed.

Alternatives to CrashPlan

Even though CrashPlan has impressive endpoint backup and recovery features, IDrive and Backblaze are worthy alternatives.

IDrive is best for businesses looking for a value-for-money solution, with more features than its competitors and availability on desktops and mobile phones. IDrive also has the IDrive Express solution. The company will back up your data to a physical drive and ship it to you, making the data recovery process faster. However, IDrive can be more expensive than CrashPlan since CrashPlan only charges you per device. In addition, IDrive lacks unlimited storage.

Backblaze is a simpler, more affordable, and easier-to-use alternative to both CrashPlan and IDrive. While its feature set is not as extensive as its competitors, it still provides adequate tools for backing up, securing, managing, and restoring data. Backblaze now offers a Backblaze 2 Cloud Storage subscription plan, enabling you to save more money on online cloud storage. Backblaze would be best for businesses that need a simple, affordable, no-frills solution to data management and recovery.

CrashPlan: Final verdict

CrashPlan stands out as one of the best data backup and recovery solutions. It provides automatic and continuous data backing, endpoint protection, at-rest and in-transit file encryption, ransomware attack recovery, and unlimited data storage. Its file versioning feature creates multiple updated copies to ensure you can restore data to previous versions.

While CrashPlan can be slow in uploading data, it can operate seamlessly in the background, gathering all the data and backing it up to the cloud or local storage. Its download speeds are fast, enabling you to restore data as soon as possible. The software also gives you the option of selecting the data you wish to back up and the frequency of the backups.

The design interface is straightforward, and users can begin selecting folder backup destinations and setting preferences. The two-factor authentication security feature is useful, but it requires an additional extension download to your browser. Even though the redundancy of signing in several times was annoying, it still showcased CrashPlan’s security approach for protecting your data.

Bottom line: CrashPlan is affordably-priced backup and recovery software that can meet your needs irrespective of the number of devices you wish to use. The software would be best for businesses that need scalable, round-the-clock, non-intrusive, secure data backup, recovery, and endpoint protection.

Further reading

If you would like to find out more about the best data recovery programs on the market, check out our guide to the best data recovery software.

Disk Drill is popular data recovery software that’s available for both Windows and Mac computers. In our Disk Drill review, we analyze it to help you determine whether it’s a good option for your needs.

Disk Drill review: Snapshot

Disk Drill is a popular data recovery program, and comprehensive testing shows that it deserves its reputation. It has options for both Windows and Mac devices, with excellent free plans and competitively priced lifetime licenses.

On top of this, Disk Drill is very easy to use. Quick scans take no more than a minute, and they will generally find any files you need to recover. More difficult recoveries can be completed with a deep scan, which will take longer.

Disk Drill boasts a suite of extra features, including the Recovery Vault, which is designed to make it easier to recover lost files in the future. It supports external drive scanning, and it has a great recovery rate.

When compared to its main alternatives, Disk Drill presents as one of the more affordable options. It sits right up there among the industry leaders, and many would argue that it’s the best data recovery program on the market.

Score: 4.5/5

Read on for our full and detailed review.

Disk Drill’s competitors

Disk Drill: Key features

Disk Drill is a powerful data recovery program that supports both Windows and Mac operating systems. It can be used to recover a wide range of devices, including hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, digital camera memory, and, if you’re using the Mac version, data from an iPhone or Android device. Over 300 file formats are recoverable, which is excellent.

Another excellent feature is Disk Drill’s Recovery Vault. When it’s enabled, it will monitor the drive or drives it’s told to. If any changes are noticed, such as a file being deleted or corrupted, it will keep a record of the file’s metadata.

With this information, it becomes much quicker and easier to recover the files if they are later lost. On top of this, you can recover unlimited files for free if you’re using Disk Drill’s Recovery Vault to protect your data.

Once you’ve run a scan, you will likely be presented with thousands of recovered files. There’s no way you’re going to want to restore all of them, so Disk Drill lets you filter and search for the files you want. When you’ve found ones that you think could be right, you can preview them within the Disk Drill file explorer.

Although it’s not available as a mobile app, Disk Drill does support mobile data recovery. If you have the Mac version, you will be able to search for and recover lost photos, texts, documents, and other data from your iOS or Android device. The process is similar to the recovery of any other external storage device, and you shouldn’t have any problems working through it.

Last, but not least, Disk Drill comes with a load of extra tools to help you maintain your device’s health. The Disk Health and Mac Health tools are designed to monitor your device and alert you of any issues. The Duplicate Finder enables you to search for and delete extra files that could be slowing your device, and the Data Backup tool offers backup options for Mac users.

Disk Drill: What’s new in 2022?

Disk Drill provides regular new releases for its Windows and Mac data recovery programs. The latest Mac release was as recent as the 2nd of March, 2022, and it improved the program’s detection of certain file types. It also boosted its ability to recover unstable disks.

The latest Windows update, from early November 2021, was much more comprehensive. It added full Windows 11 compatibility, various user interface improvements, and boosted scanning speed. It also enabled more configuration options for those wishing to fine-tune their scans and data backups.

Regardless of your operating system, you can rest assured that the Disk Drill team is working hard behind the scenes to ensure it remains at the forefront of the data recovery industry.

Disk Drill: Pricing

Disk Drill has slightly different options for its Windows and Mac data recovery programs. The free Windows option enables you to recover up to 500MB of data. The Pro version (£86.99, one-time payment) enables unlimited data recovery for a single user. Lifetime upgrades are available for an extra £28.34.

The Enterprise version (£487.74), one-time payment) supports up to 10 users and adds priority technical support. Lifetime upgrades here cost an extra £96.77.

The three Mac plans are priced identically to the Windows ones. However, the free plan doesn’t include any free data recovery, although it enables you to scan and preview the items that are available to recover. You will need a premium license to restore these.

Discounts are available in specific circumstances, including for those upgrading from previous versions (50% off) and for education and non-profit customers (20% off).

Testing Disk Drill

To test Disk Drill, we downloaded the Windows version, ran a scan, and restored a small number of files. The download and installation process was very straightforward, and you shouldn’t have any issues getting started.

How easy is it to run a scan with Disk Drill?

To start a basic scan with Disk Drill, you simply have to select the Start Scan option, then select the type of scan you want to run. For starters, we ran a quick scan, which took under a minute and found 423746 files totaling 22.6GB. Among these were a large number of image and document files, which was good to see.

Once the scan is complete, you can click through to view the recovered files. If you know the file type you’re looking for or when it was deleted, you can filter by these metrics. Alternatively, you can view the location of lost files to determine whether the ones you require are there. Disk Drill has a great recovery rate, and it took just seconds to recover 244MG of image files.

The deep scan feature took significantly longer, but it could be worth considering if you’re having trouble finding the files you want to restore. On our Windows computer, it took just under an hour to perform a deep scan, but it recovered just short of 600,000 files—almost 50% more than the quick scan did.

Alternatives to Disk Drill

DiskDrill is an effective and widely used data recovery and restoration program, but it’s by no means the only option worth considering. Two other popular options are EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and Stellar Data Recovery.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is a basic yet effective option. It’s tailored more towards beginners than advanced IT technicians, and its user-friendly interface is clearly a result of this. EaseUS is a little slow, but its scans are effective and able to recover a wide number of file types.

Like DiskDrill, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard can be used with Mac and Windows devices, as well as to recover external storage drives. On the downside, it’s very expensive. The cheapest plan costs £79.59 per year, compared to Disk Drill’s £86.99 one-time license fee.

Stellar Data Recovery is a slightly cheaper option that can also be used on Windows, Mac, and external storage devices. On top of this, it has an iOS version that supports iOS data recovery.

Depending on your requirements, Stellar could be more affordable than Disk Drill. If you need a simple one-time recovery program, its £43.99 annual fee is almost half the price of Disk Drill’s lifetime license.

Disk Drill: Final verdict

Disk Drill has a reputation as one of the best data recovery programs on the market, and this is well deserved. It supports the recovery of lost and accidentally deleted files and data from Windows and Mac devices, and its deep scans are extremely effective.

A range of external devices are supported, and with the Mac version, you can also recover files from connected mobile devices. Disk Drill is also quite easy to use, and the built-in file previewer is excellent.

Restoring files is very quick, and there is a range of extra tools to help you maximize your device’s performance. The Recovery Vault is a standout, making it much easier to recover accidentally deleted files in the future.

There’s even a free version that enables you to scan your computer before upgrading to a premium license, and the Windows version enables you to restore up to 500MB of data for free. The premium licenses are competitively priced too, so we’d recommend testing the platform if you’re looking for a reliable data recovery solution.

Further reading

If you would like to find out more about the best data recovery programs on the market, check out our guide to the best data recovery software.

Have you ever lost important data, experienced a technical issue, or simply wanted to transfer your old data to a new Google device? If you know how to restore a backup from Google Drive, you can recover your lost data, as with the best data recovery software.

Google Drive is one of the best cloud storage solutions available today. You can use it to save and share documents, collaborate via Google Docs, and access your files from any device. But did you know that you can also use Google Drive to back up photos and files, and retrieve them at your convenience?

In this article, we’ll cover all the steps required when it comes to learning how to restore a backup from Google Drive, so you can retrieve all of your data whenever you need to.

How to restore a backup from Google Drive: Preparation

This step only applies to Android devices. If you are using an iOS device, skip ahead to step 6 of this guide. If you are using a Windows PC, skip ahead to step 8.

Before you can restore your Android device from a backup, you’ll need to create a backup of your device. Ideally, you should start backing up your device regularly from the day you purchase it, but you can start this process at any time.

There are two kinds of backups for Google devices: manual and automatic. You can create a manual, one-off backup at any time, or start an automatic backup schedule that will create regular backups of your device in the background.

To create a backup of your Android device, download the Google One app. Go to the Storage tab at the top, and scroll to the device backup section. Tap "Set Up Data Backup", and choose which data you want to back up.

For the most comprehensive backup, you should back up your device data, full-resolution photos and videos, and MMS texts. Backups will now occur automatically when your device is idle, connected to WiFi, and when at least 24 hours have occurred since the last backup.

You can also manually trigger a backup by hitting the "Back Up Now" button in the Google One app under Storage > Backup.

Step 1: Retrieve backed-up photos and videos

You can retrieve backed-up photos and videos from your Android device at any time. They are stored separately from the rest of your backup data, in your Google Photos library. You can access Google Photos from any device by logging into your Google account and navigating to the Photos tab.

Photos and videos backed up from your device will be stored here, and you can restore them to your Android device if they are ever lost.

If you want to bring back your old photos, download any photos you want from Google Photos after you have finished setting up your device. You can also download the Google Photos app from the Google Play Store, and access your photos without having to download them.

Step 2: Reset your device

If you only need to restore a small amount of lost or corrupt data—your contacts app, for example—skip to step 5. If you want to upload a backup to a new Android device, it will already be set to its original factory settings, so skip to step 3. Otherwise, read on to learn how to reset your Android device.

To begin, go to the Settings app and tap "Backup and Reset". Depending on your specific device, these options might be named slightly differently, such as "Accounts and Backup" instead of "Backup and Reset". The sequence should still be similar.

Tap "Reset Device", then tap "Erase Everything". If your display isn’t working, or you cannot navigate your menus due to a technical error, you can also reset your device by holding the volume up, home, and power buttons simultaneously. This shortcut varies depending on the type of phone you are using, but this particular combination is common across most Android phones.

This will boot your phone’s recovery menu, which you can navigate using the volume buttons. Navigate to "Wipe Data/Factory Reset", and press the power key to initiate the reset.

Step 3: Restore your data

Once your phone is reset, you should see the welcome screen that you saw when you first set up your Android device. Tap "Let’s Go" to begin. On the next screen, select the option to "Copy Your Data", then choose "Backup from Cloud" as the copy method.

Sign in to your Google Account, and agree to Android’s terms of service. You’ll receive a list of items that you can restore, like your apps, call history, device settings, contacts, and calendar. Since you did a full factory reset, choose everything, and hit restore to begin restoring your data.

Once the reset is complete, you should have a fully functional Android phone, current to your latest backup. The only thing missing will be photos and videos, which you can now restore by following the instructions from step 1.

Step 4 (Optional): Restore without resetting

Instead of using the Google One app, you can use a third-party application like AnyRecover, Disk Drill, or iBeesoft to back up and restore your data, or one of the best data recovery software platforms.

Third-party apps can access your files in Google Drive and photos in Google Photos directly. You can download individual items from your backup, like individual messages or contacts, without resetting your device.

If you only lost a small amount of data, this is more efficient than doing a full reset. Plus, by using third-party software, you can access photos and files from one location instead of two separate ones.

Step 5 (Optional): Back up an iOS device with Google Drive

In addition to Android devices, you can use Google Drive to back up an iOS device. Apple products come with their own proprietary cloud account called iCloud.

iCloud has some limitations. Most notably, you cannot restore to a backup without doing a full factory reset of your iOS device. If you only want to restore a small amount of data, restoring from an iCloud backup can be very time-consuming. Google Drive, on the other hand, lets you restore data without a reset.

To begin, download the Google Drive app to your iOS device from the App Store. To create a backup, navigate to the Google Drive app settings and go to "Backup". Then hit "Start Backup". Google Drive will back up your photos to Google Photos, contacts to Google Contacts, calendar to Google Calendar, and so on.

This is a great way to migrate data from an iOS device to an Android device, or to keep your iOS data in sync with your other data if you keep most of your files on Google Drive.

However, you’ll have to navigate to each individual app to restore your data. This is beneficial, because you don’t have to do a full reset, but it is time-consuming if you are trying to recover a large amount of data. Consider keeping an iCloud backup for total resets of your phone, and a Google Drive backup for small amounts of essential data that you may need to restore quickly.

Step 6 (Optional): Enjoy unlimited backup with Google Pixel

Google Drive’s free storage space is limited to 15GB across all of your Google devices. This is particularly noticeable when you back up your photos, as it is quite easy to hit that 15GB cap.

However, if you own the original Google Pixel, you can enjoy unlimited full-quality backups to Google Drive for your photos and videos. Owners of the Pixel 2 and above get unlimited backups, though the quality is reduced after you surpass your 15GB storage cap.

You can recover your photos at any time by navigating to Google Photos in your browser and downloading them individually. Alternatively, you can access your photos in the Google Photos app without downloading them to your device.

