You knew you were living on borrowed time and now it’s happened – your computer has given up the ghost! You probably think you have lost all your hours and hours of hard work, but guess what? You may be wrong! A good data recovery service may be able to help you to recover some or even all of your data. But before you get too excited we have to urge you to make sure you can trust such a service with your valuable information. If you want to recover your lost data we recommend you approach a reputable company that knows what they are doing. The last thing you need is to have lost all your data AND be faced with an unusable hard drive as well. So how does one find a good data recovery service?

When you lose vital data from your computer it can be very stressful. Even with all the added precautions and protective software we install onto our systems things can still go wrong. In fact there are estimates that suggest that one out of every five hundred computer data centers will experience a significant loss of data. That means we aren’t alone when things go wrong.

Your business can be badly affected when this kind of thing occurs and the loss of data could even threaten the security of your business as a whole. Not to mention the fact that, if you do survive, hours must now be taken trying to fill the gaps or redo highly technical work. In some cases, for example, the more creative fields of music and design you may never recover your losses and have to start from scratch.

In most cases human error and mechanical failure are the cause of data loss (at least 75%). The remaining 25% of users will suffer considerable loss of data from actual physical damage to the computer, software corruption, and malicious actions from outsiders like computer viruses.

A good data recovery service is your best bet when this happens because expert help may well recover data you thought lost or repair damage to your computers hardware. A data recovery service usually removes your computer’s hard drive and, using advanced technology, attempts to retrieve as much information as they possibly can.

It’s probably not a good idea to try to fix it yourself because a) you may be far too emotional to think clearly about the most productive course of action and b) you may not have the tools and expertise to do a good job without causing irretrievable data loss.

If you are still able to gain access to your computer’s hard drive through the operating system you may be able to use some form of data recovery software to access and restore lost data. If you do so you will want to be pretty comfortable with the program and have a good basic knowledge of how your computer functions.

In most cases you probably won’t even be able to access your hard drive or operating system – a situation commonly referred to as the dreaded ‘blue screen of death’. In this case it is wise to consult a good data recovery service to help you to restore your data.

If you do so bear in mind that access to the correct and proper tools doesn’t necessarily mean that the service you choose will have a good data recovery rate. Recovering lost data is a blending of the advanced tools AND the skill and determination of the specialist. A ‘never-say-die’ attitude is probably your best hope when combined with the right skills and abilities.

What Not to Do!

If you have somehow lost or accidentally deleted the files from your computer – think positively. In short BELIEVE that your data is recoverable. There are a few things you probably shouldn’t do until you can get your hard drive into the capable hands of a good data recovery service.

* Don’t run the drive anymore, or use the device. This includes MP3, portable storage, camera cards etc. Don’t think that probing your computer is the next best step unless you really, really, REALLY, know what you are doing. Most times, it is the actions of the computer user AFTER data loss that causes the real problems with recovery.

* Don’t install or run anything on the drive i.e. the drive where lost data resides. If you want to access the drive do so only from a healthy computer where data recovery software is installed. Files are overwritten in the order they were deleted so the last files that have been excised from your drive will be the first to be permanently lost.

* Don’t use tools like Scandisk, or a boot record utility. In many cases these may just probably overwrite the files you want to get back.

Probably the best way to find a good data recovery service is to ask other computer users. There is a good chance that at least one (and probably more!) have lost data from their computers at some time or another. Ask friends and colleagues who helped them to recover the majority of their data. Anybody who has been through this horror once or even twice will be able to point you in the right direction.

Search online for the names of good data recovery service providers and companies who sell data recovery software and contact them to discuss the best solution for your particular problem. You may only need to run the software to restore your data or your hard drive may have to be removed and examined. Beware of those companies who only try to sell you their software solution – they may be out to make money while forgetting your best interests. A good data recovery service will put your needs first.

A blu ray is a digital video disk that can record, store and play back high definition video, digital audio and computer data.

Consider the single-sided, standard DVD. It is capable of storing 4.7 GB of data (or about the size of the average two-hour, standard-definition movie). However, high-definition films have much greater clarity and need five times more bandwidth. Obviously standard DVD disks are inadequate and Blu Ray disks are the solution.

