Data Recovery Service Discusses Windows 10 Growth, Identity Theft With New Blogs

Continuing its series on data recovery, operating systems and keeping data safe in today's Internet dependent computing environment, Hard Drive Recovery Group's latest post discusses Windows 10.

The popularity of Windows 10 for PCs and laptop computers is unlikely to be shaken without significant a catalysts in the PC market, which remains unlikely.

"Although for many people having a desktop computer is part of their everyday life, this segment is one that few vendors are really focusing on for growth," said Maureen Davies, spokesperson for Hard Drive Recovery Group. "The market itself has been seeing lower numbers for desktops since about 2010, which means any innovation at that level is not exactly something a hot, growing company might be interested in."

Interestingly, the industry recognized cause of lower growth numbers for desktop computers, the sales growth of laptop and tablet computers, also appears to be falling. Whether that is because of higher quality materials, better hard drives or faster chips in newer computers that enable users to use them for a longer period of time, or because the platforms are becoming stale, PC growth has stalled.

"One of the major drivers of growth for PCs in general in the early 2000s tended to be the fact that software vendors were continuing to create their applications with a focus on using more and more computing resources as they became available to mainstream machines," said Davies. "Even as early as 2010, almost all software companies outside of maybe video and gaming app developers had simply stopped building software that would test the capabilities of the hardware. The hardware had grown too strong."

Not entirely coincidentally, around 2010 smart phones began to be real competitors to even laptop computers in their ability to perform computing tasks on the go. Microsoft at the time did make an attempt to port its Windows OS to smart phones, but was able to find very few partners for the OS, and even fewer for the Windows Store - the latter which had to compete with far larger application marketplaces like Apple's App Store and Google's Play.

"I'm sure there will be many books written about Microsoft's missteps in the smart phone market, but it appears obvious that they simply did not have an answer for the iPhone at the time," said Davies. "But in the end, Windows wasn't willing to ease some of the developer restrictions that Google was, and the result was that Windows 10 didn't have the phone environment to establish new growth with."

In another post, entitled Tracking Down A Lost Hard Drive, Hard Drive Recovery Group spotlights a case where a man had a hard drive stolen. The lost drive led to identity theft as well as the loss of thousands of photographs of his young son. There are lessons to be learned for every hard drive user.

"External hard drives and flash drives are incredibly useful and portable while being one of the cheapest forms of data storage available," said Davies. "The problem with them is that some people use them to completely backup their lives. If these drives are lost or stolen, they can cause a lot of headache."

Hard Drive Recovery Group recommends that external hard drives that contain critical file backups and personal data should be kept at home, and not transported anywhere unless absolutely necessary. Simply keeping a hard drive in the same place is going to mean the likelihood of theft or loss is very small.

"In the end, there really should not be a reason why you should need to carry a drive with all of your critical data on it anywhere," said Davies. "In fact, if you have a portable drive, we recommend deleting personal items that have been backed up elsewhere to ensure safety."

from Hard Drive Recovery Group

Expert Shares Her Thoughts On Data Recovery And Windows 10

Windows 10 is very popular these days. Most computer users are using this particular OS. That's why it is always good to hear from the experts as to what their thoughts are regarding this very popular OS.

Continuing its informative series of blogs surrounding hard drive technology and operating systems, including MacOS, Hard Drive Recovery Group discusses the popularity of Microsoft Corporation's Windows 10, easily the dominant OS when it comes to PCs.

"It's really an amazing situation that PCs continue to use Microsoft Windows so long after the OS really made its debut in 1985," said Maureen Davies, spokesperson for Hard Drive Recovery Group. "There have certainly been a ton of hiccups along the way, but despite some slight moves by Google's Chrome and Android, we're still talking about the absolutely most dominant OS that the world has ever seen."

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

Let me iterate. Windows is immensely popular among computer users. Now when it comes to smartphones, it’s Android. This might raise a couple of eyebrows out there but come on, it’s true.