Step 7 (Optional): Back up your PC to Google Drive

You now know how to restore your Android or iOS device from a Google Drive backup. But what about your Windows PC?

Note that these instructions are for backing up a large number of files. If you only need to back up a few files, drag and drop them into your Google Drive, and download them back to your PC at any time to recover them.

To begin, download Google Drive for desktop. Run the installer and hit "Sign In In-Browser" to sign in via your Google Account. Once Google Drive is installed, run it and right-click the drive icon in your taskbar. Click the gear in the top right corner and navigate to Preferences. Click "Add Folder" to choose which folders you would like to automatically back up to Google Drive.

These folders will now automatically back up any data in them to Google Drive. You can restore the data to your PC by downloading it from Drive at any time.

As you can see, there are many ways to restore your data from a Google Drive backup. You can do it on Android devices or your Windows PC. Google Drive can also be a cloud storage alternative to iCloud for your iOS devices, as it allows for more speed and flexibility when recovering an iCloud backup.

Further reading on cloud storage and data recovery

To learn more about cloud storage from Google, find out what Google Cloud storage is. Beyond Google, learn what hybrid cloud storage is, and read our guides to the best cloud storage for business, the best encrypted cloud storage and the best free cloud storage to determine what type of cloud storage is best for you.

Backup and recovery platform provider Redstor has detailed its new All Access Partner Program, alongside an expansion of its leadership team.

The new All Access Partner Program has been designed to help MSPs capitalise on high demand for cloud-based data protection services across on-premises, cloud-native, and SaaS business application workloads.

The initiative equips MSPs with co-branded online marketplaces that will simplify and accelerate the sales process, including sales, marketing and technical support, attractive NFR bundles and discount pricing, as well as a new Partner Advisory Board for exchanging insights with peers.

“Redstor’s commitment to MSPs is absolute,” Redstor said in a release. “The company only sells through the channel, and having started out as an MSP, it is familiar with the challenges that service providers face. This has allowed Redstor to create a uniquely powerful program with All Access.”

Redstor’s backup and recovery platform helps businesses discover, manage, and protect customer data. With a wide range of connectors for on-premises and critical cloud applications such as Microsoft 365, it helps streamline IT workloads by centralising the backup and management of data across entire customer environments.

It also offers near-immediate file recovery through its InstaData technology, as well as AI-powered malware isolation for safe restores.

With its new partner program, Redstor says MSPs will now see improved efficiency when onboarding customers and will benefit from lead referrals and listing in the Partner Directory.

Partners also have access to NFR and marketing development funds, increased margins, a library of sales resources, as well as access to the scheme’s Partner Advisory Board and partner community.

The move comes amid continued growth for Redstor and an expansion of its leadership team. Alongside its partner program, the company announced the appointment of Linda Misauer as its new VP of Software Security, as well as Douglas Sawyer as Director of Partner Acquisition.

That takes the total number of senior executives to recently join the business to four, with Mike Hanauer recently becoming Chief Revenue Officer and Matt Scully taking on the role of Channel Chief.

Speaking on his appointment, Sawyer said: “I’ve built a career on listening to MSPs, advocating for their needs, and teaching my teams to do the same. With Redstor, I can not only ensure their voice continues to be heard, I can answer with technology that’s recognised by users as the best on the market.”

A message arrives from a pal. One of those regular messages we all get, when we’re the person in the WhatsApp contacts list who knows most about computers.

“Sarah has a friend who’s a counsellor and she’s having difficulty migrating her Microsoft Professional data between two computers,” the messages reads. “She’s panicking as she can’t lose patient info et cetera, and is looking for someone to help.”

We’re two sentences in and this one already sounds chewy. Microsoft Professional data? Well, that could be anything. Panicking because of lost patient data? This doesn’t sound like someone with a comprehensive backup plan.

I pick up the phone and call said counsellor. My friend was right: we’re in panic code red. The long story made short is that our counsellor has just bought a new computer, because the old one was too slow to do anything with. On the old computer, she was seemingly part of someone else’s Office 365 account (I know, I know). On the new computer, however, she decided to make a fresh start and buy a standalone copy of Microsoft Office Professional from Amazon, because she doesn’t want to pay a monthly subscription.

A “computer-literate friend” helped her set up the new PC, and that’s working fine, but she’s locked out of her files. Every time she tries to access them, a message pops up telling her she needs to pay some money. Her computer friend is a Mac guy and he’s run out of ideas. Can I help?

At this point, two theories are racing through my mind. One was that our counsellor’s new PC is riddled with ransomware. The other proved to be the actual problem, which I’ll reveal shortly – if you don’t want to know the result, look away now.

Well, it did turn out to be a form of ransomware, albeit one propagated by Microsoft.

When our counsellor was part of that Office 365 account, one of the sundry benefits was 1TB of OneDrive storage. Whenever our counsellor saved a document on her old PC, she was actually – and unwittingly – saving it to OneDrive.

When she made the perfectly reasonable decision to buy a one-off licence for Microsoft Office for her new PC (“I only type reports, I don’t care about new features”) and left that shared Office 365 account, she unknowingly forfeited 1TB of storage. And even though her important client reports only take up a few hundred MBs of space, she’s got loads of digital photos saved in OneDrive too, meaning she’s somewhat over the 5GB of storage Microsoft affords “free” account holders. Even though she’s just paid Microsoft another £140 for Office.

A quick visit to OneDrive.com confirms her vital files are still there, although there’s an accompanying threat: pay up or anything above that 5GB limit could be deleted in a fortnight’s time. Attempts to download the full set of files are met with stubborn resistance.

The only way out is to cough up the cash. We could pay Microsoft a couple of quid for one month’s extra OneDrive storage and back up all the files to a hard drive, I suggest. “Great, I’ve got one of those!” says our counsellor, who then produces an Iomega drive the size of a small bungalow that must be 20 years old if it’s a day. Okay, let’s not back up to that.

The other alternative is to surrender, give Microsoft £1.99 more each month for OneDrive storage and basically let it take care of the backup. Neither of us like it. Microsoft effectively taking her files hostage and demanding money for their release hasn’t endeared the company to our counsellor. And I’d rather she had a local backup of the files so she wasn’t just relying on OneDrive, either.

However, it’s the easiest and cheapest solution to this fix. She gets an offsite backup of her files for a couple of pounds per month and can carry on writing her reports, and I get to go home without having to spend a few hours driving to buy a hard disk that’s not steam powered and backing up everything locally.

So, we do the dirty deal. I turn off the now-default setting that ensures only those files you access are actually saved on your PC, with all the others left in the cloud. If Microsoft puts up the prices (which it will) I want her to, at least, have a local copy of everything. She’s grateful she’s got her files back, but nobody feels good about it.

Nobody except Microsoft, which has sold a new Windows licence, a new Office licence and now has a new OneDrive subscriber wriggling in the keep net. And all because, as the ransomware writers know, the easiest way out is to pay to make it go away.

Dell has unveiled new data protection offerings as part of its partnerships with two major public cloud providers.

'Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure' and 'CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Amazon Web Services (AWS)' both aim to increase cyber resilience, which CEO Michael Dell has described as “fundamental to success”.

Expected to join other Dell offerings on the Azure Marketplace in June 2022, Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure aims to help organisations protect their data from ransomware attacks by isolating it in a cyber vault inside the public cloud.

Meanwhile, CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS will allow organisations to monitor files and databases to determine if a cyber attack has taken place. If a breach is discovered, the service will identify the last known uncorrupted copy of data to make a faster and more secure recovery, which will be supported with adaptive analytics, machine learning, and forensic tools. CyberSense for Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for AWS is expected to become globally available in the second half of 2022, and builds on the Dell EMC PowerProtect Cyber Recovery security capability announced in March 2021.

Alongside Monday's product announcements was the formalisation of a multi-cloud collaboration with Snowflake Data Cloud, which is known to use both Azure and AWS infrastructure. The partnership will allow Dell and Snowflake customers to use on-premises data stored on Dell object storage with the Snowflake Data Cloud, all while being able to choose to either keep their data local or in the public clouds.

Multi-cloud was named as one of the two greatest trends by Dell co-chief operating officer Chuck Whitten, alongside data.

“​​The worlds needs multi-cloud by design – not by default,” Whitten told attendees of the opening keynote at the company's annual tech conference.

Dell Technologies also announced the addition of recovery services to its existing Apex portfolio, which was first announced in October 2021. Similarly to Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Microsoft Azure, Apex Cyber Recovery Services also provide isolated vaults for the storage and recovery of data.

Available in the US starting today, the latest Apex addition will provide organisations with fully-integrated solutions “designed to provide rapid time to value and on-demand scaling with the convenience of a subscription”, according to Whitten.

“With Apex Cyber Recovery Services, you can feel confident in the ability to recover from a cyber attack and achieve more agility by offloading the day-to-day management of data protection. You get resiliency to recover operations from an isolated, immutable and intelligent data vault – something that we have deployed more than 2000 times globally,” he said.

Whitten also added that customers should “stay tuned”, as “additional Apex solution services will be delivered this year”. These will include high-performance computing (HPC), machine learning operations, VDI, and more, he said.

Apex Cyber Recovery Services will become available in other parts of the world in the second half of 2022.

Atlassian’s cloud outage that began on 5 April is set to last for another two weeks.

The collaboration software provider experienced an outage of its Jira and Confluence products starting 5 April. Although the problem didn’t affect all customers, it came at an awkward time as the company was hosting its Team ‘22 event in Las Vegas last week, an event where it shows off new products.

In a statement shared widely with the media and customers, Atlassian has now said that while it is beginning to bring some customers back online, it estimates the rebuilding effort to last up to two more weeks.

The company told IT Pro that as part of scheduled maintenance on selected cloud products, its team ran a script to delete legacy data. The data was from a deprecated service that had been moved into the core datastore of its products. Instead of deleting the legacy data, the script erroneously deleted sites, and all associated products for those sites including connected products, users, and third-party applications.

The company added that it maintains extensive backup and recovery systems, and there has been no data loss for customers that have been restored to date. The incident wasn’t the result of a cyber attack and there has been no unauthorised access to customer data, it confirmed.

“We know this outage is unacceptable and we are fully committed to resolving this,” an Atlassian spokesperson said. “Our global engineering teams are working around the clock to achieve full and safe restoration for our approximately 400 impacted customers and they are continuing to make progress on this incident.

“At this time, we have rebuilt functionality for over 35% of the users who are impacted by the service outage. We know we are letting our customers down right now and we are doing everything in our power to prevent future reoccurrence.”

The 400 impacted customers impacted by the outage represent around 0.18% of the company’s 226,000 customers. The two weeks estimated time to repair the company’s systems is also longer than the under 6 hours promised by Atlassian for Tier 1 services like Jira and Confluence for service restoration in the event of a disaster.

Currently, there are still active incidents with Jira Software, Jira Service Management, Jira Work Management, Confluence, Opsgenie, Statuspage, Atlassian Access, and Atlassian Developers, according to the company’s status page hub. Jira is a software issue tracking product, while Confluence is a corporate wiki. Opsgenie is an alerting and incident response tool and Atlassian Access is an identity and access management service.

The outage comes after Scott Farquhar, Atlassian’s co-founder and co-CEO, revealed in October 2020 that the company will stop selling licences for on-premises products from February 2021 and will discontinue support three years after, on February 2, 2024. The company is aiming to discontinue its server products and move its products and services to the cloud.

End-to-end technology solutions provider Rackspace Technology has announced a new strategic partnership with data management specialist Cohesity.

Announcing the move, Rackspace said the partnership aims to deliver multi-cloud managed backup and recovery solutions to its customers around the world.

They will now have access to Rackspace Data Protection, a software-defined backup and recovery service designed to provide cyber resilient managed backup and recovery across VMware-based clouds.

The offering is underpinned by Cohesity DataProtect, which includes backup and recovery for VMware workloads, as well as advisory services, ransomware anomaly detection and remediation services.

Rackspace says customers will benefit from its streamlined approach to data recovery, as well as ransomware remediation techniques, such as immutable snapshots and machine learning-based anomaly detection. In the event of a cyber attack, users can quickly restore data at a granular level and apps to any point in time.

“The partnership with Cohesity gives our customers access to a proven, robust data protection solution that eliminates legacy backup silos and provides comprehensive protection against the array of rising data threats they are facing, including ransomware,” explained Josh Prewitt, chief product officer at Rackspace Technology.

“Customers can now manage and control data recovery from a single source, more efficiently store data, and eliminate potentially costly disruptions.”

Rackspace says the addition of Cohesity’s data protection layer with integrated VMware Cloud Director (vCD) will help unify the efforts of SecOps and ITOps to better combat cyber threats and help customers tackle self-service management.

“We are excited to engage in this partnership as it really addresses customers’ number one concern today, developing cyber resilience so they can quickly defend and if needed, rapidly recover data in the event of a cyber attack,” said John Theberge, vice president, global alliances, service providers and GSIs, Cohesity.

“Our next-gen data management capabilities, including DataProtect, give Rackspace Technology customers a simple and powerful solution that can enhance their security posture, advance protection, and improve their business resiliency.”

Meta's Oversight Board has urged the social network to change a policy that allows the sharing of people's addresses over fears it could lead to online harassment.

The company, formally known as Facebook, requested the advice last year as it struggled to find clarity on the issue itself.

One of the company's biggest concerns was "doxing", a form of online harassment that involves uncovering someone's personal details, such as name, address, and occupation, to expose them publicly on the internet. In its request to the Oversight Board, Meta said that doxing can have "negative real-world consequences, such as harassment or stalking".

In response, the Oversight Board has issued a 17-point plan that calls on a "publicly available" exemption to be scrapped. It has also urged Meta to "swiftly" respond to anyone that reports a case of doxing, regardless of whether they have a Facebook account.

Meta currently applies this type of information, which is often publicly available anyway, under a policy called the Facebook Privacy Violations Community Standard, which states that users should not share "personally identifiable information about themselves or others".

This includes addresses, but it comes with exemptions when shared in the context of charity or to find missing people and animals and also for business contacts.

Imagery that shows a users address is also included, but that may be allowed if it features in things such as press releases, court filings and news coverage. For example, Meta's internal guidance classes information as "no longer private" if it is published by at least five news outlets.

The board's recommendations come after a spate of leaks over social media involving the addresses of high-profile users, such as the writer of the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling. Once the Board's recommendations are finalised, Meta will have 30 days to respond.

