It’s hard enough running a small business these days, without having to worry about the computer stuff as well.

Most medium and large businesses have a dedicated IT department that looks after all the technical stuff.

As a small business, the buck probably stops with you, and to be honest disaster recovery is probably far from your mind. That is until the wheel comes off (so to speak).

The business owner is often the main single point of failure, but lets assume that he/she is ok, what about your computer system? Do you hold any of the following on it?

• The Accounts
• Electronic Invoices
• Customer Database
• Electronic stationary
• Electronic copies of letters sent
• Electronic Diagrams
• Spreadsheets
• Word documents
• VAT records

Now imagine pain, if you lost them……..

It won’t happen to me I hear you say, well I truly  hope it doesn’t, but there are not that many people with computers that cannot say that they have not lost anything ever.

Now some people are paranoid about data loss, other just stick their heads in the sand, or are just plain too busy to think about it.

Well I urge you to think about it just for a moment, maybe even just five minutes, what plans do you have in place to mitigate the effects of losing your data?

We all hear of burglaries, of Computer virii, Hard Disk crashes, fires, or even more recently in Cumbria Flood Damage. All of these quite common disasters can take you Business Data.

There are many solutions you can implement to prevent the loss or recover from it.

At www.TheFileCrypt.com we have what I believe to be the most cost effective simple secure solution that there is currently on the market in the UK.

Offsite Data Backup is the creme de la creme of Data Backup, and is normally only affordable to the larger Businesses with deep pockets. Well here at TheFileCrypt we have have used some pretty sophisticated technology to take the complexity out of the process and reduce the staff to a bare minimum, we have also removed the major risk to the data, by not implementing an online data transfer, this makes out system hacker proof as there are no connections to the internet, and less prone to user error (sorry but you the user can be a weak link, its easy to set up other systems incorrectly).

We can cater for all sizes of backup, but unfortunately we are currently only available in the United Kingdom.

Please stop by and take a look at the fantastically low prices and excellent options.

If you would like any more details of our products, or would like to discuss your Back Up needs, please e-mail me at;

jason@TheFileCrypt.com

Regards,

Jason – Founder TheFileCrypt.com

www.TheFileCrypt.com

The distance from the local exchange is one of the main factors that dictates the speed, or should I say the lack of it.

The technology is getting better, enabling the speeds to slowly increase, however the actual implementation is somewhat slower than we would like. Many of us are on a broadband plan that enables us to have up to 8Mb, but how many of us actually achieve anywhere near that?

There are a large number of housholds in the uk that only just get 0.5Mb, although that is better than the ones still on dialup!

Has anyone tried using any of the online backup services with a slow connection? Well let me tell you it’s painful, I tried to upload my photo collection after leaving it uploading permantly for 4 week, yes 4 weeks, I gave up and started looking for an alternative. Very quickly I found that there wasn’t one that was affordable for the consumer.

Now being an innovative type personality, I decided that if there was no solution, then I would create one.

It’s from this thought that I set to work founding www.thefilecypt.com , through lots of research and my background heavily embeded in telecoms and datacoms I came up with what I believe to be a simple, secure and affordable solution available for the consumer.

Come over to www.thefilecrypt.com and have a look.

For December only you can get 3 Months FREE just use the code “3monthsblog”.

All the best,

Jason Pope
Founder of www.thefilecrypt.com
Jason@thefilecrypt.com

There are a few main signs that a hard drive is heading towards failure;

1. The Hard drive is making any strange noises, especially a loudish clicking noise that it only recently started to make.
2. The hard drive seems to be running much more slowly, with files taking a long time to transfer to and from it, this sometimes leads to a slow down in programs opening. This should not be confused with other issues such as not enough RAM or the hard drive being full.
3. Files stored on the Hard Drive are corrupt, this may be a sign of impending hard drive failure, or could be due to virus attack, or a power failure during a read/write action.
4. The computer gives warnings, sometimes the computers operating system will start issuing warnings of corruptions or “bad sectors”.
5. The hard drive only sometimes works, it sometimes does not show up on the system.