While Android did gain the majority market share for Operating Systems in 2014, the key focus of that OS tends to be smartphones and tablets. Windows did fail to provide a solid competitor for these mobile devices, as so called Windows Phones sold incredibly poorly. Still, when it comes to PCs of almost any kind, Windows remains the default choice for most users.

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

Davies shares her thoughts as to why Windows manages to dominate the market.

"Certainly one of the more critical reasons why Windows managed to save its market share is undoubtedly because they simply gave it away when it came out as a free upgrade if you already had a Windows based system," said Davies. "For businesses in general, 'rocking the boat' when it comes to computing is a major no-no, and of course Windows 10 provides continuity for companies."

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841#ixzz5n0qyYRGI )

It’s just very unfortunate that Windows 7 is not anymore supported by Microsoft. The options for the remaining Windows 7 users are not exactly ideal.

As noted in the post, entitled Windows 10 Domination, another one of the major considerations for most users is that the most popular previous iteration of the OS, Windows 7, has had support discontinued by Microsoft, which sadly makes it a risky proposition for most users.

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

This is what Davies has to say about that.

"Like it or not, there are hackers, and there is malware and viruses no matter where you look thanks to email and the Internet," said Davies. "Windows 10 is by far the best in terms of security in the series, and because Microsoft is heavily focused on supporting it, it's a solid investment."

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

Data ubiquity is important these days. Microsoft’s attempt to make data more ubiquitous is evident with their app called Your Phone. This particular app allows us to access data from our Android phone right from our computer.

An additional feature that has just been revealed is that an app called "Your Phone", which has been created to allow users to access an Android phone directly from a Windows computer, a boon for users that need semi-seamless access to data on their smart phones.

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

Davies shares her valuable thoughts on this.

"The Smart Phone is easily the most used device for both business and personal use, but there has always been an issue when it comes to making them talk to PCs," said Davies. "Microsoft offers what looks to be an excellent starter product that hopefully they can expand upon in the years to come."

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

The most valuable thoughts from Davies have a lot to do with solid data management solutions.

"Today's larger organization can have access to thousands and thousands of terabytes of data in their day to day, with each type of data critical to their mission often in a differing way," said Davies. "Managing this data requires expert planning, and applications that weren't available a mere ten years ago. Developers are taking notice."

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

Davies is right. When it comes to data management, most especially data recovery, there has to be a solid plan. There has to be a set of experts focusing solely on data recovery. A solid data management does not include any DIYs.

"After YouTube started getting really popular, the do-it-yourself crowd started calling us at a rate that really hadn't been seen before," said Davies. "The unfortunate part about this is that many DIYers tend to actually destroy their lost data while trying to recover it, which means we can't provide a data recovery service, and they won't be seeing their data again."

Davies stresses that high quality data recovery service companies will almost always offer a free evaluation either in person or by phone, which means there is rarely a need to pull out a screwdriver or attempt to source drive parts from manufacturers.

"If you love your data, give a hard drive recovery company a call," said Davies. "You'll be much happier that you did."

(Via: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4276841 )

Again, Davies is right. A high-quality data recovery service company, like the Hard Drive Recovery Group, can do the job right. For them, https://www.harddriverecovery.org/hard-drive-recovery.html is never hopeless.

The following blog article Expert Shares Her Thoughts On Data Recovery And Windows 10 Read more on: Hard Drive Recovery Group

source https://www.harddriverecovery.org/blog/expert-shares-her-thoughts-on-data-recovery-and-windows-10/

Tracking Down A Lost Hard Drive Can Be Devastating

A lost hard drive is bad news. No one wants to lose a hard drive, especially one that’s filled with valuable data like family photos and videos. That would be heartbreaking. Sacred family memories should always be kept private. They should never be handed over to complete strangers. It’s just too dangerous.

A hard drive can be filled with so many kinds of data. For it get lost or stolen just widens the possibility of exposing data to complete strangers. That pretty much explains why a man, in a particular news article dated March 9, 2019, is heartbroken after losing his hard drive filled with family memories.

