Take a look!

Here is an article written from an interview I did last month.

Interview

Enjoy!

I have run into this at least 10 times in the last few weeks, so I decided to so some research and document the best answer I could find.

Different viruses cause different types of damage on your computer. Most of the time, the viruses are programmed to disable Windows Task Manager, Regedit, Command Prompt, folder options and etc. These restrictions are meant to prevent a normal computer user from using these built-in Windows diagnostic tools such as MSCONFIG to disable the virus from starting up on your computer.

There are some viruses that will cause destruction such as encrypting recently used files so you are forced to buy the decryption key from the virus programmer. Then there’s another type of virus such as BDS.Mirc.Backdoor that will hide your document files by setting the hidden and system attributes to the file. You can still see the files if you set to show hidden files and folders plus disabling hide operating system files. Another trick is to use Google Chrome or Opera to reveal the hidden files. If the virus is capable of restricting Folder Options, chances are you think that your files have been wiped out by the virus but in fact they have just been hidden in your system.

There’s still hope if you think that your files are gone because of a virus. Here’s how to check if the files are still around, and if they are, you can reset the attributes of the files to view them normally in Windows Explorer again.

How to show hidden files and folders or system files

1. Go to Control Panel and open Folder Options.

2. Go to the View tab and select “Show hidden files and folders“. Then uncheck “Hide protected operating system files“. Do take note that some viruses that are still active on the computer will revert the changes that you made. So make sure your computer is clean from viruses first by scanning with an antivirus program.

3.  If you managed to locate your files which is hidden but visible because you’ve configured in Folder Options to show, then you’ll need to unhide the hidden file. Here are 4 methods to reset the system and hidden attributes.

Unhide using the attrib command

This is the old school method of doing it without using any software. Just run command prompt (Start > Run > CMD for XP, or for Vista and 7 Start -> type CMD in search box, right click and run as Admin), type the following command:

attrib -H -S C:\path\to\your\file.doc /S /D

You can also use the asterisk character to define multiple extensions. For example:

attrib -H -S C:\data\*.* /S /D

This would remove the Hidden and System attribute of all files in the data folder on the C drive. The /S and /D arguments are optional. /S will recurse down into all sub folders and /D will unhide the folders themselves if they have the System or Hidden attribute set.

Just to point out, it’s probably not the best idea to use something like “C:\*.*” as this will unhide the whole drive including files which Windows has set as hidden or system by design.

Like all customer’s some make their backup decision based on price.  I had such a customer that make the decision to move away from our service to a cheaper solution, Carbonite for Business @ $600/yr back in April of this year.

Their service crashed and they called their IT Service Company.  After 4 hours the IT guy decided that the drive was dead and requested a restore from Carbonite.  Six (6) business days later they received an external drive from Carbonite that did not contain everything they needed to restore the server.  After 35 hours of effort in rebuilding the server, recreating the System State and Active Directory (which Carbonite does NOT do, but my service does easily) they got the server back up and running.

The afternoon that they got their server back they asked the IT guy to call me and get back on our service THAT VERY DAY!

Lesson’s learned:
- Cheaper is not better
- Know what your backup does and doesn’t do
- Recovery time IS VERY IMPORTANT (their entire staff was idle for 10 days)
- Do Your Homework (i.e. search this blog)

Online Data Backup & Storage Blog – Part 3

Data Backup & Storage – Mirrored Storage

Mirrored Storage Fills the Backup Gap | Online Data Backup …

I told you so: Mozy scraps unlimited backups | Online Data Backup …

Cloud Technology Myths | Online Data Backup & Storage Blog

Industry Misconceptions – Mirrored Storage

We admire what Mirrored Storage does for businesses, organizations and the wider community across Dallas and beyond. By protecting critical digital assets and helping recover quickly in the event of a potentially disastrous data loss event, they keep businesses humming and families thriving.

Part of what empowers Mirrored Storage’s top-notch virtualization and cloud backup and storage solutions is high-capacity collocation — essentially a cocoon that houses and protects your company or organization’s IT assets.

Here’s how collocating at CoreXchange helps Mirrored Storage serve you better:

Room to Grow

Our highly redundant, SSAE 16 SOC-1 Type II-compliant data centers provide single-server, half-rack, full-rack and private cage solutions. When your business grows, this abundance of space and options makes it easy to scale up IT assets along with it.

Higher Connectivity Capacity

The data centers’ connectivity capabilities include multiple, BGP-routed Tier-1 Internet backbones via one managed connection, as well as high-speed cross connection to all major carriers. This allows customers the connections required for mission-critical needs common to larger clients and applications such as Mirrored Storage’s high-capacity cloud storage.

For example, Mirrored Storage’s nightly customer backups are now finishing two to three hours more quickly than they were previously. This only enhances the company’s already top-notch data security capabilities.

Reliability, Security, and More…

This state-of-the-art power infrastructure is protected by KVA UPS systems and backed by redundant 1.5 MW generators. And we go a little bit overboard on security, with such a 24/7 staffed check-in station (with mantrap), video surveillance throughout the centers, and cutting edge lightening protection and fire suppression systems.

In other words, we provide the space, power and connectivity so that Mirrored Storage can provide their services efficiently and reliably.  Mirrored Storage can focus on what they do best – cloud backup and storage solutions. Our infrastructure simply serves as the foundation.

There has been a lot of BUZZ about “The Cloud” the last couple of years, but it is heating up even more this summer.  There has been tons of press about the Cloud from almost everyone.  One of the most common search phrases of the last half of 2011 was “What is the Cloud?”.

Common Beliefs about “The Cloud”:
- Information is Secure
- Stored in a location outside your local area
- Data Redundancy
- Monitored

The truth is that all of these thinks CAN be true, but commonly are NOT.  If questions are not asked and information presented to the contrary then you should assume none of them.  The reality is, as in many things in life, you get what you pay for.