What is Meta's Oversight Board?

This appears to be the first time that Meta has called on its Oversight Board for advice. The body was created in 2018 to set "content moderation decisions" and provide settlement, negotiation and mediation services to Facebook, which also includes overriding the company's decisions if it sees fit to do so.

The board is made up of 20 members, all of which began work in October 2020, and its biggest referral to date is the decision to ban former president Donald Trump from the platform following the Capitol Hill riots.

Enterprise data management company Qumulo has launched a business continuity feature to help protect against ransomware threats.

The feature, Qumulo Recover Q, stores backup data on customers' premises but also replicates and snapshots files in the cloud.

The on-premises deployment is included in the company's Qumulo Server Q product, a file management system running on bare-metal Linux systems. It runs on the primary Server Q cluster and replicates to a remote site. It can also replicate from the remote cluster to others.

The cloud option offers disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) capability, allowing cloud-based fail-overs. It ships as part of Qumulo Cloud Q, a cloud-based data management system that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, or GoogleCloud.

Qumulo Recover Cloud replicates files from Server Q to a Cloud Q cluster. It can also replicate to Server Q clusters running at the user's facilities or in alternate cloud providers' infrastructures.

The company highlights reduced capital and operating expenditure as two key product benefits. Cloud operation eliminates the need for dedicated backup data centers, the company points out. It also enables customers to cut operating expenses by using application programming interfaces (APIs) to instantiate Cloud Q as a hot site only when needed for fail-over purposes.

Recover Q Cloud runs on AWS and Google Cloud as self-managed infrastructure and on Azure as a fully managed service.

Qumulo's data management products store files in their native formats, enabling its products to build workflows around the files on-premises and in cloud environments. It focuses on its ability to store and process large volumes of structured and unstructured files, enabling customers to manipulate them via its API.

It’s great to have a single solution that manages both local and cloud backup – and Barracuda’s Backup platform adds site-to-site replication too, making it ideal for multi-office businesses. It runs on a range of standalone backup appliances, but you can also get it as a virtual server for both VMware and Hyper-V.

We tried out the latter and found that installing the VM took just ten minutes. We were then easily able to register the virtual appliance to our account by logging into the cloud portal and entering its unique code.

Pricing for virtual host backup is based on sockets: our dual-socket Hyper-V hosts required a total of four licences, while physical Windows servers required a single licence each, regardless of their socket count, with no extra charge for the Exchange and SQL Server apps running on them.

Cloud storage is bought separately, with a 1TB chunk costing £807 per year. Whatever storage you buy is instantly linked to your account and made available to the appliance.

Client deployment is supremely simple because Barracuda provides one agent for all Windows systems and applications. Note, though, that this doesn’t handle remote access, so homeworkers will need to connect to the office network over a VPN.

With the agents installed, we used the cloud console to declare our test systems as backup sources; enabling cloud replication simply requires ticking a box. Protecting our VMware host was even easier: we were immediately able to browse its VMs and choose which ones to back up.

If you’re running local Exchange services, you can secure your mailbox database just by adding the host. Message-level backups require a dedicated Exchange service account and a management shell command to enable impersonation rights, but this isn’t difficult to set up thanks to clear documentation.

You can set a global backup schedule or individual schedules for particular groups and hosts. Jobs can run as frequently as every 15 minutes, and after the initial full backup Barracuda takes an “incremental forever” approach to keep things quick and compact. Block-level deduplication is automatically applied to really help you make the most of your storage.

After we’d defined our hosts and schedules, our jobs automatically spun up at the appointed time, and set about copying data to the appliance and replicating it to the cloud. For site-to-site replication, you simply register a second Barracuda backup appliance and select it as a replication destination in your backup jobs.

Recovery is handled via the portal’s restore window, from which you can browse all your backup sources. You can choose the Restore option to retrieve files and folders from the appliance, or use the Download option to get them from the cloud. Selecting our Exchange backup allowed us to view all users and recover anything from a single email to a complete mailbox.

As for server backups, you can use the LiveBoot feature to restore entire VMs back to their host, or use the Cloud LiveBoot service to bring up a VM backup in Barracuda’s cloud and access it via a VNC viewer.

Through it all, the cloud portal provides plenty of information about backup and appliance health, local and cloud storage, backup job status and active tasks. You can also check up on how much space the appliance has saved through deduplication, using either the cloud dashboard or the local web console.

Since Backup Vx lacks explicit support for remote workers, it might not be a perfect fit for businesses that have fully embraced working from home. However, it’s quick to deploy and seamlessly integrates local and cloud backup, so if you’re looking for an on-premises hybrid backup solution it’s a very attractive option.

Hot cloud storage can help solve many of the backup and recovery challenges organisations face with traditional cloud storage technology and the frustrations of multiple tiers of object storage services with different cost structures.

With this next generation of cloud storage technology, there’s only one level of service at a low usage-based fee, and all data is treated as equally valuable and accessible.

Download this comprehensive guide to find out:

• The latest trends and options for backup and recovery storage
• The pros and cons of each storage type
• How Wasabi’s hot cloud storage helps you manage and protect data at a low cost

Fill out the form below to download this resource

Acronis takes a broad view to data protection: its Cyber Protect software doesn’t just take care of backup, but adds a heap of AI-driven cybersecurity measures, including malware protection, vulnerability assessments, patch management, hard disk health monitoring and remote desktop services.

Both local and cloud management options are provided; we went for the latter, as it gives you the ability to extend protection to home workers. There are also Essentials, Standard and Advanced editions, with the top-tier package including shared protection plans, deduplication, backup fingerprinting and backup malware scans. Check out Acronis’ website for a full breakdown of the differences between the various versions.

Whichever permutation you opt for, all versions are subscription only. The Advanced licence includes protection for one physical or virtual server and 250GB of cloud storage for £458 per year; further 1TB chunks are £379 per year, while cloud seeding incurs a one-time fee of £59.

As for self-hosted backups, there’s plenty of flexibility. Supported destinations include SMB and NFS shares, IP SANs and tape drives, and Acronis also offers its own storage node service with deduplication.

For management, the web-based dashboard offers a wealth of information about your protected systems and backup repository status, along with details of any malware detections, blocked URLs, missing patches and more. It’s customisable too, allowing you to personalise and reorganise widgets to focus on whatever’s most important to you.

The only clunky aspect of the cloud-based approach is agent deployment; the client software has to be downloaded from the portal and manually installed, which might not be ideal for full-time home workers. It’s not complicated, though, and you can check the Devices page in the console to confirm that all computers have been successfully registered.

There’s also an agent specifically for Hyper-V systems, while for VMware you can download an agent VM and configure it with your cloud credentials and vCenter server details. Once we’d deployed these agents, the portal happily presented a list of all their VMs available for backup.

Cloud storage is automatically assigned to your account, and for local backups we were easily able to point the software to shares on remote Synology and Qnap NAS appliances using their UNC paths.

The specifics of your backups are configured in the form of plans, which define items to be copied, security settings, schedules and storage devices. A plan can be associated with any number of devices; a clever data protection map exposes files not covered by a backup plan, while plans created at the virtual host level will helpfully take in any new VMs as they’re added. Configuring hybrid backups is as easy as specifying two destinations in your plan, so each run backs up to both on-premises storage and the cloud repository. Malware scanning can be included in your plan too, along with URL filtering (using a predefined list of 44 categories), vulnerability assessments and other security checks.

Acronis also shines when it’s time for recovery. Regular system backups can be easily mounted as virtual machines, so you can browse and pick out individual files or folders for restoration. Backed-up VMs can be restored to their original location, either as a new VM on the same host or to another location. It’s fast, too, which is great news for your RTOs: we restored an entire Windows Server 2019 VM back to our vSphere host in just 100 seconds.

Acronis Cyber Protect is a great all-round data protection solution, thanks to its smart combination of cybersecurity measures and cloud-managed backup. The portal is well designed too, making it easy to create and manage hybrid backup strategies, and the protection for virtualised environments is first class.

The “CE” in this software’s name stands for “Community Edition” - but although this is a euphemistic way of saying ‘free’, that doesn’t mean this backup suite comes with no strings attached. It’s licensed for non-commercial use only, so if you’re looking for a home office solution, this particular offering won’t fit the bill. Still, as a personal backup manager, it pretty much ticks all the boxes, allowing you to easily configure any number of local backup jobs, with a much greater degree of control and configurability than you’d expect for the price.

As you’d imagine, the core functions include backing up the contents of one or more folders, and optionally restricting the selection to files of specified types. More than this, however, you can also create jobs that capture periodic images of entire disks or specific partitions, with sector-by-sector raw processing on hand for unrecognised file systems. There’s a built-in recovery media builder too, to help you restore your images should the worst happen.

Scheduling options are quite flexible, allowing you to run jobs daily, weekly, monthly, or every time the system starts up. The hourly backup option of previous versions has mysteriously vanished, but you can hit the “Back up now” button at any time if you want to ensure your backups are completely up to date.

It’s also up to you whether you want to create a full backup every time, or to run differential or incremental backups between each full backup. Select one of these options and a handy plain-English explainer appears, detailing the advantages and disadvantages of each, and letting you specify the length of each job’s backup chain. At the bottom of the dialogue, you can choose whether each job’s backups should be kept forever, discarded after a certain number of generations, or deleted only when the space is needed for newer backups.

On that note, three levels of compression are provided. Oddly, the middle setting very slightly increased the size of our test archive to 2.01GB, but switching up to maximum compression reduced this to a much leaner 1.9GB. Encryption can be applied too, with complexity options going up to AES-256. You have to set and remember your own key, but Paragon thoughtfully allows you to attach a password hint to each backup job, to help jog your memory if necessary.

Whatever files you choose to back up, they’re stored as virtual disk containers in Paragon’s own PVHD format. If you prefer, you can set the software to create VHD, VHDX or VMDK formats instead, allowing you to mount and browse your backups in Hyper-V and VMware – the trade-off being that neither compression nor encryption is supported with these file types.

There are a few notable things the program doesn’t include. One is cloud integration: Paragon doesn’t offer its own remote storage service, and there’s no direct connection to third-party providers. If you want the reassurance of offsite backups, you’ll need a workaround, such as using a sync service to copy your backups into the cloud, or mapping a drive to a remote server via WebDAV.

Some other features are held back for paying customers. The commercial Hard Disk Manager Advanced package looks and works almost identically to Backup & Recovery CE, but adds email notifications and disk-to-disk cloning. Most home users will survive without these features, but one convenience you might miss is the ability to exclude specific files and file types from your backups. If that makes you want to upgrade, be prepared to pay a steep premium: Hard Disk Manager Advanced comes as a three-PC licence costing £69.

Paragon Backup & Recovery is also a little on the sluggish side. Every time we kicked off a backup job, the software sat and cogitated for a good minute before starting to transfer files. We ended up waiting 100 seconds for an uncompressed USB backup that other packages completed in a fifth of the time, and dialling up the compression to the maximum setting extended the wait by a further 83 seconds. The delay won’t be noticeable when you’re running regular backup tasks in the background, but it’s a frustration if you want to quickly refresh an archive before shutting down for the night.

Through all this, the thing to bear in mind is that the whole shebang is completely free – which makes it very easy to overlook a few quibbles. Obviously, if you particularly want continuous backup, a package with its own dedicated cloud service or something you can deploy in a business setting, this isn’t the right answer. However, if you merely need a low-key backup agent to make periodic duplicates of your crucial files, Paragon Backup & Recovery CE is a persuasive solution that outshines many paid-for rivals.

The Home Office has confirmed that the records of more than 15,000 people were accidentally deleted from the Police National Computer (PNC).

The incident was first revealed last month, but it was only on Monday that government revealed how many records had been erased. That's according to The Guardian, which received a statement from policing minister Kit Malthouse confirming the extent of the data loss.

A total of 209,550 offence records that related to 112,697 individuals were been deleted from the PNC. The entire records of 15,089 people were also erased from the system, which is operated by the Home Office and used by police forces across the UK.

The data included crucial evidence such as fingerprints, DNA and arrest records, but the government has said it hopes to contain the damage and that none of the records will be lost permanently. Malthouse said that 99.5% of the deleted records were created before 2011, but also that restoration will take another 12 weeks.

The Labour Party were quick to question whether the deleted data could be restored. Shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said that even in the "best-case scenario" there will be a three-month period where criminals could potentially walk free due to a "dangerous lack" of police records.

"This statement confirms many of the worst fears about the impact of this catastrophic data loss," the Thomas-Symonds said in a statement. "We do not trust a government with this appalling lack of leadership and grip will be able to rectify these huge errors. An independent review is welcome, but Ministers need to take personal responsibility for this huge security breach."

The incident has been attributed to human error and a coding issue. The government has appointed former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe to fully investigate the mishap. He is set to report his initial findings in March.

A technical issue has resulted in 150,000 arrest records being accidentally deleted from the Police National Computer system, used by law enforcement organisations across the UK to store and share criminal records.

The lost data included fingerprints, DNA, as well as arrest histories.

Malicious activity, such as a cyber attack, has reportedly been ruled out, and the Home Office has said it is “working at pace with law enforcement partners” to assess the impact of the incident.

It also said that the deleted data did not include the details of wanted criminals, but was in relation to “people arrested and released where no further action had been taken”.

However, the shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds described the incident as an “extraordinarily serious security breach that presents huge dangers for public safety”.

He also called on home secretary Priti Patel to provide a statement “outlining the true scale of the issue”.

“It’s not good enough for the home secretary to hide behind her junior minister on this when there has been such a major security breach on her watch,” said Thomas-Symonds. “The incompetence of this shambolic government cannot be allowed to put people at risk, let criminals go free and deny victims justice.”

Ezat Dayeh, systems engineer manager at data management company Cohesity, raised questions as to how the data was inadvertently lost.

“It is hard to believe that there is no protection, no backup and no policies that would prevent this kind of data being lost. If they have only just discovered the deletion, then they should be able to recover this data within hours. If not, and if their backup doesn’t stretch back far enough, then questions need to be asked,” he said.

“Human error, ransomware or even something as innocent as accidental deletion or a power failure can lead to files not being accessible," added Dayeh. "But organisations should be regularly backing up their files and verifying that all that data is secure and usable. It’s not just a best practice in data management or an IT issue, it’s an organisational must and a compliance measure that is often required by law."