Today’s television sets and movie studios have made the leap toward high definition technology and playback options with greater storage capacity are becoming essential for capture and storage.

So, how does Blu Ray Work? Before we tell you, let’s cover some of the advantages to a Blu Ray.

Increased Storage Capacity

* A single-layer Blu-ray disk is about the same size as a standard DVD but it is able to store up to 27 GB of data – in excess of two hours of high-definition video or about 13 hours of standard video!

* Double-layer Blu-ray disks have a storage capacity of up to 54 GB and can hold 4.5 hours of high-definition video or more than 20 hours of standard video. Developments suggest that Blu ray disks will soon be able to hold double this amount.

Blu-ray Discs Offer Increased Interactivity

* With the advent of the Blu Ray disk, computer users will have the added advantage of being able to download subtitles and other interactive movie features direct from the Internet. Tasks they will be able to perform include:

* Recording High Definition Television (HDTV) with perfect quality

* Skipping to any place on the disk instantly

* Recording a program while at the same time watching a second program on the disk

* Create a play list

* Editing and re-ordering data stored on the disk.

* Search automatically for an empty space on the disk (to avoid mishaps)

* Access the Web and download features like subtitles.

Blu-ray Discs have an Increased Transfer Rate

Data transfer rates on Blue Ray are 36 Mbps (megabits per second). Much higher than DVDat 10 Mbps. A Blu-ray disc can record 25 GB of material in a little over an hour and a half!

Blu-ray Discs Offer Increased Security

Blu-ray discs are better protected than DVDs. A secure encryption system is fitted with each disk, This is a unique ID that protects against video piracy and copyright infringement.

How Blu Ray Works

Disks store digitally encoded video and audio information in spiral grooves called pits. These grooves run from the center of the disk to the edges. The data is accessed when a laser reads the other side of these pits i.e. the ‘bumps’ enabling us to watch a movie or listen to a CD.

If a disk contains a large amount of information the pits are packed closely together and are much smaller. As the pits become smaller the laser needs to become more and more accurate in its ability to read the data.

DVDs use a red laser to read and write data but the Blu Ray disk uses a blue laser to access the information. Blue lasers have a shorter wavelength (405 nanometers) than red lasers (650 nanometers) and the smaller beam has the ability to focus on the pits more accurately.

Blue Ray disks can read information recorded in pits as small as 0.15 microns (µm) (1 micron = 10-6 meters) long i.e. twice as small as the pits on a DVD. In addition Blu Ray has reduced the track pitch from 0.74 microns to 0.32 microns.

The combination of the smaller pits, smaller beam and shorter track pitch mean that a single-layer Blu Ray disk can hold in excess of 25 GB of information, that’s about five times the amount of information that can be stored on a DVD disk.

A Blu-ray disk is about 1.2 millimeters thick (the same as a DVD), but the disks store data in different ways. DVD disks store data between two polycarbonate layers, each 0.6-mm thick. This polycarbonate layer can cause a problem called birefringence i.e. the substrate layer refracts the laser light into two separate beams.

If the beam is split too wide apart, the disk cannot be read and if the DVD surface is not perfectly and perpendicular to the beam, it may lead to ‘disk tilt’, in which the laser beam is distorted. For these reasons the manufacturing of DVDs is a very involved process.

How do Blu Ray Disks Avoid These Problems?

Blu Ray disks alleviate reading problems by placing data on top of a 1.1. mm thick polycarbonate layer. Since the data is on top birefringence is avoided. In addition the recording layer is in very close proximity to the objective lens of the reader so disk tilt is eliminated. The disk is protected by placing a hard coating over the disks surface.

The injection-molding process on a single 1.1-mm disc reduces the manufacturing costs and is balanced by the cost of adding the protective layer.

In the end the price is virtually the same as that of a DVD.

What about Formats for Blu Ray Disks?

Blu Ray has been designed in several formats:

* BD-ROM (read-only) – for pre-recorded content * BD-R (recordable) – for PC data storage * BD-RW (rewritable) – for PC data storage * BD-RE (rewritable) – for HDTV recording

If you want to duplicate a DVD or CD there are a number of duplicators to choose from, from 1:1 duplicators for home use to larger 9 bay duplicators suitable for your business needs.

