The common desktop, much like the one you’re probably using, has a single hard drive. Servers, on the other hand, have multiple drives which are configured to appear as a sole logical volume. This is what is known as RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Generally, RAID is used »

Going green is a recent trend for hard drives. Companies like Western Digital and Seagate are two manufacturers that have released their own power efficient hard drives. Green drives are often marketed as being quiet, cool and less power consumptive than their standard counterparts. This usually means that the drives »

When it comes to deciding what storage device you want inside your computer you will find that you are presented with two different options: a solid state drive (SSD) or a hard disk drive (HDD). There’s no correct choice for which one you pick, since it’ll depend on factors such »

A file server is, in its simplest sense, a computer that stores and manages data on a network. Network-attached storage (NAS) is a piece of hardware created specifically for data storage accessible on a network. It is specialised and built from the ground up for use as a data server, »

If you are researching hard drives to buy then you will probably be deciding whether to go for a standard hard disk drive or a solid state drive. The latter is faster and less prone to failure, but those luxuries will put a hefty dent in your wallet. As such, »

A fairly recent addition to the hard drive market is drives that have been designed to be energy efficient. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Western Digital are two companies that have released drives in the market, with their products boasting a reduced power consumption of up to 40% over a »

If you are going to have a hard disk fail in a RAID configuration, you want it to be in a RAID 1 configuration. This is even more true if you have multiple disks fail. RAID 1 is one of the most fault tolerant RAID levels, because it consists of »

Businesses in all sectors have data storage needs. Documents, databases and emails constantly flow through businesses of any size and choosing the right infrastructure to store this data on can seem confusing at first. What you decide depends on a number of factors. Things like how fast you need to »

Data storage and retrieval are both vital to businesses of all kinds, and in all industries, yet the available options for data storage are abundant. Not all data storage methods are created equal: to efficiently meet their data storage needs, many businesses turn to a RAID 0 methodology. Utilizing a »

In terms of fault tolerance, RAID 1 configurations are very robust. This is because a RAID 1 volume consists of independent disks which are mirrors of each other. Unlike RAID 0, which has no fault tolerance, and RAID 5, which as a fault tolerance of one disk, RAID 1 can »

In Windows, and most other operating systems, there are two basic formatting options: quick format and full format (sometimes referred to simply as a “format”). These two methods for reformatting your hard drive have slightly different results. But these differences may make or break your chances to recover data after »

Dividing a single disk into multiple partitions is a cost-effective way to implement multiple file systems on the same physical drive. This lets you treat each partition as a different drive with its own drive letter, its own file structure and even its own operating system. For example, you could »

A good data backup strategy is like a good insurance policy. It’s a modest upfront investment that helps protect you against costly losses caused by the unforeseen. If your data backup plan doesn’t sufficiently protect your valuable data, then you’ll be faced with the high costs of data recovery. Just »

When choosing an enterprise cloud storage provider, getting what you need to keep your business up and running boils down to asking the right questions. One of the most important contingencies to plan for is data recovery after data loss or erroneous changes to your data. With an in-house data »

In terms of protecting your privacy and the security of your data, encryption is a widely accepted best practice both at home and in the office. However, while disk encryption vastly strengthens your data security, it also complicates your ability to recover your data should your disk become corrupted. In »

In recent years, smartphones have shifted away from external storage media, such as SIM cards and SD cards, and now use built-in flash-based media for storing photos, contacts, videos, documents and other mobile multimedia. This poses a few risks and challenges when it comes to data recovery. For one, as »

RAID stands for “redundant array of independent disks” which means, in simple terms, that multiple physical hard drives are treated by a system as a single logical volume. RAID volumes are often used in data storage cabinets, dedicated file servers and network attached storage devices. This is because RAID offers »

Recovering Data from a Failed RAID 5 The main advantages of a RAID 5 volume are its faster data access and fault tolerance. The latter advantage means that a RAID 5 volume can continue working even if one of the disks in the array fails. The failed disk can be »