As the famous quote says, three things in life are certain: death, taxes and lost data. It's happened to us all at least once: we fire up a laptop or plug in a hard drive and learn it’s corrupted and the data within is inaccessible. There's that immediate sinking feeling as you recall all the important files you forgot to back up that may be lost forever.

Fortunately, you have a number of data-recovery remedies at your disposal without having to pay for costly forensic retrieval services or simply write it off forever. There are various software offerings that can restore data your operating system can’t find. We’ve tested a few of the top data-recovery programs and found the best option for retrieving missing files.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

EaseUS offers a free version of its software, but it's extremely limited. There's a trial version of its paid-for tier that lets you to run a scan and preview the files found, but you can't restore them. There is a freeware version with a claimed 2GB cap, which sounds great. However, this is too good to be true, as the actual base limit is 500MB. You can unlock the remaining 1.5GB by promoting the product on your social media accounts.

Despite this, if you don't mind the price, this is a robust data recovery solution. Similar to many of EaseUS' products, this Data Recovery Wizard benefits from a well-designed and modern user interface, combing a decent blend of simplicity and functionality. It is quick and painless to start a scan and, even though the console is clean and uncluttered, you can find advanced filtering options a few clicks away if you need them.

Price: £84.95 a year

Lazesoft Data Recovery

Lazesoft immediately impresses as it is one of the few data recovery tools on this list that offers a genuinely useful free tier. Most free data recovery tools limit the user to a certain (usually fairly small) maximum quantity of data that can be restored, Lazesoft Data Recovery Free provides almost all of its features right off the bat. It only gates the support for Windows Server and bootable recovery media.

Although the interface is a little dated, with what some may call a Windows Vista-esque appearance, the functionality is definitely solid. It can get a little frustrating when using the filtration options to identify and recover specific types of data, and unfortunately, the full drive scans aren't as quick as some others you'll find on this list, but it's definitely a well-rounded system that delivers on its promise.

Price: Free

Minitool Power Data Recovery

Minitool's user interface pitches the right balance between an uncluttered, clear layout, and one that still impresses with a solid amount of flexibility and technical depth. We were great fans of the detailed file-explorer window for previewing recovered data, complete with indicators for whether specific files are lost or deleted.

Scans take a little longer with Minitool than with some other software, but that’s paid off by the depth of information that they return, including dates when files were last modified. Unlike other entries in this list, Minitool offers a lifetime plan for personal users, in addition to monthly and annual subscriptions, which may offer better value if you’re looking for a long-term solution.

Price:£90/year

Stellar Data Recovery Wizard

Stellar Data Recovery Wizard is among the better-looking tools in this category, with a clean, modern interface, but it suffers a little from being over-simplified. The default options are all large and clearly labeled, but you’ll have to dig a little deeper for more granular options; as an example, the scan process doesn’t allow you to preview recovered files until you toggle an optional slider, while systems like Minitool display that info automatically.

Like the other paid-for options on this list, Stellar offers a free version of its software allowing users to recover 1GB of data without paying, but be warned – you can only recover files that are under 25MB in size. Bumping up to a paid subscription will remove these restrictions, although only the ‘Professional’ tier and above are able to recover files from lost partitions.

Price: $89.99/year

UnDeleteMyFiles Pro

Like Lazesoft Data Recovery, UnDeleteMyFiles Pro is a genuinely free app with no strings attached, and despite its mid-2000s aesthetic, it’s a perfectly capable file recovery tool. All the functionality you’ll need is here, although the layout – with individual names and icons for different tasks – can be slightly confusing compared to more menu-driven rivals.

Get your head around the UI, though, and you’ll find a tool that offers fast and reliable recovery operations. Advanced filtration isn’t as intuitive a process as with some other tools on this list, but it does the job, and it even includes some more niche tools including email recovery and a forensic file deletion tool.

Price: Free

Please note while this round-up was accurate at the time of publication, prices have since been updated to reflect the standard pricing for these tools as of December 2022. We will update our listing for 2023 in due course.

This whitepaper provides a technical overview of Veritas Access Appliance as a secondary storage solution with IBM Spectrum Protect for backup, archival and long-term retention. It highlights the overall solution architecture components, integration flow, best practices, sizing guidance, and deployment of Access Appliance with IBM Spectrum Protect.

Data loss and downtime are inevitable, whether they occur because of human error, hardware failure, software corruption, natural disasters, or ransomware. Contingency plans in case of disasters are vital, and can come in many shapes and sizes.

This whitepaper breaks down how the cloud fits into your disaster recovery plan and how to choose the best cloud solution based on where you store your data, the sector you work in, your recovery point objectives, and several other factors.

Download it now to discover disaster recovery best practices and the benefits of StorageCraft Cloud Services Disaster Recovery.

Backups are arguably the most vital component of an organisation’s tech setup. But as you don’t need them till things go wrong, for some organisations it is all too easy to set systems up and forget about them, which could be a recipe for disaster. What should an organisation be doing to ensure its backups are in fine fettle at the point when they’re needed?

With working from home now standard practice, are there any additional considerations for organisations in terms of ensuring their backups are in tip top condition, they’re regularly done and accurate, and quickly restorable?

Revisit, revise, repeat

The only way to be sure backups are fit for purpose is to keep a very firm eye on the regime. That applies wherever people are working – in the office, at home, or anywhere else. The basic rules of good practice don’t change.

In some organisations, those in charge of backups can find they are always fighting from behind. As Wes van den Berg, VP & GM at Pure Storage UK&I puts it: “Expectations for disaster recovery never equal IT disaster recovery capabilities.” That’s quite a pessimistic view, but the only way an IT team can be sure they can give their best selves when disaster recovery is needed is, he says, to “perform data recovery checks at least quarterly, bi-monthly or monthly if possible. The longer between tests, the higher an organisation’s risk over time.”

Peter Groucutt, managing director at Databarracks, agrees that if left unchecked problems can mount up over time. “If you have a large enough IT environment, there will be something that doesn’t work every day,” he says. “ In most cases, the issues are minor but they need to be checked and fixed or your most recent recovery point will be too old.”

Is your provider giving you what you need?

This is all very well, but the fact is that organisations rely on third parties to provide backup services and it’s vital that those third parties do the required job. For this to happen, an organisation must get the specifications for services right. In the best examples finding the perfect fit is a ‘double-act’, where the vendor advises the organisation, but doesn’t oversell to them, and the organisation understands its needs and buys what’s necessary. Both parties also need an eye on the future, so that the organisation’s general direction of travel can be catered for.

Key questions to ask a vendor include:

• Can the solution scale and if so, what’s the mechanism, how quickly can it be done and at what cost?
• How quickly are bugs and support issues dealt with? Are new applications supported quickly?
• How fast can data be restored, including full disaster recovery?
• What archiving services are on offer?
• How are backups protected from ransomware, data theft and other attacks? For example is there end-to-end encryption to protect any stolen data, and are backups properly isolated from the network?

While this isn’t an exhaustive list and organisations’ needs can and will vary, these five elements should be considered core to any backup strategy as if any of them should fail, it can be disastrous for individuals and the organisation. Groucutt puts it in simple terms: “No-one gets promoted when [the restore process] works, but you will be dismissed if it goes wrong.”

He adds that while “in an ideal world, backups would just happen silently in the background, in the real world, they fail quite frequently”.

Working from home doesn’t change the basics

The vaccine rollout means that an increasing number of companies are welcoming their employees back to their offices – especially in the US. However, in other parts of the world, such as the UK, where a work from home order is still in place, businesses might be reluctant to reopen due to restrictions or simply no longer need a common working space – especially if their employees have proven to be more productive from their kitchen table. Other enterprises, most notably Salesforce, are opting for a hybrid working model which allows employees to come into the office only for collaborative projects, customer meetings, and presentations, allowing them to work from home for the most part of the week. According to Druva EMEA VP Nick Turner, “the secret to supporting a successful hybrid workforce will be in recognising how the industry has evolved and the gaps which may have been overlooked in the rush to complete projects”.

“According to our Value of Data report, since the onset of the pandemic, IT leaders in the UK and US have reported an increase in data outages (43%), human error tampering data (40%), phishing (28%), malware (25%) and ransomware attacks (18%). As the threat of ransomware continues to rise, the rapid expansion of endpoints and cloud-based collaboration tools like Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and Google Workspace must be met with the right level of protection to safeguard against increasing risks,” he said.

Whatever the working model, companies have to factor in their backup regime and it is now a fact of life that organisations need to be able to reliably store, access, and restore files to remote users as a matter of everyday practice. With that in mind, Wes van den Berg gives some advice: “Businesses should look to backup vendors that make it easy to manage a product remotely and let leaders make changes quickly and with minimal disruptions.”

Servicing a home-based workforce may have allowed some key issues with organisations’ backup and restore processes to become visible, but perhaps those issues have been lurking for a long time, waiting to bubble up to the surface. Catch them early and deal with them, and they’re an opportunity. Carry on with the same old, same old, and sooner or later they turn around and bite you.

Storage manufacturer Seagate has unveiled the latest 18TB-capacity entry in its Exos family of data centre hard drives aimed at enterprise customers.

Exos X18 is a fifth-generation helium-based 3.5in enterprise drive that runs at 7200 RPM, and has been designed specifically for use in hyper-scale data centres. The latest generation currently available is the Exos X18 line of hard drives which vary in capacity between 10TB and 16TB.

With enterprise data expected to balloon over the coming years, Seagate has designed this drive specifically in mind to meet data storage challenges businesses may face as a result. The capacity to scale efficiently, in particular, is a quality Seagate hopes will become one of its major selling points.

“Seagate’s Exos X18 hard drives and upgraded Exos AP controllers enable enterprises to effectively tackle challenges associated with the exponential rise in data volumes by increasing system capacity and reducing deployment complexity,” said Ken Claffey, Seagate’s vice president and general manager of enterprise data solutions.

“With the ever-increasing demand from enterprise data centers for greater storage capacity and efficiency, Seagate offers the industry's leading density and configurability with ease of deployment for data lakes and private storage clouds.”

The Exos X18 also supports enterprise NAS system storage demands by allowing for fast data transfers, lower power and weight against comparable drives, Seagate claims. The drive also features increased random reads/write (IOPS) versus previous generations, with 512e and 4KN formatting.

This is in addition to the company offering built-in data protection capabilities through its Seagate Secure platform that provides many new features, including a pathway to retirement once drives reach end-of-life.

Seagate has also embedded the Exos X18 into its newly launched Exos application platform (AP) 2U12, which is said to combine high-capacity storage and computational functionality onto a single platform.

This system combines servers and storage in a compact and dense system, which is pitched at businesses of all sizes, regardless of their demands. The platform offers a new controller, in addition to a flexible enclosure, enterprise-grade firmware, data protection tools and automatic tiering.

The Exos X18 is available now in the US, priced at $562. It's currently unclear when the drive will be available in the UK.

Microsoft has unveiled its own Windows File Recovery app, a tool that can retrieve documents you’ve mistakenly deleted.

“Accidentally deleted an important file? Wiped clean your hard drive? Unsure of what to do with corrupted data? Windows File Recovery can help recover your personal data,” says the Microsoft Store’s listing for the app.

“For photos, documents, videos and more, Windows File Recovery supports many file types to help ensure that your data is not permanently lost.”

This tool can recover not only Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, but also JPEG and PNG images, PDFs, MP3 files, MP4 videos, ZIP files and others. The app requires users to be running Windows 10 build 19041 or higher.

Microsoft’s Support website offers more information about the tool and its three different modes:

Default mode: It uses the Master File Table to locate lost documents.

Signature mode: This may end up being the most popular option. It only requires the data to be present, and it allows users to search for specific file types. It won’t work for small files. Importantly, this is the only mode you can use to recover a file from an external storage device like a USB drive.

Segment mode: This doesn’t require the Master File Table (MFT), but it does require file segments to be present. Segments are summaries of file information that the NTFS file system stores in the MFT such as name, date, size, type, and the cluster/allocation unit index.

“Recovering from a camera or SD card? Try Signature mode, which expands beyond NTFS recovery and caters to your storage device needs,” says the app listing.

“Let this app be your first choice for helping to find what you need from your hard drive, SSD (*limited by TRIM), USB drive, or memory cards.”

Enterprise data volume is growing exponentially on a global scale, and developing a robust backup strategy is becoming a key strategy for IT leaders. For many, backups, restores, and data recovery operations are some of the most important tasks that an organization's IT department performs.

 A backup strategy is the lynchpin of an overall business continuity strategy. The purpose of a business continuity strategy is to maintain a minimum level of service while restoring an organization to business as usual when a disaster happens.

Smaller and mid-sized companies can struggle to find time to design an optimal backup strategy. Backup technologies and best practices have improved dramatically in recent years. Read on and discover a few tips that will help you boost your backup strategy, irrespective of where your organization's strategy is.

Consolidate multiple backup solutions onto one platform and prioritise backup efficiency

Organizations have turned to multiple-point solutions for backup and recovery because of increasingly complex IT environments. For example, a company might need to have separate backup systems for physical Windows and Linux servers. Non-integrated backup infrastructure is costly and difficult to manage, but you can consolidate these backup workloads onto a single platform. 

Non-integrated backup infrastructure leads to slow file restoration time, and this is usually a tell-tale sign of backup inefficiency. Often, the issue lies with having implemented a solution that doesn't cater to the exact needs of the business or having a plan that lacks the detail and granularity required for optimum efficiency.

Therefore, it's important to switch to a recovery process that isn't simply based around just getting everything up and running regardless of system intricacies. Instead, it's best to draw up a more detailed and sophisticated plan around specific systems, applications, and data - which will then help get the business back up and running quickly and efficiently.

A backup product that integrates directly into these existing systems will aid the process greatly, as every integration point helps improve efficiency, organization, and ultimately productivity.

Be predictable and utilize the 3-2-1 backup strategy

Using consistent backup processes and testing frequently using a standard testing procedure will give reassurance that backups have been run and tested properly. This will mean far fewer issues should a recovery situation arise.

Having documented processes that can be repeated easily across your business will reduce your response time, lower your support costs, and ultimately minimize downtime.

Following the 3-2-1 backup rule is a good approach: keep at least three copies of a data set, store backup copies on at least two different media, and keep one of the backup copies off-site.

