Continuing its efforts to keep data recovery services customers educated about data safety and protection, Hard Drive Recovery Group discusses preparation techniques for when a person sells a computer and interesting backup options with two of its latest blog posts.
In our modern replace-once-obsolete world, buying a new computer can be a joy that many people find quite fulfilling. New RAM, larger capacity drives and high performance chips make buying a new computer exciting, but what of selling an old computer? It only makes sense to attempt to finance a new purchase by selling the old system, and yet many users are discovering that their "safe sale" may be far more dangerous than they thought.
In the blog post, "The Most Important Thing To Do Before Selling Your Old Computer," Hard Drive Recovery Group discusses a recent study published by researchers that purchased a number of used hard drives on Ebay. According to the study, over 42% of the drives actually contained data, while 15% of the drives actually contained personally identifiable information, including scanned images of passports and valuable identification.
"One of the reasons why data recovery services even exists as a business is simply because of the fact that even if a user thinks she has deleted a file from a hard drive, it may in fact still be there," said Maureen Davies, spokesperson for Irvine, CA's Hard Drive Recovery Group. "Few folks seem to understand this, and assume that a 'quick format' or overall file deletion is going to eliminate the drive's data. The fact is, it does not."
One of the primary issues for users is that they assume that if they delete files and then empty their drive's Recycle Bin, their drive files are permanently deleted. The study showed this was not the case. And unfortunately, even deeper formatting left data that could be recovered.
"Really, if a person is planning to sell a computer and wants to be assured that the data on the drive is eliminated, the right tools are necessary," said Davies. "Fortunately, there are a number of disk wiping tools available, including Eraser, which are either cheap or free. Download one of those programs easily, and the process is better in general."
In a second blog post, entitled, "Backup and Storage Options We Should All Consider", Hard Drive Recovery Group discusses not only the reasons to backup data, but also the best avenues for it. This approach continues to win fans. One key point is that there is really very little excuse for companies to be relying on older backup methods.
"It really is almost comedic when a company that has a $10,000 RAID 10 server that they are backing up with digital backup tapes from the early 2000s," said Davies. "Not only does this usually end really badly, but users today have far more choices for large scale backup than they have ever had. To ignore new technologies when business and personal data is so valuable is simply ridiculous."
Popular backup technologies like separate RAID servers, NAS appliances and Cloud backup providers are easily some of the most popular new enterprise technologies, and those in the know tend to use them regularly. This can save a business thousands of dollars on processes like RAID data recovery. For smaller businesses and personal files, SSD drives, external hard drives and even the now seemingly ancient flash drives are suitable backup options as well. There is never an excuse to not backup your data, said Davies, especially when the tools are so available.
"We're in an era where hard drive capacity has never been cheaper to purchase, so if backing up your drive is a goal, you can add redundancy really cheaply," said Davies. "A user doesn't have to deal with enterprise RAID backups to tape anymore. It's just not responsible."
from Hard Drive Recovery Group
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