If any of these signs show themselves, it would be a good idea to make a backup of any data held on the hard drive. Sometimes hard drives can be diagnosed and semi fixed, by running system utilities such as de-frag on PC and disk utilities on the MAC, but unless you can find a real reason for the hard drive problems, it will be a good time to find another backup solution just incase.

Jason

jason@thefilecrypt.com

www.TheFileCrypt.com

First of all, if you are using your computer to look this up on the Internet, stop right now, you should stop fiddling straight away, what you do next can have a massive impact on the amount of data you recover.

The first scenario I shall look at is if the crashed hard drive is an external one. Here are the questions you should be asking yourselves;

Can your computer see the hard drive at all ? If not, then it is possible that the hard disc is ok ( fingers crossed) and that it is the external hard disk case that has broken. If this is the case, they can be replaced relatively easily.

If your computer can see the hard drive but it is responding very slowly, the best course if action would be to assume that it is going to fail very soon. Get youself a spare hard drive and start copying the files across. This may take some time if your drive is failing, but hopfully it will hold out until you get the important files off.

If the drive has failed completely, all may not be lost, do not reformat it, you need some disk recovery software. There are many on the Market, some will analyse the drive and tell you what files it can recover before you buy the software, this is handy as it saves paying out for software that will not work.

Running file recovery software takes a long long time, but resist the urge to skip steps, take it slow, really slow. You are bringing your files back from the brink here, if you rush you could lose the lot.

Part 2 coming soon

Jason
Jason@thefilecrypt.com
www.thefilecrypt.com

Now that is an interesting question !

Photography is a very addictive past-time, often for many, it becomes an obsession, and ultimately leads to either becoming a semi-professional photographer, or even full time professional photographer.

It doesn’t take long to ammase a large photo collection, especially if you are using the RAW format, rather than the much compressed and lossy JPG format.

Personally, my current photo collection is a not too small 180GB’s, and approximately 35,000 photos. I am sure this is a bit above average for a photo collection, however in my defence that it 7 years worth of digital photos. The subject matter is mainly family snaps, but in recent years, and after convincing my other half that a digital SLR is the way to go, I have started taking my photography to the next level. Bizarrely, my wife has also got into it, and actually uses my toy more than I do.

With all that photo storage and the subject matter mainly being my family, you can see why I would want it stored securely. I have tried using an online data backup service, and although they seem on the surface a good idea, the problem in the uk, is the speed of the ADSL, here we have really slow upload speeds, I estimated that it would take 5 months to do the initial backup of my photos, and that assumes that I take no more photos (like thats going to happen). There is also the problem of broadband subscription, my provider considers upload to be part of my monthly allowance, I exceeded this after a week or so, so ended up paing extra to increase my allowance, watch out for that one.

I started looking at the alternatives;

Flickr – Now that is ok, used by many photographers, but it boils down to 2 major factors, 1 is that it is still online, and needs to be uploaded. The other major problem with Flikr for me was the small print that says that Flickr own the copyright to the photo that you upload to their servers. Now that really is not on, they are my photos, not theirs, I was also uncomfortable with the idea that they would be quite public. You never know who is looking at the photos of your children.

A second hard drive – Well this was my solution for a few years, but as the photo collection got more and more precious, the more I worried about theft, lets face it, if someone goes to the trouble of breaking into the house and steals your computer, the chances are they will take any other shiney stuff they find close by. I actually resorted to leaving my external drive with a neighbour whilst going on holiday, they thought I was nuts, but they did take on board what I was saying, and even left a hard drive with me when they went away. Later that year we had a theft in the village, and exactly that happened, the computer was stolen, together with the hard drive, ALL photos of the children growing up gone forever.