Think of backup as a daily practice

In a Solarwinds MSP survey, 32% of respondents admitted to not carrying out daily backups. Yet in the event of a serious crash, days or weeks of data could be lost.

Backup is not just extra copies of data. The real goal is disaster recovery. If backups are performed regularly, it will dramatically cut down on recovery times in the event of an incident, as it will be easier to locate exactly which backup will address the data loss incident.

The underlying theme is about changing the way your business approaches backup. By using simple and structured service offerings, running repeatable and consistent backup jobs, and using integrated solutions, you can make significant improvements to your organization's backup processes.

Don't assume you're covered

Organizations are increasingly utilizing SaaS productivity suites such as Office 365 and Google Drive to manage their workflows. While these applications offer a range of benefits from collaboration to efficiency gains, they harbor a secret: they don’t back up your data, going against the common assumption that they’ve got you covered.

Cloud providers can protect data to an extent. Issues occurring on their side, such as disk failures or natural disasters, are covered, but they are unable to help with issues on the customers' side. Ransomware attacks or deletions by employees (either accidentally or maliciously) aren’t accounted for, meaning data restoration would be very difficult.

As platforms, productivity suites are generally secure. But even still it’s worth looking into additional backup, as their backup specifications are often found to be lacking compared to the requirements of most organizations. For instance, Office 365 only operates a 14-day retention period, with Microsoft SharePoint Online backed up every 12 hours, creating a gaping window for potential loss.

It’s worth your time to take backup into your own hands, at least to some extent. Backing up second copies of cloud data locally would permit efficient restoration in the occurrence of an incident on your side. It would also help align the business with compliance regulations and internalize control in an increasingly unpredictable digital landscape.

Keep up to date with changes in backup technology

Backup isn't a new idea, but the danger of it being a familiar process is that it's easy to take things for granted. But even technologies as familiar as backup continue moving forward, and ways of doing it get better, easier, faster, and less expensive. One example is cloud-first backup solutions, which are becoming a cost-effective way to store copies of data offsite and reduce local storage requirements.

Determine what needs saving

If anyone could imagine the perfect backup strategy, its scope of coverage would likely range from unlimited quantities of data to bytes hidden underneath software. However, this idealistic scenario is seldom attainable and, for many enterprises, it means that compromise is key.

You're likely aware that developing and sustaining second copies of every single piece of information is expensive and time-consuming. A common example of this is hard drives, which are most often weighed down by having to contain the device’s operating system as well as the program files chosen by the users. Neither needs to be constantly backed up – in fact, they can often be re-installed from other sources.

If the chosen backup strategy doesn’t exclude this type of data, an amount that is likely to be large, if not exuberant, the receipt for this kind of service will be priced proportionally. Simply put, your company’s finance team might not be pleased.

This is why, to optimize a given backup strategy, it’s important to first sift through all the data, folders, and files, and categorize them based on how crucial they are to the functioning of the organization. For instance, it's common for business assets that a company usually cannot afford to risk losing, including database and accounting files, to be backed up every day.

The second-most critical business assets, which can include anything from folders saved in 'Documents' to important email data, should be backed up at least once a week. Anything beyond this is usually up to the individual needs of the business and should be decided based on what the company values most or is essential to its operations. A smaller volume of second copies can also make the recovery and restoration of lost files faster and easier.

Data is one of the most powerful weapons a business has. It provides key insights about employees, customers, products and competitors. It's collected from a whole host of sources and can make or break a firm's success.

But the world of data has also become harder to manage over the last few years and most notably with the introduction of the GDPR in May 2018, where businesses are now required to only collect the necessary information to dictate their business strategy.

A major part of the GDPR is protecting data from hackers and also, recovering that data if a loss occurs. If, by chance, your organisation's data is stolen or falls into the wrong hands, you may have to pay a huge fine and tell the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) as soon as you learn about the loss.

Because data is such a vital asset to the company that it belongs to (and of course the person to whom it relates), it must be viewed as such. Consider that a company's data may have taken years - if not decades - to collect. If that data is lost, that's not just a big fine to deal with, but also a huge part of the company's value too. If you don't already have a data backup and recovery solution, now's the time to start considering the investment.

According to Clutch, 58% of businesses are not prepared for data loss, despite 60% of firms suffering a data breach being forced to close their doors six months after losing the data. The same report revealed 29% of hard drive failures are caused by accident.

As losing data is such a common occurrence, it's vital your business is prepared should you lose that information, and the best way to do that is to implement a data recovery system to get your information back should it be lost or stolen.

What could cause a data loss?

There are three primary causes of data loss:

Firstly, there are the accidental causes, which can be difficult to predict. Environmental disasters, power outages and other IT malfunctions are key contributors to data loss. Hardware outages are actually the leading cause of data loss incidents, as cited by 47% of recent survey respondents.

Employees are also often a cause of data loss. Whether a member of staff accidentally deletes key files or deliberately leaks access to a vital database, the impact on businesses who aren't prepared can be devastating.

The final cause of many data loss incidents is a cyber attack. Whether a computer has fallen victim to malware, a server has been hacked or business details have been exposed, many businesses lose millions of pounds in lost data each year. That's before the cost of fines is added up; British Airways for example is facing a record 183m ICO GDPR fine after hackers compromised the personal data of half a million customers.

Data loss disasters have the potential to create a very damaging set of circumstances for any individual or enterprise.

What is data recovery?

Data recovery is the process of recalling or recovering data from any storage media following data loss. In technical terms, data recovery encompasses a set of methods used to recover lost data or information.

Data recovery processes can be applied to situations including accidental file deletion, incorrect hard drive or server formatting, a faulty re-installation of applications or system booting failures.

The high prevalence of data loss experienced by users of technology suggests it would be wise to consider your data recovery options before trouble begins. If, as the above statistics suggest, a crash is inevitable, plan ahead. Think of data recovery as a protective measure and have a viable plan in place. Even with the best of intentions, many users would admit to an all too casual approach with the backing up of precious data.

Depending on the nature of your situation, there are two main methods of data recovery available to assist with restoration. You can utilise data recovery software or you could employ an expert in data recovery services.

Data recovery services are often consulted when the data recovery software has failed to recover the data, or the data corruption is so complex that a specialised data recovery expert's attention is required.

Resources of time and money will most likely dictate your response to a data loss catastrophe. Although the software option can be a more cost-effective approach in the short term, it might not have the capacity to resolve all of your issues and you may need to consult a professional service in the end anyway.

Having a disaster recovery plan in place should the worst happen can mitigate the impact of data loss, and help your business get back on its feet quicker. This can be as simple as circulating a list of who to contact in the business in the event of an incident, to having actual disaster drills to test your plan.

How to recover data

If you suspect a data loss has occurred, ensure you adhere to your planned recovery strategy. Make a decision about whether to apply specialist software or to consult an expert and if you opt for the first option, make sure you are confident you know what you're doing before further damaging your files.

Recovery software has the capacity to repair data files, databases, storage media and corrupted partitions, hopefully also returning lost data to its rightful place.

There are numerous free data recovery programs that can assist with the recovery of your lost data, but while such programs are can be useful, it's imperative to do your homework. Check the one you opt to use is legitimate and has trustworthy reviews before unleashing it on your lost data.

In some circumstances, lost data cannot be restored by using recovery software alone. Complex data recovery requires expertise and it is best to leave this to the professionals and contact your local data recovery service for advice.

The downside of this approach is, of course, the expense and downtime without your hard drive but if the data is valuable enough, then it may be the only option painful as it is.

The importance of having a robust backup strategy is well established, and most organisations understand the need to protect their on-premises data so that it isn’t lost if any systems fail. But as cloud migration accelerates, it’s important for businesses to understand the issues around backing up data in a cloud environment, and to not fall prey to any myths or misconceptions.

Cloud-to-cloud backup, or C2C backup, is a solution that has been growing in popularity. On a fundamental level, C2C backup is a system in which the data stored on one cloud is copied onto another. But if data has been stored on one cloud, why does it need to be backed up on another?

Businesses may operate under the assumption that using software as a service (SaaS) platforms like Google Drive or Microsoft 365 means that their data is secure. But although these platforms tend to employ very robust data protection systems, they are designed to protect from losses on their side only, and might not be able to help in cases of user error. A survey conducted by Spanning found that 58% of IT decision makers reported experiencing some form of data loss through SaaS over a 12-month period.

C2C backup offers a solution to these issues and is an important tool for any business wanting to ensure their data is protected as they shift to the cloud

What is cloud-to-cloud backup?

Simply put, cloud-to-cloud backup, also known as SaaS (software as a service) backup, is the practice of taking data in the cloud and backing it up on another cloud. It serves the same purpose as off-site backup methods like tape or disk backup but offers an extra layer of protection and ease of use for businesses already using the cloud.

It’s important to distinguish between backup and archive. C2C is specifically for backing up data, not archiving it, so the purpose of the backup copy in the second cloud is purely meant to be for recovery if the original isn’t accessible for whatever reason.

On the other hand, an archive is intended to meet compliance requirements and internal policies, not for data recovery. Most archive systems don’t have the capabilities to automate accurate, rapid data restorations, so it’s important to ensure C2C backup is being used for the correct purposes.

How does C2C backup help businesses?

Just like offline backup solutions, the multiple cloud storage locations of C2C backup enables businesses to easily restore data in the event of a cyber attack, accidental deletion, data corruption, or other incidents.

As more and more software applications are being delivered as services, many providers already protect against data loss in their cloud-run applications and C2C backups are usually run automatically.

However, these SaaS providers - like Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 - don’t have backup totally covered. The protections in place are meant for problems on the providers’ side, like disk failures or natural disasters, and can’t do much for issues on your side.

Using C2C backup is a solution for this security gap. It can help protect businesses against problems on their side, like a ransomware attack or an employee’s accidental or malicious deletion of files.

Pros and cons of cloud-to-cloud backup?

The main benefit of cloud-to-cloud backup is cost. Because there's no investment required in on-site backup infrastructure, C2C backup can be set up quickly and inexpensively. This also applies in the long term; cloud storage can be added or taken away quickly as business needs evolve, and costs are kept predictable on a monthly basis.

However, as with many cloud services, this can also lead to wastage, with dark data or unnecessary data taking up large amounts of storage space and driving up monthly costs.

Due to the nature of C2C backups, availability is a major advantage. Backup copies of data in the cloud can be accessed from anywhere, so IT teams don't have to come to a physical location to restore business data if anything goes wrong.

C2C is still a relatively new market, and most vendors currently offering cloud-to-cloud backup services also manage the backup and day-to-day management themselves. This makes it a good option for organisations that don't have their own in-house specialists to do this for them. But larger enterprises may feel more comfortable managing C2C backup themselves, or even keeping backup on-site.

Another benefit is resilience to cyber attacks. Should an employee accidentally click on a malicious email attachment and open the business up to a ransomware attack, backup data on a cloud generally won't be affected as it isn't on the office network.

However, as with all cloud services, data security is an issue. Backup data stored on a cloud opens it up to being hacked or otherwise compromised, and offline hard backups are still considered to be the more secure option.

Any businesses looking at cloud-to-cloud backup services should carefully consider their needs, from how frequently a backup should be run to how the day-to-day management should work, and how much storage is required.

What to look for in a cloud-to-cloud backup service

As cloud-to-cloud backup services can differ in terms of both what they offer and what conditions need to be in place for them to be effective, a degree of internal analysis is at first necessary. Only after a business has determined its needs can a suitable vendor be identified; some of these needs will be specifically tailored, however, there exist several key characteristics that all businesses should look out for, which if fulfilled, provide comprehensive backup.

The broad function of C2C backup is to restore lost data, as swiftly and efficiently as possible. The higher the number of steps leading from loss to recovery, the longer the process; and so, locate a straightforward method that in the times of chaos precipitated by a data-disaster, can be quickly and easily deployed. Here, a simple-to-navigate interface would also help minimise downtime.

How much of your data needs saving? Some vendors offer a comprehensive, transparent backup solution that protects every possible fleck of data stored in every digital nook and cranny. However, if your business only needs select portions of data backed-up rather than large swathes, unnecessary costs can be avoided by selecting a vendor which provides scalability.

With data, security and compliance are never far away. Vendors and users alike are duly having to place a greater onus on how their data is managed as regulations are introduced to the data landscape. Vendors stamped with an external security certificate would settle nerves in a data loss event, as end-users can be assured they have followed the rules carefully.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, nothing is certain except death, taxes and lost data. There's only so much that technology can do about death and taxes, but a solid RAID configuration can definitely help with the latter. RAID technology helps protect hard drives - whether they're in a server, desktop NAS drive or data centre storage array - from data loss through mechanical failure or corruption.

RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks" or "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks". It was principally designed with fault tolerance or failover protection in mind, and involves mirroring the data in a storage array across multiple disks, ensuring that if one drive fails, the contents of the array are not lost. Redundancy is important as hard drive failure can and does happen, so RAID acts as a failsafe against hardware breakdown.

In addition, multiple drives can also be combined into a single pool to create a cheap, high-capacity storage resource. This also allows the system to write to multiple disks at once, thereby improving performance.

There are many different levels of RAID, the most common being RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5. Other more niche levels include RAID 6, 10 and 5+1. In addition to this, there is JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), virtual disk RAID, and other vendor-specific RAID implementations.

Benefits of using RAID

There are a number of advantages to using RAID over conventional hard drive configurations.

Large storage: RAID volumes can support much larger capacities than a single drive. If you need more storage, you can simply add more drives.

Fault tolerance: For most RAID levels, some degree of redundancy and fault tolerance is built into the array, helping to prevent data loss.

Continuous running: When hard drives fail on a computer, the operating system stops. In a RAID array, when hard drives fail, the systems continues to operate normally while the failed disk is replaced - assuming the system supports hot-swapping drives.

Parity: Many RAID levels will include 'parity' protections which, in the event of a drive failure, use data from the other drives in an array to rebuild the replacement drive.

Speed: RAID can run much faster than a single drive, as the array can write to and read from multiple disks at the same time, increasing transmission rates.

RAID levels explained

RAID 0 (Disk striping)

This type of RAID divides data across any number of disks enabling higher data throughput. Files are read from multiple disks, increasing speed and capacity. This is known as striping and has the benefit of increased performance.

However, it doesn't have redundancy and fault tolerance as data is not duplicated. Disks appear as a single partition. If one of them fails, the array is broken, and data is lost. RAID 0 is used where speed is more important than data loss (such as live streaming, video on demand and IPTV).

RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring)

This RAID level reads and writes the same data to two drives. This is known as data mirroring and provides redundancy. If a disk fails, the system can still access data from the other disk or disks. Once a faulty disk is replaced, data is copied from one of the remaining disks to the new disk, rebuilding the array. This is an easy way to create failover storage.

The downside is that it lowers the usable capacity by half, increasing the cost per GB. It is used where data redundancy and availability are critical.

RAID 5 (Striping with parity)

This type of RAID stripes data blocks across multiple disks as RAID 0 does, but it also stores parity information (this is a checksum to determine if the data on the disk has any errors and can help in recovering data in the event of disk failure). RAID 5 has both speed (as data is accessible from multiple disks) and redundancy as parity information is stored across disks. If a disk fails, data can be recreated from data on other disk and the parity blocks. Around a third of the disk capacity is used in storing parity data.

The drawback of this is it has lower performance, as servers need to carry out many more write operations for parity. It is ideal for file storage and application servers.

RAID 6 (Striping with double parity)

This is not unlike RAID 5, however, it stores two parity blocks instead of one. That means that two drives can fail without destroying the array. This enables it to have higher redundancy and better read performance.

However, if a server is carrying out lots of write operations, performance decreases because of the extra parity overhead. This too is ideal for large file and application servers.

RAID 10 (Striping + Mirroring)

This is a combination of RAID 0's striping and RAID 1's mirroring. This means you have redundancy (RAID 1) and better performance (RAID 0).

The drawbacks of this is that usable capacity is lower and cost is higher. There is also limited scalability compared to other RAID levels. This arrangement is heavily used in database servers carrying out a lot of write operations.

Implementing RAID

There are two ways of implementing RAID; Software RAID and hardware RAID.

Hardware RAID uses a dedicated hardware controller to which the disks are linked. An on-board processor manages RAID that offloads the work from the host processor, making it faster to read and write data. Hardware controllers offer an extra element of failsafe as its BBU (Battery Backup Unit) protects your data in case of an unanticipated loss of power in the server. Replacing failed disk is easy; you just pull it out and insert a new one.

The disadvantage of hardware RAID is the need to buy hardware, which makes it more expensive than software RAID. If the controller fails, you need a compatible one to replace it to get the system back up and working.

Software RAID is done within an operating system and is fairly easy to implement. There is no need for extra hardware and firmware; this makes it more cost effective. Arrays can also be reconfigured as they are not restricted by the hardware RAID controller.

The disadvantage of software RAID is that it is slower than hardware RAID. It uses processing power, and in turn, impacts read and write speeds of a RAID configuration, along with other operations on the server. Replacing disks is a more complicated task too, as the system has to stop using the disk before it is replaced.

It doesn’t matter how prepared we are, we live in a world where a disaster will unfortunately occur, whether that be a security breach, data corruption or hardware failure. So when fate does come knocking, it’s essential to have a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place so that everyone knows what to do, and the impact is reduced.

When creating a recovery plan, it’s important to consider all areas of business operations that could be disrupted by an unplanned incident. This includes data centres, networks, and even the cloud, all of which could negatively impact not only your employee experiences, but also your customers, and ultimately your income.

Having a structured DR plan can mean your business can minimise any destructive downtime in the short-term, and get operations back up and running quickly, which can also contribute to successful longer-term recuperation.

It’s all about identifying risk, deciding what apps and documentation are critical to the business, and ensuring there are backup procedures in place, all of which should be reviewed regularly.

So if you’ve already got a DR plan in place and need to review its core components, or if you’re looking to develop one for the first time, the following nine tips aim to guide you through your disaster recovery plan creation, and ensure your organisation is ready for when disaster strikes.

1. Have full documentation

Paperwork is never fun, but documenting your DR plan is a vital component of full, quick recoveries.

Documentation should include the purpose and methods of the recovery plan, the steps for each tactic, each role’s responsibilities, and the roles involved in each stage of the plan. Language should be clear and simple so that anyone could follow instructions, and senior management should sign off on a clear chain of command in case of a disaster.

Without a document of your strategy, it can be extremely disruptive if the person in charge of disaster recovery leaves the company or can’t be reached during a disaster, so this first step must be implemented right away.

2. Assess the risks

All the best-implemented things in business start with a risk assessment, and disaster recovery is no exception. A good DR strategy will consider all the functional areas of the business, asking what potential threats they face and what IT resources are relied on.

A full IT inventory and data audit can help with this task by identifying both critical software applications, and any hardware infrastructure needed to run them.

A risk assessment should also consider any issues that might affect external partners and service vendors, especially in cloud environments, which in turn will form the basis of your disaster recovery plan.

3. Drill for disaster

Having an evacuation strategy for your building won't stop a fire from happening, but regular fire drills mean that when the alarm goes off, everyone knows what to do and where to be, and will all theoretically get out safely.

A disaster recovery strategy needs the same treatment, with regular, periodic testing to ensure each process and system works as it should. Having an effective DR plan in place is the goal, but it's much more reassuring to know that it will be followed, should the worst happen.

4. Prepare for different disaster levels

There are many different types and scales of disaster, and sometimes just a small disaster can lead to a longer outage if organisations aren't prepared.

A good DR strategy will have different levels of response detailed for different levels of disaster, ensuring that smaller problems can get the right teams dealing with them straight away.

5. Consider the cloud

Yes, disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) is a thing. Not all cloud-based disaster recovery systems are the same or work the same way; some offer cloud-based backup and recovery, while others use virtualisation to maintain a copy of your servers and applications, while data is replicated from production systems to the virtualised failover systems.

Cloud DR has its pros and cons, but as with many cloud-based services, it's accessible to a wide range of businesses without the upfront investment costs of backup and recovery hardware.

6. Prioritise resilience

Disaster recovery is one of the IT services organisations pay for in the hope it never gets used. That's why it's important to make resilience a guiding principle in your IT infrastructure.

Ensuring your infrastructure is resilient comes down to a combination of good practice and investment in technologies and services that both support the business and minimise any risk of failure.

The most important principle when aiming for resilience is to avoid having single points of failure. If a key application runs from a single server, and can only run from that server, then that's a potential weak spot.

As part of your disaster recovery strategy, assess the resilience of both the hardware and software in your organisation and see if there are any areas for improvement.

Failover connectivity, uninterruptible power supplies, backup generators and backup servers can all help reduce the risk of failure.

7. Evaluate security practices

Security is a separate topic in itself but is inextricably linked with your disaster recovery strategy. In theory, good security practices will minimise the risk of that DR plan ever having to be enforced.

Nonetheless, as part of a comprehensive DR strategy, potential weaknesses in security should be evaluated, and action taken if necessary to strengthen them, as well as a plan for what happens should particular defences be breached.

8. Revise and revisit

It's tempting to shelve your DR plan once it's all in place. But as quickly as new technologies are adopted, new staff come on board and situations within the business change, so the strategy should be revised.

If a new cloud technology is implemented for example, a disaster recovery plan should be updated with the specific strategy for that particular tool, including how and where the data is being backed up, and how to recover it.

9. Build a critical response team

A step-by-step recovery strategy cannot be implemented without the personnel needed to bring systems back online. A critical response team should include any external contacts, such as software vendors, in addition to existing internal staff.

Disaster recovery roles and responsibilities need to be clearly defined, highlighting the need for comprehensive documentation and training. Larger enterprises with more distributed resources and expertise will find themselves better able to action a recovery plan as they can leverage resources from multiple locations, depending on the type and location of disaster experienced.

Ironically, it’s best practice here to backup your backup team. Through ensuring that each role within the team has a shadow member, you can rest assured that in an untimely case of disaster, there is somebody who can still step in to fill the vacant role.

Communication across the team must also be considered. Having multiple ways of contacting each member, and having contact details clearly marked on the recovery plan itself can enable a rapid, effective response.

The average cost of downtime across industries is $5,600 per minute. The unavailability of critical data has been shown to cost large organizations millions of dollars per hour. By continuously protecting data and reducing the time it takes to recover the data, companies can make tangible cost savings.

This whitepaper looks at the hidden costs and the interrelation of costs and policy choices for modern data protection and recovery operations.

Download it now to learn about a smarter approach to data protection and recovery.

Pioneering social network MySpace has potentially lost more than a decade's worth of its users' music, photos and videos, it has been discovered this week.

Messages on the company's website warned visitors that "any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from MySpace".

According to the messages, the issue is the result of "a server migration project". However, while it has only recently become widely publicised, the issue actually dates back almost a year. Posts on the /r/techsupport subreddit reveal that as early as 1 February last year, the company was experiencing problems with hosted files.

"We are aware of the issue and I have been informed the issue will be fixed," a support technician said, according to one poster, "however, there is no exact time frame for when this will be completed."

A few months later, in July 2018, the company added a message to its website, indicating that the problem had worsened: "As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies. If you would like more information, please contact our Data Protection Officer, Dr. Jana Jentzsch at DPO@myspace.com."

This message has since been revised, removing the advice regarding backups and stripping out Dr. Jentzsch's name, who it appears operates as a freelance DPO as part of a legal technology consultancy practise.

It is currently unknown how much of the content previously hosted by MySpace has been lost. The company has not officially confirmed that all content is gone, opting instead for a non committal admittance that it "may no longer be accessible". However, the site has reportedly confirmed that all its hosted music files have been erased.

The loss for many users goes beyond simple copies of their favourite tracks; many fledgling bands used it to host their first demos and albums due to MySpace's lack of fees and restrictions for artists. Acts such as Kate Nash and the Arctic Monkeys famously used the platform as a stepping-stone to greater success, but for the legions of musicians whose bands never made it, MySpace was often the only place were a copy of their first tracks were hosted.

At its peak, the company boasted more than 75 million monthly active users, meaning that - between photos, music files and videos - MySpace is potentially looking at hundreds of terabytes of lost data. This data is, in many cases, irreplaceable.

"This event demonstrates the popular misconception that your data is safe with any cloud vendor," said James R. Slaby, director of cyber protection at backup firm Acronis. "Individuals and companies should be clear that their data is their own responsibility and that only they will be able to take care of data that is important to them."

"When you store something valuable in a cloud you must always make a backup copy of your data. Rest assured, one day your backup will save you! You can use any cloud if you follow the golden 3-2-1 rule of data protection: three copies of valuable data, on two different media (you can use another cloud) and one offsite copy."

IT Pro has previously written about the risk posed by trusting platforms like MySpace and Facebook to safeguard our content without users maintaining their own archives, but this incident also highlights the issue posed by poorly executed server migrations.

Server migrations have been blamed for numerous gaffes, slip-ups and outages over the years; TSB's 200 million meltdown - which locked customers out of accounts and led to the resignation of CEO Paul Pester - was pinned on a server migration that went wrong, for example, while the BBC, Mumsnet and Aviva have all suffered problems of varying severity after migration projects went sideways.

For Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, tech evangelist at network specialist Zerto, the news of MySpace's data loss is shocking, and illustrates the importance of having a properly thought-out plan for protecting your data during IT migrations.

"For any organisation that is looking to move data and workloads confidently, implementing an IT resilience plan is crucial," he said. "Wherever data is moving to, owners will expect it to be transparent and fast, while allaying any risk to the data that is being moved. That's it; that's all you need to do."

Learning how to restore Outlook emails is a handy skill that could help avoid disaster for you or your organization. 

If email is a large part of your daily work, accidentally deleting an email could leave you scrambling to locate vital business correspondence. 

Luckily, Outlook provides a fairly straightforward method for you to restore deleted emails, albeit with slightly different menus and processes depending on the specific version of the email application you currently use. 

One of many email services available on the market, Outlook is one of the most widely-used by professionals and businesses, mostly because it forms part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. 

This ecosystem includes a number of useful productivity and communications apps such as Microsoft Teams. 

So, if you’ve haphazardly deleted some correspondence, this guide will run you through all the steps that will help you rectify that mistake. 

How to restore Outlook emails: Getting started

Given there are a variety of Outlook versions, and that the steps for recovering deleted emails differ slightly. 

We've detailed each of the main versions and platforms below. We will be covering:

• Outlook.com
• Outlook on the Web App (OWA)
• Outlook 2016 and 2013
• Outlook 2010

Servers and disk drives from dissolved computer company NCIX have been found for sale on US trading site Craigslist, with all customer, partner and employee data still recoverable.

Although it's unclear who's selling them, one seller said they were helping the landlord get rid of equipment left in their warehouse after the Canadian company went bust last year.

Bleeping Computer reported that security consultant Travis Doering decided to try and buy one of the servers to investigate into whether they were being sold with any data still on them. After seeing one for sale on Craigslist, he set about buying it and was successful.

The seller said he was offering an entire server farm on behalf of the landlord. He also had 300 desktop computers as well as the 18 DELL PowerEdge servers and two SuperMicro servers with StarWind iSCSI software.

Apparently, NCIX had failed to pay the property owner CAD150,000 in rent and so he was trying to recoup the costs by selling the equipment, without clearing it securely.

One of the servers Doering bought contained the data from 3,848,000 orders placed between 2007 and 2010, including names, email addresses, company names, addresses, phone numbers and even payment data.

In all, there was payment data relating to more than 250,000 customers.

Another dataset included unsalted MD5 hashed passwords for 385,000 customers.

The seller's name was Jeff and although speculators think it could be NCIX's former CEO, Jeff Chiang, who wants to make some quick cash, Doering said he didn't think that was the case.

However, whoever is selling the equipment risks getting into serious trouble for essentially selling customer data illegally.

"Both sellers and buyers of the customer records, allegedly belonging to the retailer, can face harsh legal ramifications," High-Tech Bridge's CEO Ilia Kolochenko commented. "Under certain sets of circumstances it can be a serious criminal offense, however, it is too early to make any decisive conclusions prior to thorough investigation of the incident."

But, as NCIX has gone bust, compensation claims are unlikely to fly as there's no one to pay them except those selling the equipment and it's unlikely they'll have the funds to cover any costs like that.

"Nowadays, such negligence is unfortunately not all that uncommon, even amid operating and profitable companies, let alone bankrupt ones, Kolochenko added. "Many large organisations have been exposed for throwing away plaintext PII and other sensitive data of their customers on paper, hard drives or mobile devices.

"This is why certifications similar to ISO 27001 play an important role to ensure that at least the fundamental of information security management are properly implemented in a company."