Tymes Marsh has been documenting his three-year old son, Wes. He started from the day Wes came home from the hospital.

Tymes Marsh says since the day his three-year-old son Wes was born, he's been documenting every memory. From the trip home from the hospital to his first steps, even swim lessons.

(Via: https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/valley-man-trying-to-track-down-cherished-hard-drive-filled-with-family-memories)

There is a very good reason as to why Tymes went on to document the life of his young son.

"One day I was hoping that when he got older, I could show him how much I cared about him and how much I love him," said Marsh.

(Via: https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/valley-man-trying-to-track-down-cherished-hard-drive-filled-with-family-memories)

Who can blame Tymes? Any parent would do exactly what he had started to do. With the convenience the digital world has to offer, it makes sense for any parent to maximize the use of technology to document every single, living moment of a child.

In the three years that have passed, Tymes had documented a lot. Then suddenly, all his hard work went down the drain.

Now, Marsh is doing everything to still get that chance. The father says he got a call from his bank in February, flagging some suspicious activity on his debit card. Marsh says that's when he realized one of his two backpacks were missing. Inside, his wallet and a hard drive containing thousands of photos and videos, years of memories he's collected and stored of his son.

(Via: https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/valley-man-trying-to-track-down-cherished-hard-drive-filled-with-family-memories)

Tymes not only lost all the memorable photos and videos of his young son, he’s also in the verge of losing his identity. The fact that someone had tried to use his debit card means his identity is already being compromised. Who knows what can happen next?

This is a good example of how valuable data can end up in the hands of a stranger. Unfortunately, in Tymes’ case, it ended up in the hands of a heartless crook.

Marsh believes someone opened up his passenger car door, which he says could have been unlocked, and took the backpack lying in plain sight.

(Via: https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/valley-man-trying-to-track-down-cherished-hard-drive-filled-with-family-memories)

While he reported the incident to the police, he decided to do some digging himself. Although he has been able to provide some good leads to the police, he is still waiting and hoping to get back the hard drive that contains all his precious memories.

There’s a lot to learn from Tymes’ story. One of which is to lock car doors at all times. Seriously, there’s more to the story than just locking car doors.

The most important thing to learn from Tymes’ story is how to store and protect a hard drive. Truth be told, hard drives should always be stored in a specific way. Keeping it in a backpack is not the safest way to protect it.

The data in the hard drive could get corrupted, even worse, lost. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable to keep a hard drive in a backpack. There will be times when we won’t have the time to store and to protect our hard drives the right way. Hard drives will end up in our backpack at some point. When that happens, our data is in danger as well. Hence, it’s best to recover the data from our hard drive first. In doing so, we will be needing https://www.harddriverecovery.org/data-recovery-services.html so that our data can be transferred to a safer place.

The following article Tracking Down A Lost Hard Drive Can Be Devastating is republished from HDRG

source https://www.harddriverecovery.org/blog/lost-hard-drive/

Data Recovery Service Discusses New Possibilities With Hard Drives In New Blogs

While hard disk drives may just be boring old technology to most people - steady working electronic data storage that gets the job done - Hard Drive Recovery Group points out that HDD units can be far more than just that in its latest blog.

Entitled "What Does A Hard Drive Do?" discusses a recent finding by computer scientists that demonstrates that the mechanical components that make up a hard disk drive can behave as a microphone. The process involves accessing an acoustic side channel that enables scientists to measure how sound waves make hard disk parts vibrate during use.

The research was presented in May at the 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. It shows that although the actual HDD vibrations do not yield sound of particularly good quality, human speech can be discerned, given the right conditions.

"The process is something that the scientists discovered is possible when the HDD firmware is altered, using an offset called the Positional Error Signal," said Maureen Davies, spokesperson for Hard Drive Recovery Group. "While this certainly does create a pretty huge 'neat-o factor', it also unfortunately seems like the kind of discovery that has more applications for bad actors such as hackers."