Events of note:
- Major Cloud Server provider outages
- Popular Backup/File Share provider dropping security on ALL data for 16 hours
- Most popular Internet Email provider loss of >130k mailboxes occurred > 1 time
- Popular Consumer Backup disk failure and customer data lost
- Popular Consumer offering business service commonly “expires” data and removes it
- Largest Financial Institution loss of unencrypted backup tape

Mirrored Storage offers a comprehensive managed backup solution for businesses of all sizes.  Our offering is considered a Hybrid-Cloud solution.  We utilize the internet for the transmission of data from our customers to our Data Center provider, CoreXchange.  However, they are not offered without a contract and have strict security, encryption and access controls.

CoreXchange became our data center partner in March.  After a very smooth move we have enjoyed better bandwidth that we didn’t know we needed and no worries about power outages or physical access issues.  It was hard decision to make, but looking back it was the best decision we could have made.

Mirrored Storage offers these valuable services for prospective customers to get started:
- Free one hour assessment session to look at your data protection environment
- Free Virtualizing of YOUR server in our CoreXchange data center

Call or Email us today to schedule a call or meeting.
214-550-0550 / sales@mirroredstorage.com

I have been asked so many times lately, “What is the Cloud”, that I decided to create a page dedicated to the question.  Please visit the page Cloud page.

After fighting the word Cloud, I am adopted it as what I have been doing for almost 3 years, do today and moving forward.  That was “Off-Site Managed Online Data Backup” is now “Managed Cloud Backup”.  I have changed the home page and will work on the rest of the site to represent the new name for the same offering.  The technical offering is the same with feature such as:
- Compression & Encryption of information
- Stored in a remote location
- Redundant copies of Data on my side
- Local Copy of data at no cost
- Incremental File, Database Email & Bitbackup Transmitted over the Internet or “Cloud”
- Daily Monitoring of the backups, Managed

I am also per-announcing here that I am finishing up the last couple of technology pieces of a cloud storage solution offering for my customers and prospects.  This new offering will have all the security, privacy, redundancy and flexibility that my backup services are known for.

This new offering will be branded as My Mirrored Storage Cloud aka MyMSCloud

Customers will be able to have local, cloud or both locations for their data.  An synchronization option if data is stored in both locations or used off-line.  There are many options and flexibility available and it will ALL be managed, administered and of course backed up.

Stay Tuned!

There has been a lot of BUZZ about “Cloud” the last couple of years, but it is heating up this summer.  There have been tons of press releases about the Cloud, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in on the subject.  I have heard several talks lately and over the coming months I have been asked to speak on topic.  So here are some bullets for thought and your response.

Myths about the Cloud; things that may be implied but are NOT true:
- Information Secure
- Data Redundancy
- Stored in a location outside your local area
- Monitored

Events of note:
- Amazon EC3 Failure
- DropBox Security Breach
- Gmail Mailbox Loss
- Carbonite Lost Data
- My Backup Loss

What is the answers to these issues with who you are talking to or considering?

I saw a story about a set of stores with the sign that said the following, “either Way you get you pet back.”  The stores were a veterinary clinic and taxidermist side-by-side.

That got me thinking about what I do.  I have partners that I do work with that do data recovery either as part of their core service offerings or do that for their customers.  Since I do their backup off-site and optionally on-site that saying would apply to what I do.

The caveat is if “they” were a customer of mine before the data loss.
#1 If they were than no question, I recover their data.
#2 If not, then the question is whether their hardware was damaged and to what extent.

So the answer:
#1 NO COST
#2 Service cost or REALLY big costs for hardware recovery.

Want to know who is both happier and up and running the quickest?

Call Me to find out.

John
214-550-0550

February 28th Google discovered that tens of thousands of Google Gmail users e-mail, chat histories and contacts had disappeared from their accounts.  The problem still is not fixed. Googleannounced Monday night that the Gmail issue, which struck some users on Sunday, was caused by a bug in a storage software update. While Google had said Monday afternoon that the issue would be resolved for all users within 12 hours, the company now says that the problem has not been fixed but hopes it will be “soon.”

The good news is that Google reported that users’ e-mails, contacts, folders and settings have not been lost. They are retrievable and should be back in users’ accounts once the problem is resolved.  Keep an eye on the dashboard.

“Imagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty,” wrote Ben Treynor, a Google vice president engineering and Site Reliability Czar, in a blog post . “That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon.”

The number of users affected has varied. At first, the company estimated that 0.08%, or 150,000 users had been affected. Later Monday, Google reduced that estimate to 0.02%, or 35,000.

On Monday afternoon, a Google spokesman told Computerworld that engineers had restored service to about a third of those affected.

In his blog Monday night, Treynor addressed the question of how this could happen if Google has multiple copies of users’ data in multiple data centers.

“Well, in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data,” Treynor wrote. “That’s what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we’ve been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue.”

He added that engineers have also archived to tape in order to save the data.

“To protect your information from these unusual bugs, we also back it up to tape,” he said. “Since the tapes are offline, they’re protected from such software bugs. But restoring data from them also takes longer than transferring your requests to another data center, which is why it’s taken us hours to get the email back instead of milliseconds.”

Treynor said a detailed incident report will be posted to Google’s Apps Status Dashboard.

Our TAKE:

We believe that this highlights the importance of backup for businesses.  I was having lunch with a friend on Monday that told me has last company used Gmail so that they would not have to worry about backups — oops!

Not all backup solutions are the same.  Check out our Ten Questions page for questions you should ask and get GOOD answers to from your backup person or provider.

John Neibel
Mirrored Storage, Inc.
www.mirroredstorage.com