Windows PCs come on all sorts of different PCs desktops, laptops, tablets, 2-in-1s but they all share one thing in common: they can go badly wrong in lot of different ways, and identifying and fixing the problem can be tricky. Has your PC been hit by a malware infection, a hardware failure or have some important system files become corrupt? It's hard to know.

Fixing your own computer can be difficult enough, but if you're also expected to fix PCs belonging to friends and family members, then your job suddenly becomes much, much harder. In this issue's Weekend Project we'll show you how to create a portable USB rescue kit, packed with useful tools, that you can turn to in case of emergency.

What you'll need

The first thing you'll need for your rescue kit is a USB memory stick. You can, if you prefer, create a rescue CD or DVD, but modern PCs don't always come equipped with an optical drive. It's also easier to carry around a single memory stick than a data disc. It's also less likely to get damaged. Some USB flash drives even come with a keyring attachment, you can keep your rescue kit with your house keys, ready for when disaster strikes.

Almost any USB memory stick will suffice, but it makes sense to go for one which is at least USB 3 compatible, so you'll benefit from faster speeds that USB 3 ports provide. A 64GB drive should be large enough to hold all the rescue tools and any data you might need to recover from a troublesome PC.

The next step is to collate the tools you need to fix any PC problems you encounter.

There are plenty of dedicated rescue toolkits that fit the task, such as AOMEI PE Builder which can create a recovery disc based on Windows PE (Windows Pre-installation Environment), which is a cut-down version of Microsoft's operating system.

Alternatively, you can create a Windows 10 Recovery Drive (below), which doesn't have as many tools but is a useful quick option.

How to create a Windows Recovery Drive

Step 1

Windows 10 lets you create a USB recovery drive that includes a selection of useful troubleshooting tools, and can even reinstall Windows if necessary. To launch the tool, type 'recovery drive' into the Windows search box, then click on 'Create a recovery drive'. The wizard will open.

Step 2

The first question you will be asked is whether you want to 'Back up system files to the recovery drive'. This lets you use the drive to reinstall Windows, so say yes if that's something you want to be able to do. Click Next, and select the correct drive when prompted.

Step 3

Click Create. If you see a message asking you to format the drive, ignore it. The creation process will take a while, especially if you're backing up system files. When done, click Finish. When you boot into the drive, you'll be able to refresh or reset your PC, and access troubleshooting tools.

Best portable tools

The best type of recovery kit is one you build yourself. There's a huge range of portable tools available, but here are some of our favourites to get you started.

Google Chrome Portable

You'll definitely want to include a browser in your toolkit, unless you want to be stuck using Microsoft Edge or worse still, Internet Explorer on someone else's PC, so it makes sense to take Chrome with you. The link above will let you download the very latest version of the browser.

Windows Password Recovery Tools

Nirsoft offers a number of tools designed to recover lost usernames and passwords, which might come in handy if simply resetting your password isn't an option. There are password tools for instant messengers, routers, browsers, wireless networks and more. You can download all of the tools in a single zip file (enter 'nirsoft123!' as the password).

CrystalDiskInfo

If you suspect one or more of the PC's hard drives is failing, CrystalDiskInfo can tell you for sure. It displays the drive's S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status and current temperature, along with details such as the number of hours the drive has been on for, and the read-error rate.

IObit Uninstaller Portable

If you need to fully remove unwanted applications or browser junk, IObit's Uninstaller is the tool for the job. It can batch uninstall multiple items, then identify and remove any leftovers afterwards.

Malwarebytes AdwCleaner

AdwCleaner can remove toolbars, adware, hijackers, and PUPs (potentially unwanted programs) from your web browsers. It's very easy to use, you just run it and then click the Scan button, and it will present you with its findings.

BlueScreenView

If the problem PC keeps crashing and ends up on the 'blue screen of death' (BSoD), this program can narrow down the cause by scanning all the minidump files created during a crash, and making them available to study.

Speccy Portable

Speccy is a fast, lightweight, system information tool from Piriform, the creators of CCleaner. It can tell you everything you need to know about a PC, from the version of the operating system it's running to the hardware inside. You can even use it to monitor the temperature of all of the core components.

WhoCrashed

Like BlueScreenView, WhoCrashed will search your crash dump logs, tell you the cause of your woes, and offer suggestions for fixing the problem. The download is an installer, but you can then copy the program's folder to a USB flash drive and run the executable file from there.

ProduKey

A very useful Nirsoft tool, it helps you find the Windows key of the PC you run it on, as well as several other registration keys.

Process Explorer Portable

Process Explorer displays a list of running processes and colour codes them to make it easier to see what they are. You can scan suspicious entries using the VirusTotal.com online virus checker.

Recuva

If you, or someone else, has accidentally deleted some important files, you can use Piriform's Recuva to find and restore them. Running it from a flash drive rather than the PC's hard drive means there's less likelihood of you overwriting the files you're trying to recover.

Create a rescue kit using PortableApps

You can just manually drop each of the tools listed above into their own folders on a USB memory drive, then run them as and when they're required. However, another option is to create a rescue kit using PortableApps.

This is a Start menu and organiser, which even comes with its own built-in app store to make it easier to find and install the latest tools. You don't have to worry about updating your apps either, as the software makes it easy to download the most up-to-date editions.

We'll show you how to put this together in the mini-workshop below.

Assemble your toolkit using PortableApps

Step 1

Insert a USB memory drive into a spare port on your PC, then download the PortableApps program to your desktop and run it. During installation select Portable as the location to write the software to. On the next screen, select the drive to install to (make sure you pick the right one).

Step 2

When you run PortableApps on your drive, a blank Windows 7-style Start menu appears, along with the Portable App Directory. The directory lets you find apps to install. Chrome can be found under Internet, which is sensible enough, while the likes of CrystalDiskMark and IObit Uninstaller are under Utilities. Tick the ones you want.

Step 3

When you've chosen some programs, click Next. Your selection is downloaded and installed, which might take a while. Once it's finished, the installed apps appear in the menu, ready to be launched. You can also access the App Directory by clicking the Apps button in the menu, and selecting 'Get More Apps'.

Image: Shutterstock

Application downtime is costing businesses 1.3 million a year as IT departments fail to recover data quickly enough, according to Veeam.

The backup firm found that 82 per cent of the 760 CIOs it questioned are unable to meet business needs for always-on access to IT services, losing their companies an average of 1.3 million in lost revenue, productivity and unrecoverable data.

An overwhelming 90 per cent of those CIOs said they are under pressure to recover data faster to mitigate the cost of downtime, but also feel pressure to backup data more often to reduce the amount of data lost.

Ian Wells, VP of North West Europe at Veeam, told IT Pro: "Minimising data loss is as important as the time it takes you to get the system back up.

"If a system fails and you have it up and running in 10 minutes, great, but if you recover it to your last backup and it was taken 20 hours ago, you will have recovered back to a point with all the data in the last 20 hours lost.

"That could be 20 hours' worth of trading data. It could be 20 hours worth of customer transactions, how are you going to process those?"

CIOs told Veeam growing pressure from the business to have 'always-on' IT comes from trying to support more frequent, real-time customer interactions, cited by 65 per cent, followed by the need to access applications across different time zones, cited by 56 per cent.

Other reasons included rising adoption levels of mobile devices, cited by 56 per cent, while 54 per cent said staff were working irregular hours.

"Availability's becoming a big thing because business is becoming more demanding," said Wells. "We expect business now to be always on, so we as consumers expect to be able to transact with whichever company we choose at any time of the day and night."

But the study found IT departments are missing the business's recovery time objective (RTO) by more than an hour, and missing the recovery point objective (how often data is backed up - RPO) by 90 minutes.

However, Wells said the capability is there now to hit a 15-minute RTO and RPO, as Veeam announces version eight of its Availability Suite.

"Its about leveraging your data protection environment to provide more than data protection in the event of failure," he said, adding that the suite allows customers to trial new applications in a sandbox environment to test for bugs before taking it live, reducing the risk of a crash.

"Every time they take a backup effectively they're taking a complete clone of their production environment. We put that clone to work in a dedicated sandbox environment so you can do any type of testing you might want to do," he said.

"If something goes boom, it doesn't matter. You can investigate it, fix it, and when you know it's okay you can go and do that over in the production environment, migrating it in real time."

HP Autonomy has taken the wraps off HP Data Protector 8.1, which it claims is the industry's first adaptive, dynamic and self-aware backup and recovery software.

Autonomy, HP's big data analytics arm, said it produced the offering in response to the challenges facing IT managers when it comes to backup and recovery, in light of the explosion in data that has happened over the last two years.

The vendor claims this has led to a potentially overwhelming amount of information that needs storing, a problem that is compounded by the fact much of this data generation is happening on smart devices.

HP Autonomy claims HP Data Protector 8.1 overcomes these issues by changing backup from a "send it and forget it" model to being an essential service at the core of an organisation's data centre and business strategy.

According to the firm, the offering enables organisations to set backup strategies and policies based on data and application priority and criticality, uses operational analytics to proactively set backup resource utilisation and can also make recommendations to IT managers to reduce potential conflicts and ensure SLAs are met.

Data Protector 8.1 also enables automated backup and recovery adjustments based on operational analytics gained from a self-learning system, HP Autonomy claimed.

In addition to these four core abilities, the product includes integration with SAP HANA, HP StoreOnce, HP 3PAR StoreServ, Microsoft Active Directory, VMware vCenter 5.5 for Single Item Recovery, and certification of both VMware vSphere 5.5 and vCloud Director 5.5.

It also features new object selection methods, restore options and wizard pages, which the company claimed would offer a better automated disaster recovery experience.

David Jones, general manager of data protection at HP Autonomy, said: "Today's release marks the end of backup as we know it.

"HP Data Protector delivers the industry's first self-aware, self-healing and self-managing solution that will transform how forward-thinking organisations power and protect the modern data centre."

HP Data Protector 8.1 is scheduled for release in January 2014.

HP also announced it now has more than 60,000 customers worldwide using Data Protector, LiveVault and Connected Backup.

"The continued success of HP Autonomy's data protection business is a testament to our unique, intelligent approach and ongoing dedication to customer satisfaction and success," Jones concluded.

"Oh yes, I think we had his drive here"

This was not what I was expecting to hear while wandering around the British offices of Kroll Ontrack, the long standing independent experts in data recovery.

Just to tease you further, I decided when that particular anecdote was presented that I wouldn't share with you the unfortunate owner of the disk in question: Ontrack has clearly been living with the lid screwed down nice and tight for many years and were enthused with an almost confessional need to share a few war stories.

I guess the takeaway lesson here is that seeing a room full of proprietary hardware that retrieves damaged sectors of spinning disks by taking their top covers off and running them naked, with a sawed-apart cover plate put back with the shear-marks still sharp and fresh (it has to support the end of the actuator spindle, they said) does not represent the daily lives of the guys actually getting the data back. If you are the unhappy chap who shipped them the disk they were talking about then you would also be paying about 700 for seeing what might be recoverable from it. And, overwhelmingly, that is an emotional process, more than a technical one.

It doesn't matter whether your drive was incinerated, stopped a bullet, rode an earthquake, or suffered the attentions of a nihilistic employee, Kroll will have a go at getting your stuff back. Its workflow is both impressive, and curiously low-tech in places a stack of Coolermaster cases out front all play host to forlorn single drives, mostly on suspiciously custom-looking USB to drive hardware adapters, some with add-on cooling fans. These are considered electrically OK, and therefore ready for a forensic copy to the BIG Ontrack disk pool, back in the server room.

I think the phrase BIG is good enough has a description of the setup, firstly because I lost count of the disks being forensically imaged while I was there, and secondly because I didn't get to see into that room. It did say rather sheepishly that it went through a short phase of recommissioning its Pentium III-based server farm because the multi-core replacements were actually slower in their resolutely simple bit-slinging usage pattern.

If a drive is electrically OK, then, and the forensic image process completes without a hitch, the data recovery process goes all virtual, with the image being worked on and recovered via more proprietary software. If it's not OK, then off with its heads a quick trip to the top lid shear cutter and on to the clean room for further attention.

When I was there, the majority of drives were laptop format, though I couldn't swear to a preponderance of any one brand over another. Once the data has been retrieved, by software or hardware-bashing methods, then it is written back to a nice new hard disk and that gets shipped back to the customer in a bouncy, foam-padded mailing box.

I am skipping over the interesting bit here though. Judging by the stories that Kroll was ready to tell, the divide between actual hardware death involving smoke coming out of your drives, and someone cocking up and then claiming it's a hardware problem is nowhere near as much in favour of dodgy hardware as you might expect. That's not to say it is running a software/human error recovery business with pretentions to status as hardware hackers. Indeed, it's quite the reverse. One corner of the clean room had iPhones in bits (info is encrypted on the chips, they said, though this isn't a showstopper), and Kroll was very confident about the largest ever disk array it had imaged and then recovered (96 drives, incidentally).

When I sat for a chat with its VMware guru, the first story they told wasn't strictly speaking specific to VMware at all: It was rather a harrowing tale of staggering hubris and poor negotiative skills which prominently featured an IT "professional" effectively holding his employer to ransom by simulating storage failures. It wouldn't have mattered if they were using Hyper-V, or Netware, or a stack of Hollerith cards: it's actually a superb example of the way humans mis-use various types of technology, rather than an illuminating case study of a shortfall of the technology itself.

The second example again falls into an area which I would have labelled as "systems management" more than "data recovery." Professionals working entirely inside the feature set of VMware vSphere have failed to RTFM when it comes to the nature and behaviour of VM snapshot files. These can produce sudden and unexpectedly full disks, which can't naturally be emptied without a good deal of pain and anguish, and which often give off errors and statuses which don't directly relate to the genesis of the problem.

The Kroll drive-imaging methodology makes this relatively easy to fix, though I was intrigued by just how it estimates the timescale required to run a given job through its recovery systems, given that most of the kit I saw there was at least, recognisably consumer-grade and therefore unremarkable. Most of those Coolermaster cases for instance were showing Windows XP screens, albeit with Kroll's own forensic software running on it.

The most telling VMware-specific snippet I gained in a short visit, though, wasn't strictly speaking a war story: It was an aside, about the balance of cases in which one of the engineers from Kroll goes onsite, as distinct from a stack of drives turning up in the post.