Certainly, the findings in this study are preliminary, and to suggest that current drives are easily programmable to pick up unauthorized audio is probably going beyond the realms of possibility. But, the idea of the technology being used as a hack-friendly listening device in the future is a terrifying one, without a doubt.

"One of the lucky things about this particular research is that in order to create this listening channel, one has to use malicious firmware and install it into the hard drive itself," said Davies. "This is the kind of process that is far from seamless and very few operating systems would allow to happen remotely. And yet, it does certainly create a chilling effect for a discovery that would otherwise be quite interesting."

In another recent blog post, the company discusses large hard disk drives as well as hard drive failure - the latter being absolutely key annoyance for almost anyone that has used a drive based computer or gadget. The tendency for many consumers is to trust newer technologies and have expectations of better performance - something which they should avoid when it comes to new hard drives based on old designs.

"Despite the fact that hard drives are now starting to have capacities upwards of 10TB and greater, the key design breakpoint - the platter and spindle - remain the same," said Davies. "The fact that many people do not understand is that hard drives, while certainly less prone to failure than, say, 20 years ago, are still subject to very similar rates of crash."

And in another post, Hard Drive Recovery Group talked about Privacy Flag, an EU funded project that allows consumers to better protect their data privacy while online. Education surrounding online data privacy is always something that consumers can use, particularly in an environment where literally five companies have control over the personal data of hundreds of millions of consumers.

"Europe is almost always ahead of the game when it comes to protecting the individual rights of people over the profit concerns of corporations," said Davies. "It is unfortunate that in the US, agencies like the FTC and FCC have become rubber stamp organizations for large corporations. Yet, as these huge corporations continue to affect consumers on a daily basis, the idea of breaking them up via antitrust laws has become much more popular than ever before."

from Hard Drive Recovery Group

What Does A Hard Drive Do?

A hard drive stores data. From a layman’s point of view, that is the main function of a hard drive. It stores our precious digital data.

Apparently, the function of a hard drive can get more interesting than that. In the future, a hard drive can do more than just that.

Eggheads at the University of Michigan in the US, and Zhejiang University in China, have found that hard disk drives (HDDs) can be turned into listening devices, using malicious firmware and signal processing calculations.

(Via: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/07/hard_drive_eavesdropping/)

So, if you think that only walls have ears; think again. Here’s how two computer scientists are making it possible for hard drives to eavesdrop.

For a study titled "Hard Drive of Hearing: Disks that Eavesdrop with a Synthesized Microphone," computer scientists Andrew Kwong, Wenyuan Xu, and Kevin Fu describe an acoustic side-channel that can be accessed by measuring how sound waves make hard disk parts vibrate.

"Our research demonstrates that the mechanical components in magnetic hard disk drives behave as microphones with sufficient precision to extract and parse human speech," their paper, obtained by The Register ahead of its formal publication, stated. "These unintentional microphones sense speech with high enough fidelity for the Shazam service to recognize a song recorded through the hard drive."

(Via: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/07/hard_drive_eavesdropping/)

Although their research was presented in May this year, it’s something that we should all look forward to.

The team's research work, scheduled to be presented in May at the 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, explores how it's possible to alter HDD firmware to measure the offset of a disk drive's read/write head from the center of the track it's seeking.

The offset is referred to as the Positional Error Signal (PES) and hard drives monitor this signal to keep the read/write head in the optimal position for reading and writing data. PES measurements must be very fine because drive heads can only be off by a few nanometers before data errors arise. The sensitivity of the gear, however, means human speech is sufficient to move the needle, so to speak.

"These extremely precise measurements are sensitive to vibrations caused by the slightest fluctuations in air pressure, such as those induced by human vocalizations," the paper explained.

Vibrations from HDD parts don't yield particularly good sound, but with digital filtering techniques, human speech can be discerned, given the right conditions.

(Via: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/07/hard_drive_eavesdropping/)

Now, wait a minute. As interesting as it may sound, it’s sounds alarming as well. If hard drives could discern and eventually store human speech, then it could possibly pick up more than just a wealth of information.