In order to buy the right technology to duplicate a DVD or CD you first need to determine what you needs are in terms of duplicator speed, formats, throughput and many other considerations.

So what features should you look for before you buy?

* Duplicator Drive Speed

DVD and CD duplicators feature drives that record at different speeds. A 1x duplicator speed indicates that data will be copied at one times the speed of playback and a speed of 4x means it is copied at four times the speed and so on.

The higher the duplication speed, the faster the CD or DVD will record. If you will be dealing with high volumes of time-sensitive data choose a duplicator with the highest recording speed you can afford.

* CD and DVD Format

At present there are two formats of recordable CD or DVD that are compatible with CD and DVD duplicators. These are CD/DVD-R and CD/DVD+R. There has been much debating at to which is a better format and consequently most drive manufacturers make a dual drive that can support either one. I really is a personal choice.

* Throughput

Consider how fast you need to duplicate your DVD or CD discs. If you use a 1:1 duplicator it may only have a throughput of a couple of DVDs each hour. A higher capacity 9 bay tower can duplicate in excess of a hundred DVDs per hour.

So now you know a little bit more about what to look out for but are probably asking yourself (and me) how the recording process works and what choices are available to you. There are two ways to duplicate a DVD or CD:

* Manual DVD Copying

* Automatic DVD Copying

You will need to decide which duplicator type best suits your production demands.

How They Work

Manual DVD Duplicators

If you choose to duplicate a DVD or CD manually you just place your DVD or CD manually into a drive/s in your pc or multi-drive tower. The duplicator then makes a copy or copies of the original disc. Manual duplicators offer a speedy solution because they allow several DVDs or CDs to be copied simultaneously.

The only real downside is that they do require some stand-by labor to re-feed the drives during the copying process. There are manual towers which feature auto-loading compatibility but these are far more expensive that standard manual duplicators.

Auto-loading Duplicators

If you need high volume duplication with virtually no physical operation then an auto-loading tower may be a better choice. All you need to do is put a pile of plank DVS or CDS into the hopper and hit the go button. This type of duplicator has space for between fifty or eighty discs on each recording run. This type of duplicator can stand alone or be PC based.

Brand Names to Look Out For – Which One to Buy

Look out for the top names in duplicator technology like U.S. Digital Media, Rimage, Media Technics, Microboards and Primera with drive technology from Pioneer and NEC. All CD and DVD Duplicators feature a standard equipment manufacturer warranty and in some cases extra warranty benefits with certain models or retailers.

Retailers are offering DVD or CD duplicators at pretty affordable prices these days so if you want to get on the band wagon, now is the time. It isn’t hard to duplicate a DVD or CD, in fact, these little wonders make it child’s play. Your reasons for wanting to duplicate DVD or CD may be very basic or business oriented but your duplicator should make things easier for you. Keep this is mind, and select one that acts as a digital assistant!

First and foremost, you must have a very clear understanding of where, when, and what you will be using your laptop. For example, an aspiring writer chasing his muse away from home will have different needs than a graphic designer who is preparing for a client presentation. Thus, the first “extra” you will most likely purchase is extra software.

Secondly, no matter how you plan to use your your laptop, the odds are very good that you will need to print something. You may find that you have some articles ready to submit and wish to print a hardcopy for yourself. In the alternative, you may want to see what the layout of your newly designed website would look like on paper, and again, you will need a printout. Perhaps you even hope to include such items in a hardcopy portfolio; regardless of your reasons, you will need a printer. Granted, you probably still have a printer at home that came with the desktop computer you recently retired; however, if you happen to be traveling, you will suddenly realize that finding an available printer that will work with your laptop is not as easy as it sounds. While there may be copying centers that also specialize in business access, depending on your location they may be hard to find, and so it is best to purchase a portable printer that easily hooks up to your laptop.

Thirdly, depending on your system, you may have any number of USB ports. Usually, you will have only two. If you decide to update any of your peripherals and are not able to hook them into the usual port, you will most likely have to take up one of the USB ports. If you decide to run more peripherals than you have ports, you will quickly find frustration becoming your good friend. Fortunately, USB hubs are inexpensive accessories that can very nicely complete the set of “extras” you will require for your new laptop.