The virtual computing team seemed to have a slightly greater bias towards travel than the other, more traditional teams. This is mainly because their workload is not nearly so much about smoke escaping, or the echoless crackle of a bent smartphone. Indeed, in a virtual world, it's far more about keeping track of the features, the Thin Provisioning and the remote storage and the deduplication and all the other hot buzzwords that infest virualised data centres.

This redefines the job of a data recovery engineer, away from drying out soaked circuitboards or recovering Master File Tables and more towards remote admin sessions, travelling with a tiny USB key of commerciall confidential utilities and just occasionally telling the boss it was a hardware problem, to save the nerd's skin.

At some point in the past - perhaps even today - you've no doubt experienced that sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach after accidentally deleting an important file or folder. That feeling is even worse if your hard disk fails and you lose its entire contents, including months or years' worth of work, documents, finances, photos, videos and music.

If you've simply deleted a file, the good news is that it's almost always possible to recover it as the file still exists on your hard drive; the area it occupies has simply been marked as available for other data to be written over it. However, if your disk has been dropped, set on fire, submerged in water or any other horror, it might rattle or stop spinning entirely. Here, things become a lot more complicated.

Computer Weekly's fire damaged digital camera and SD card

The extracted and cleaned memory chip from the SD card

Whatever your situation, there are data recovery companies that can attempt to restore your precious data and return your life to normality. One such firm is Kroll Ontrack, based in Epsom, Surrey. IT Pro visited their facility to see how engineers are able to recover lost data in special clean rooms.

Due process

The process starts with a call to one of Ontrack's data recovery team to discuss exactly what has happened, and work out the most cost effective way to recover it. Data on just about every medium can be recovered, from magnetic tape through to the latest SSDs (solid-state drives) including USB flash drives and memory cards in your phone or camera.

Even if the data is stored on a RAID array or in a virtual machine, Ontrack can usually recover it. Robert Winter, Ontrack's Engineering Manager, gave us a guided tour of the lab and explained that, "data is recoverable in the vast majority of cases". Even if the contents of your drive have become corrupted due to a virus or some malfunction, there's still hope.

There are various options depending on the nature of the problem. For example, it might be possible to recover the data instantly via the internet in as little as an hour if it's a simple case of accidental file deletion or corruption and all your hardware is intact and working fine. However, if the hardware is faulty - either a failed disk or other component, such as a RAID controller - you'll almost certainly have to send the equipment to Ontrack's lab. For the most complex or sensitive situations, engineers can visit your premises to repair the problem and recover the data on-site.

There are also various service levels, which determine how quickly your data is recovered and returned to you. For mission-critical business data, Ontrack's engineers will work around the clock, but where budget is more of a concern, rather than time, there are cheaper options.

Recovery position

When your hard disk(s) arrive at Ontrack's lab, they're bagged and tagged to allow them to be tracked through the entire recovery process. They then head to the pre-diagnosis area and are checked to find out if they're physically working. If there are any unusual rattles or the bearings are seized, they head into the clean room. However, for those that will power up and spin, they are connected to one of the imaging PCs.

Bagging and tagging incoming hard disks so they can be tracked throughout the data recovery process

Kroll Ontrack's imaging computers

The disk's contents are then copied with Ontrack's proprietary software. The software can automatically skip over bad areas - portions of the disk that may be damaged or corrupted. It then scans in reverse', backing up as far as it can until it reaches the end of the bad area in order to recover as much of the data as possible. Once the disk has been imaged, the data is stored on Ontrack's severs, which are currently fitted with 140TB of storage. The disk itself is now finished with, but the image must be worked on by the experts in the logical recovery area. This is split into various sub-areas for different file systems including Windows, Mac, Unix, plus other areas for RAID and virtualised systems.

Working on servers and RAID arrays

As well as disks, data can be recovered from tape backups usually for for migration to a different format. Accidental initialisation can also be overcome and backup data recovered.

Clean room

If a hard disk isn't working and can't be imaged in the pre-diagnosis area, it heads into the clean room. The engineers within will first listen to the disk and - using their considerable experience - will be able to determine whether it's safe to remove its lid or not. Some disks' chassis are integral to the spindle so opening it can render the disk useless as it can't be spun up or reassembled.

The clean room is equipped with special benches which prevent any dust or debris falling on the platters. Disks which are deemed safe to open have their lids removed and a visual inspection is carried out to check for problems. Each platter surface is inspected for damage as this can vary between platters.

We submitted our own damaged disk to Ontrack for assessment. Our disk, which spun up but refused to show up on the BIOS, had only minor damage on the upper surface of the platter.

IT Pro's damaged laptop hard disk

Unfortunately, the underside had a spiral scratch due to the head being in contact with the platter as it returned to it's parked position - a classic sign of a disk that has been dropped while operating. This kind of damage means the data can't be recovered from that platter.

If the data lost is mission critical, it may be possible to recover data from platters with minor damage. Ontrack's software allows the engineers to move the heads to a safe, undamaged area in order to copy the 'good' data off before attempting to image the damaged area. Allowing the heads to read the damaged area could cause further damage and destroy good data.

If a particular platter is beyond repair, the software can tell the disk to ignore any data being read from that platter's read/write head in order to trick the disk into thinking it is working correctly - otherwise it may refuse to read any data at all.

Microscopes are used for inspecting platter damage more closely, and to check for any damage that isn't visible to the naked eye. Another recovery technique involves cleaning any debris from the platter surfaces before powering the disk up to image it. Even smoke particles can damage the platter, as they are larger than the gap between the read/write head and the platter - just a few microns - and can get caught between them.

When a disk is dropped or knocked, perhaps when a laptop is placed roughly on a desk, the read/write heads can hit the platters. The damage can be minor or severe, but if any particles are chipped off, this can fly around and cause further damage - this is why it's important to act quickly if you suspect your disk has been damaged following a drop.

Some disks arrive in the clean room with seized bearings. The engineers are able to fix this, either by fitting replacement parts or by repair, in order to get the drive spinning again. Ontrack currently stores around 1,500 different hard disk models which can be used for spare parts to repair failed disks quickly.

Kroll Ontrack claims to maintain a huge supply of spare hard disks

Even circuit boards can be quickly swapped over where the problem is electronic rather than mechanical. Often, you can't simply replace a controller board with an identical model as calibration data is stored on the chips. Ontrack can copy this data to a new board to get a drive running again.

Don't lose your head

Solid-state disks

SSDs are still relatively new, and the recovery process is not yet automatic. Where an interface has been damaged - for example if the SATA connector has been snapped off - engineers can repair the electrical connections in order to copy the data off the drive. The same technique also applies to USB flash drives, which are fairly vulnerable to damage.

Removing memory chips from a SSD with the aid of a microscope

When it isn't possible to repair the interface, or there's another problem causing the data to be inaccessible, the memory chips can be removed from the circuit board and the data read directly from them. Data is usually stored across the chips using RAID, but the data should still be recoverable using Ontrack's proprietary software as long as the intricacies of the chip manufacturer's RAID implementation is documented.

A logical solution

Once the data from the disk has been imaged, it passes to the logical recovery team to recover the files the customer has requested. As long as the file system isn't something obscure, the data can usually be obtained fairly quickly. Even if the data was stored in a virtualised environment, or a RAID, it can be recovered but it adds extra steps to the process.

It's possible to recover files which are either corrupted or written over a damaged area of the disk, but it isn't always possible to extract the full file. Ontrack has techniques to read individual records in databases and emails within Outlook PST files. Engineers can also search for the signatures of particular file types, such as Word documents, and as long as the filename is embedded, this can be restored as well, instead of leaving the customer with a slew of files with numerical filenames.

It's crucial to have a backup strategy in place to avoid having only one copy of your critical files.

Engineers rarely open files to see what they contain only when checking that the data has been restored correctly are files opened. However, should an engineer find a selection of suspicious filenames and suspect they may contain illegal material, they must report it to the police. An investigation can then be carried out and, if the customer is suspected to have broken the law, they can be prosecuted. However, this has only happened once or twice in Ontrack's history.

What's the damage?

As we've mentioned, there are various services depending on how quickly customers need their data back: Emergency (working round the clock), Express (your data has priority, and recovery work continues on Saturdays), Standard (data is recovered during normal office hours) and Home User (time isn't a factor).

To recover a single laptop hard disk for these services would cost:

Emergency 350 + 1,495 to 2,995 + VAT

Express 95 + 795 to 1,495 + VAT

Standard 75 + 495 to 995 + VAT

Home User fixed price 599 inc VAT

For a complex enterprise system, for example a four-disk RAID from a Microsoft Exchange server, the prices are proportionally more, due to the extra labour required:

Emergency 800 + 6000 to 8000 + VAT

Express 500 + 4000 to 6000 +VAT

Standard 300 + 2000 to 4000 + VAT

If you've simply deleted some files or have an operating system or file system problem, you could try Ontrack's EasyRecovery software, which starts at just 25. Of course, while it's remarkable that Ontrack can restore data from hard disks you may have thought completely dead, it's crucial to have a backup strategy in place to avoid having only one copy of your critical files.

Disaster recovery and business continuity firm Core Consultancy has unveiled its first channel programme to support the launch of a new version of its data backup and recovery service, DataSafe.

The Core DataSafe service will for the first time be delivered through a 100 percent channel model. The two-tier programme will cover smaller consultants with a low touch ‘Certified’ referral programme and a more advanced ‘Professional’ tier aimed at systems integrators.

“By moving to a 100 percent channel model, we will expand our coverage and help our partners offer a wider range of services,” explains Sharad Saggar, MD of Core Consultancy. “Backup and recovery is still a vital requirement and as the ‘door opener’ it allows our channel partners to deliver their own complimentary value added goods and services like managed helpdesk, VoIP and training.”

Core DataSafe is a hybrid service that uses a local backup appliance and a remote datacentre network to store and recover critical data. The upgraded version now supports Instant Virtualisation technology to allow clients to gain remote access to recovered applications and data via the internet.

“Hardware fulfilment and distribution will be handled by our partner Softcat and is based on architecture from HP,” explains Saggar, “While all second and third line support as well as disaster recovery process enactment will be handled directly by our in-house operations team.”

Core Consultancy will also be offering partners the option to sell capacity in its off-site vaulting service within its datacentres.

Core Consultancy currently works with 12 partners, who will be offered free training to enable them to quickly enter the initial partner programme.

“Over the last 11 years, we have developed a sizable customer base and the move to a channel model offers the potential to dramatically grow the use of DataSafe by small and medium business across the UK,” says Saggar.

Destroying your hard drive with a hammer was the best way to avoid your data falling into the wrong hands when throwing away your computer, a study has advised.

Which? Computing issued the advice after it learned that identity thieves were looking through council tips and internet auction sites like eBay to find discarded PCs and laptops.

The magazine claimed thieves would use specialised software to recover the data deleted by the original owner, letting the thieves commit acts like credit card fraud.

Which? Computing editor Sarah Kidner said: "It sounds extreme, but the only way to be 100 per cent safe is to smash your hard drive into smithereens."

However, some experts and vendors have suggested that smashing hard drives to destroy data was expensive, environmentally damaging and completely unnecessary.

Data backup and software recovery vendor Acronis said that the study completely ignored the fact that there were "ultra-effective" disk cleansing solutions available, which had been used by government agencies and big corporate companies.

"In the current economic climate, individuals and businesses across the UK are choosing to re-use, re-cycle or donate older laptops. Wiping hard drives securely is a simple process and costs just a few pounds," it said in a statement.

"Laptops or PCs can now be safely passed onto a new colleague, sold to a third party, or donated to a charity such as Computers for Africa."

Graham Cluley, security expert at Sophos, agreed that smashing your hard drive wasn't necessary. He claimed that it was very easy to think that you had destroyed a hard drive when in fact you hadn't, as it was possible to extract data from severely damaged hard drives.

He said: "You are probably going to do more damage to yourself taking a sledgehammer to a hard drive than the chances perhaps, of your data being stolen, with bits lying here there and everywhere."

Apple has said that chief executive Steve Jobs will not deliver a keynote at Macworld next month, sparking fears about his health and sending shares down three per cent.

Apple also said 2009 will be the last year it exhibits at Macworld, claiming that trade shows are now a "minor" way it reaches customers.

Analysts said Apple's withdrawal from Macworld after next year did not necessarily mean that Jobs was sick, but could indicate that the company has no blockbuster product announcements.

Instead of Jobs, Philip Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote.

Asked whether the move was related to Jobs' much-discussed health, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said: "Phil is giving the keynote because this will be Apple's last year at the show, and it doesn't make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we'll no longer be attending."

Macworld is a cultural event that draws thousands of Apple fans and technology aficionados to San Francisco, where they have been treated to major announcements from Jobs in past years, including the launch of the iPhone in 2007. The many blogs that follow Apple's every move have been buzzing for weeks about possible product launches at this year's event.

A showman, Jobs often took to the Macworld stage amid cheers and applause from thousands of software developers, customers and employees and ended presentations by saying "One more thing..." as a prelude to something unexpected.

Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves said it's not surprising that the company would pull out of the event, especially if they don't have a blockbuster product announcement. He said the company's customer base has broadened and it no longer needs a huge event to rally its fans.

"I don't think this announcement has a big impact on the company's valuation, or it shouldn't," Hargreaves said.

However, Samuel Wilson, an analyst at JMP Securities, said Jobs' absence at the event was important. "It's like the first time in a long time he hasn't spoken in Macworld. Why is he not speaking this year would be the question."

Investors have been concerned about the cancer survivor's health after he appeared thin at another product launch in June. In 2004, Jobs, 53, said he had undergone successful surgery to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer.

In September, Jobs, who is often perceived as irreplaceable as Apple's leader, appeared thin but jaunty as he introduced new iPod digital music players.

Apple has also been hit by investor concerns about weakened consumer spending amid a struggling US economy. Goldman Sachs downgraded the company's shares earlier this week, saying it expects the company to face a tougher environment in the coming quarters.

Apple shares have lost about half their value since June.

IDG World Expo, which owns Macworld, released a statement saying it was disappointed with Apple's decision to pull out, but said "we look forward to many more successful years of Macworld to come."

Apple also said it will continue to hold product launch events.

Last year, Macworld saw the launch of the MacBook Air, the company's ultrathin portable computer. The iPhone mobile phone and iTunes music store were also both unveiled at Macworld in recent years.