Aside from the data that we aim to store in it, bits and pieces of information that come out of our mouth could be stored as well. When that happens, we could end up documenting a lot of things, even things that we have no intention of documenting. Bottom line is, that is scary. Hard drives turning into microphones are scary.

It’s hard to get into the technical part of the research. But from a layman’s point of view, there is a possibility that hard drives could eventually capture and store spoken language.

In this age of technology, nothing is impossible. The time will come when the function of a hard drive is going to level up. Its capacity to store data is going to be limitless in due time.

Before we get to the moment when hard drives can capture and store human speech, it’s important to remember that hard drives fail as well. No matter how limitless their functions are, they can fail as well.

That’s the reason why we should take data recovery seriously. When we deal with hard drives, we not only deal with data storage but with data recovery as well. This page https://www.harddriverecovery.org/hard-drive-recovery.html deals a lot with data recovery. If we care enough to know what a hard drive can do in the future, we should care enough to know how to recover files from it as well.

What Does A Hard Drive Do? Find more on: http://www.harddriverecovery.org

source https://www.harddriverecovery.org/blog/what-does-a-hard-drive-do/

Hard Drive Recovery Group Discusses Data Analysis And Data Protection With Latest Blogs

Data recovery service provider Hard Drive Recovery Group discusses the differences between data analysis and data visualization with its latest blog post.

As the corporate world continues to mine and find new ways to work with data, analysis has become a large sector for people with backgrounds in computer science and mathematics. This has resulted in a reasonable number of new jobs in a variety of sectors.

"Data analysis is no longer the classic 'nerd in a cave' sector that it used to be," said Maureen Davies, spokesperson for Hard Drive Recovery Group. "As corporations have begun to see the potential and profit hidden within their company and customer data, they are looking for self-starters and high achievers - ones that happen to know how to work and analyze data to create results."

Data visualization, meanwhile, tends to focus on the actual visual presentation of data, whether it be through charts, graphs or others pictorial forms. The goal of any solid data visualization expert is to make data analysis conclusions very simple to decipher for the reader that may not be completely familiar with the original study.

"Data visualization is one of those skills that allow executives and sales people to understand pretty complex data sets quickly and without a lot of background," said Davies. "These creators can be huge in terms of presenting findings from data analysis that would never be very obvious to the layman."

During the month of May, Hard Drive Recovery Group tackled a variety of subjects in its blog, starting out the month discussing data loss and backups.

"As a data recovery company, we are always surprised by new causes and symptoms of data loss that computer users seem to come up with on a daily basis," said Davies. "In the end, proper backup plans are by far the absolute best way to avoid data loss, and we recommend that every computer or smartphone user create one and stick to it."

In another post, the company addressed both RAID and NAS systems, as well as new TSA regulations that will soon allow laptop users to keep their computer in their case during security checks.

"When it comes to air travel, one of the biggest bottlenecks when it comes to time and delays has got to be pre-boarding security," said Davies. "Any ways that the TSA can lessen the time it takes for each individual passenger to get through security is going to have a major effect across the board."

Another blog post references the popularity of SSD drives as well as restoring backups - the latter a process that few people tend to discuss.

"By far one of the most overlooked things when it comes to backing up data is testing the actual backup file itself," said Davies. "There truly is nothing worse than losing a hard drive due to mechanical failure, and then going to your backup only to discover that the file is corrupt or that the backup process was somehow faulty."

Backing up hard drives is one of those tasks that has been made quite easy as of late by newer advances in backup software both as paid for applications and as freeware. To add to this ease is the fact that external hard drives are now in the 4-5TB range, which is more than enough for almost all consumers that don't count video as a major part of their data.

"The great thing about the new external drives is that you can literally take all of your data anywhere," said Davies. "This can be a double edged sword, of course, which is why we recommend a backup drive stay put in a closet or in a place where it can always be accessed for backups on the go."

from Hard Drive Recovery Group

Data Analysis Vs. Data Visualization: What’s The Difference?