Fourthly, yet very importantly, is the question of the power supply. If you travel a lot, you will find that power supplies at times may be iffy, and at other times may be non-compatible with your system. This is especially prevalent if you travel outside the United States. To assure that you are not running down your battery back-up with no recharging in sight, it is a wise idea to purchase an additional power adapter or perhaps converter that will assure that you can plug in anywhere, at any time.

Last but not least, consider the climate in which you will be working. During especially hot weather it is quite possible to overheat a laptop, and thus a notebook “cooler” is a wise investment. Not only will it assure that your laptop stays in top shape, it also will not drain an untoward amount of power from your laptop’s battery. Granted, it will require an additional USB port to operate, but if you purchased the USB hub, you’ll be in good shape.

In closing, it is apparent that the need-to-know basics for laptop “extras” revolve around the user: these “extras” are as individual as the user, and the needs s/he may have for the machine. One size definitely does not fit all, but each and every user will have different requirements for their laptop. Thus, if an accessory does not appear useful to you, even after careful consideration of the advantages, then quite possibly it is not the “extra” for you. Please remember, “Extras” are highly individual add-ons!

The AGP port brought with it increased bus speed / bandwidth and its point to point protocol meant AGP used its own pathway to communicate with the central processing unit of your PC and your computer’s memory. This was in contrast to the PCI bus where all the devices connected to your computer share the 133 MBs of bandwidth available to it. AGP and PCI Bus are based on 32 bit bus but AGP at 66 Mhz had double the bandwidth of PCI at 33Mhz. AGP presently has the ability to transfer data at a maximum of 8x, has ~2100MB/s of bandwidth). There are several high speed I/O devices available today like SATA / ATA150 (150 MB/s), Gigabyte Ethernet (125 MB/s), 1394B (100 MB/s) and any one of them can easily outdo the PCI Bus. However, with the introduction of PCI Express this is about to change.

So what is PCI Express?

PCI Express is the replacement for both the current version of PCI and the AGP system, but how is PCI Express different from what has gone before and why is it superior?

* Classic PCI Bus technology was based upon a parallel architecture while the new PCI Express is serial based. This feature drastically reduces pin count.

* PCI Express is a point to point protocol much like AGP, so the devices on your PC do not have to share bandwidth

PCI Express – Serial vs. Parallel Connections

Why do serial systems make such a difference? As an example take the Serial ATA controller cards and drives that recently emerged in the market. SATA was supposed to provide performance benefits that never really materialized but its interface is far superior.

When compared to the old parallel one, a serial ATA cable uses 8 wires while the older IDE cable required an 80 pin connection (40 for transmission and another 40 as ground). Parallel connections present problems when trying to upgrade their speed. Signals degrade and interference become troublesome (due to the 40 ground wires required in an IDE cable).

Serial connections reduce the complexity of the communications protocol thus reducing the pin count. Due to this the transmission speed may be significantly increased.

Through its transition from a parallel to a serial based architecture PCI Express aims to achieve a similar aim. PCI Express features a lower implementation cost, higher bandwidth per pin and scalable performance -all this, in an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of the current version.

The PCI Express is different in two ways- 2.5 Gb/s per direction translates into about 250 MB/s per direction, (twice the bandwidth of the current version) and this speed is available to each device. Secondly, the devices and slots that require high bandwidth can have extra lanes added to them (x2, x4, x8, x12, x16 and x32 lanes are possible).

Switching from AGP / PCI to PCI Express

If you are an avid gamer there is a downside to PCI Express. There will not be an AGP slot on PCI Express motherboards so this means that the new 9800XTs and 5950 Ultras will probably not work when after you upgrade your motherboard. It may be a good idea to avoid upgrading to a high end part, at this stage.

PCI Express is catching on rather slowly at present since the vast majority of current peripherals like SATA, IDE and Gigabyte LAN are integrated into the motherboard directly. On the i875, Intel has a Communications Streaming Architecture (CSA) bus dedicated for Gigabit LAN, in an attempt to avoid saturating the PCI bus. PCI Express will do away with the need for such additions.