Backup to DVD and leave with family – Another tactic that I used to use, I would create 3 DVD’s of my current batch photo’s, I would keep one in a drawer, take one to work, and post the other to my sister. Now this is quite a robust idea, however, it is reliant on the DVD media remaining in tact, and not getting lost, both of which can happen.

The conclusion was, that there was no sensible alternative, so being the innovator that I am, I came up with my own solution – TheFileCrypt.com .

The solution is simple, you use a data stick / memory card to shuttle photos to a secure storage faciltiy, the memory sticks used are 16GB’s so the equivalent storage capacity of approximately 5 x DVD’s, now that is a lot of photos or documents. The files are encrypted once they arrive, and are then put onto a managed electronic storage facilty, where they sit waiting to bail you out. Computer failure or hard disk failure will happen for the individual, and when it does, it can be catastrophic, expensive or both, data can sometime be recovered by specialists, but normally at the price of many hundred £’s.

At only £4.99 per month starting subscription Thefilecrypt.com offers a true value for money, its an inssurance againt photo loss, that insurance compnaies would never give you, anyhow, how can any amount recompense you for the loss of your memories.

The other main advantage of TheFileCrypt.com, is that it is ever so simple, no software needs to be installed, just copy your photos from your computer, and put them on the memory stick, easy as that, then send it to us, and we will do the rest.

Needless to say  our service is fantastic, and one day, if you are not using it, you will wish you had.

I have had many hard drives crash on me over the years, some let you know in advance, often by really slowing down, but some just crash big time, and leave you with nothing but a useless chunk of metal.

Come and have a look today at www.TheFileCrypt.com and let us look after your files so that you do not have to.

Till next time,

Jason

Founder – TheFileCrypt.com “Fanatical about Backup’

According to the results of a new survey small to medium sized UK companies are putting their data at risk by ignoring data backup, and as a result sensitive business and customer information is being lost http://continuitycentral.com/news04776.html.

The survey indicates that 28% of SMEs are not backing up their company data, with time, security worries and lack of concern being given as reasons. However 46% said they would back up their data if the whole process was quicker, easier and automated.

With data loss and security being so prominent in the news over the last 18 months it’s worrying to see that despite ongoing concerns businesses are still taking risks and are not backing up their applications and data to ensure it is protected.

In the event of a systems failure a business that keeps updated backups of all its data and applications stands a much better chance of recovering information and becoming operational within a reasonable time. So to ensure minimal disruption to your business in the event of a crash, surely it makes sense to invest in data backup?

Data backup needn’t be a complicated or expensive. With TheFileCrypt’s solution, you simply put your data onto the mermory stick and put it in the post, please contact us at info@thefilecrypt.com if you would like a solution that we do not currently offer.

Jason – Founder

www.TheFileCrypt.com

Our unique approach is a simple one, we supply a high capacity memory stick, you put your latest photos or files on to it, put it in the prepaid envelope and post it.

We do the rest, but needless to say as soon as the data is in our hands, you can stop worrying about safe backup or losing it to a computer crash or theft.

We do the thing that we do best, we fanaticaly (not sure if that is a word) look after them, we store them in a secure place were they are no longer at risk .

The now empty memory stick gets posted back to you, where it is ready for you to send the next bunch of photos or files to be cared for lovingly by us.

Do not be under any illusion though, your files are treated as if they were the nations secrets, on arrival they are encrypted with some of the strongest available encryption, and then stored on arguably one of the most resilient disk array systems. All the systems are actively monitored to ensure the integrity of the data, unlike sticking it on a DVD and leaving it at work, we ensure that it is future proofed and completely intact, did you know that recordable DVD’s fade after time, so you might find that your DVD backup is blank when you need it most.

So come and have a look at the best backup that you can have for your personal photos and files at www.thefilecrypt.com.

Kind Regards,

Jason

Founder – TheFileCrypt.com

jason@thefilecrypt.com