We all work with data. Smart decisions can’t be made without data. It’s safe to say that data make the work go around. Just imagine if there weren’t any data. Where would we all be? We’d all be back in the dark ages where our survival was based merely on hunting for food. We have definitely gone a long way since then because our survival now relies on data.

Nowadays, the data industry has grown immensely. From data practitioners to data scientists, several skill sets have been created to deal solely with data.

Numerous job adverts focus on data visualization skills while not necessarily specifying the importance of analytical skills. Job titles reflect this trend with the emergence of new roles such as ‘data artist’, ‘data visualization expert’ and ‘data storyteller’, but organizations are still looking for people who can extract value from their data, so these roles must include analytical skills.

(Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evamurray/2019/03/29/what-is-the-difference-between-data-analysis-and-data-visualization/#3d7c8c606411)

In this huge data community, there are two terms that are bit confusing. These two data terms are data analysis and data visualization. What’s the difference between the two?

The two terms data analysis and data visualization seem to have become synonymous in everyday language in the wider data community.

(Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evamurray/2019/03/29/what-is-the-difference-between-data-analysis-and-data-visualization/#3d7c8c606411)

We often hear about data analysis in the workplace. It’s a term that’s used all the time. The question is, what really is data analysis? Is it really just analyzing the data that’s made available?

Data analysis is an exploratory process that often starts with specific questions. It requires curiosity, the desire to find answers and a good level of tenacity, because those answers aren’t always easy to come by.

(Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evamurray/2019/03/29/what-is-the-difference-between-data-analysis-and-data-visualization/#3d7c8c606411)

It really takes more than just analyzing available data. It’s not enough to say that we all have to look deeper into the data to get insightful answers or solutions. Data analysis is a fact-finding process to discover something relevant.

Data visualization may sound new. Nonetheless, it's a very significant and specific task in the wonderful world of data.

Data visualization involves the visual representation of data, ranging from single charts to comprehensive dashboards. Effective visualizations significantly reduce the amount of time it takes for your audience to process information and access valuable insights.

(Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evamurray/2019/03/29/what-is-the-difference-between-data-analysis-and-data-visualization/#3d7c8c606411)

Is one more important than the other? Of course not. Both are greatly important in the world of data. As a matter of fact, one can't do without the other.

However, that’s not to say that the two never work in harmony – far from it. In working with data, analysis should come before the visual output, but visual analytics can be an excellent method for running more effective analyses.

Visual analytics involves the process of building different charts with your data to give you various perspectives. This helps you identify outliers, gaps, trends and interesting data points that warrant further investigation.

(Via: https://www.forbes.com/sites/evamurray/2019/03/29/what-is-the-difference-between-data-analysis-and-data-visualization/#3d7c8c606411)

Both data analysis and data visualization are important in coming up with cutting-edge findings. With the exponential growth in data, data visualization makes it easier for us to get a representation of what we need exactly from the raw data. Since data visualization transforms critical information into charts, graphs, videos, and images we are able to understand the numbers and eventually gain valuable insights from them.

The data world is so huge these days that we all need various ways to create value out of them. Both data analysis and data visualization are ways to make use of the abundant information that’s available out there.

That just goes to show the importance of data in everyday life. We simply cannot make sense of the available data if we don’t protect them. It’s a no-brainer. We won’t be able to analyze data, more so visualize them, if we don’t protect them.

When it comes to data, especially big data, protecting them is the first thing we should consider. How do we do that? We should be aware of how we can recover data in case something happens to our computers.

While we can do our own little way to recover data, big data recovery should be left to the experts at https://www.harddriverecovery.org/data-recovery-services.html. When it comes to big data recovery, the experts know better.

The following post Data Analysis Vs. Data Visualization: What’s The Difference? was originally published to Hard Drive Recovery Group

source https://www.harddriverecovery.org/blog/data-analysis/