Nforce 3 250 has Gigabit Ethernet built into its southbridge featuring a high speed connection to the processor but the PCI Express seems targeted towards the enterprise sector of the market (it makes good competition for PCI-X in terms of bandwidth and is likely to prove more cost effective.

RAID and SCSI cards will be appearing on the PCI Express bus. Look for SATA controller cards and 1394B cards on the PCI Express front.

HyperTransport Compatibility

Chipsets including the K8T800 and Nforce 3 rely on the HyperTransport 1 spec as a chip to chip interconnectivity protocol. The newer HyperTransport 2 specifications will provide mappings to PCI Express. HyperTransport and PCI Express promoters tell us that HyperTransport and PCI Express are not competing technologies (PCI Express features backplane connectivity protocols while HyperTransport is a chip to chip connectivity solution). HyperTransport is also and not a serial based connection.

Why Switch to PCI Express

Advancing from AGP 4x to 8x showed no real performance benefits to video cards for gaming, so perhaps the problem with video cards in the gaming environment is not due to its I/O interface. Increasing the bandwidth available to the videocard to double its speed isn’t deemed necessary right now but may prove to become so in future (when enough geometry and textures have been passed through the bus to saturate an AGP 8X bus). Low latency was also a design feature goal of PCI Express.

Having said this, the real benefits of PCI Express aren’t really concrete at present. Right now its main benefit seems to be the likelihood that buying a video card like this will guarantee that it will work in future mainboards where as AGP will have a limited life.

Editing HD Video may see some immediate bonuses from PCI Express. Programs like Adobe Premiere, see hardware stressed when trying to navigate a large file and being able to manipulate video directly from the video card will be a definite plus.

PCI Express will be an invaluable step in bringing convergence to the PC industry. It will do this by modernizing and standardizing the I/O standard. Manufacturers will probably benefit more (at least initially) than the end user. It is slanted to be more affordable to implement than both the classic PCI Bus and the AGP slot. It may avoid the need for custom buses like the CSA which the Intel 875 chipset uses for Gigabit Ethernet.

PCI Express is focused towards the graphics segment and the greatly increased in bandwidth offered by the PCI Express x16 slot but beware, the problem is that current AGP cards will not work which means costly upgrades on the graphics front. The extra bandwidth offered by PCI Express is slated as translating into better performance but may not hold up in reality. Its extra bandwidth probably won’t be required initially nor for some time as the AGP bus is not the limiting factor on latest generation video cards. Improved latency may help, but users may not notice much difference between AGP and PCI Express cards at first.

What this message is really telling you is that your hard drive is running low on space, and not your computer overall. If you have lots of files on your computer that are large, consider compressing them. This is easy enough to do by placing them into a zip file. It will store all of it but in less room overall. There are many sections of memory that are allocated to your computer which is why you can get error messages even though you seem to have a ton of empty space there.

If you are actually getting low on memory overall though you need to consider a couple of options. The first one involves upgrading your memory and that can generally be done for a low price. Contact your local computer repair location to see what they can do for you. They can also troubleshoot the problem for you if you definitely don’t seem to be low on overall memory.

Do you have lots of different windows and browsers open? That tends to make your computer work harder and it can affect those messages you get about low memory. Depending on your job it may not be possible to close many of them though. Instead you may need to upgrade to more memory so that you aren’t bogging down the system.

The other option is to buy yourself a better computer. Many older computers just aren’t equipped to keep up with all of the information that the average person stores and accesses on one today. You will notice that your speed is faster and that you aren’t getting those annoying messages anymore when you have better equipment to work with.

There can be errors in the coding which indicate that your configuration on the computer are no longer accurate. When that happens you will likely be have many other errors as sell though that are bogging down your computer. Some people choose to disable these pop up messages but that isn’t a good idea. Early diagnosis that something is wrong with your computer means you have an opportunity to remedy the situation before it gets out of control.

A message from your computer that you are low on storage space when you have a clear indicator otherwise means something in the coding is corrupt. You do want to take the time to figure it out though or the problem will only continue to get worse. You may find that your computer runs slower, locks up on you, and can even shut down when you are in the middle of something important. Listen to the early warning you get so that you can correct the situation.