2012 October | Memofix's Data Recovery Blog

October 24th, 2012

Professionals and companies are coping with an ever increasing amount of information and they realize that it’s critical to have a dependable system in place to safeguard their valuable data files. That system may involve additional storage capacity or tape backup technology which requires an increase in equipment purchases and technical support to manage a regular backup process.

Memofix can provide you with a Cloud Data Backup service that can simplify your IT operations and give you economies of scale. A cloud backup, recovery and restore solution takes advantage of your existing infrastructure, so you don’t need to buy or install expensive equipment. Our cloud backup software integrates with IT environments to locate and prioritize files for backup, and then securely transmits encrypted copies of those files to offsite data centers. This results in a lower total cost of ownership compared to the purchase and maintenance of complex tape backup systems.

Our Infrastructure is powered by IBM’s Award Winning Tivoli Storage Manager Software, ensuring compliancy with government mandates while securing your most important asset, your data. This managed solution includes daily backup notifications summarizing the previous days backup details, full technical support and a full monitored service. Memofix provides automated, policy-based, data backup and restore services that can easily be customized for you or your company’s specific requirements.

Our backup process creates a copy of your files or application data, compresses and encrypts it, and then securely transfers the copy at a prescheduled time to servers which are located at a secure Canadian facility. Backups can be scheduled, performed manually, or performed remotely using a Web-based interface.

Memofix Cloud Backup service advantages:

• Smarter use of IT resources. Our cloud backup, recovery and restore solution allows you to redirect IT resources to more strategic initiatives. Select a backup schedule as often as you want, specify the number of days or versions to keep, and data is saved automatically. You never outgrow your backup requirements and only pay for the space you need.
• Stronger compliance safeguards. A cloud backup solution provides more reliability and redundancy than tape backup. Your data resides in a secure Canadian sate of the art facility. Our service supports Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems, and SQL, Exchange, Oracle and other databases.
• Eliminates the shortcomings of tape backup. Tape backups may be vulnerable to obsolescence and can be lost or damaged while being transported off-site. Recovering data from a tape system can be a slow process, especially if a tape needs to be retrieved from an off-site vault.
• Improved reliability and speed of recovery. Our cloud backup solutions provides instant restoration of data, including individual files and access to previous versions of your files. You can archive backups for long term storage and retrieve files as needed.

The Memofix Cloud Backup service can save you money, simplify your IT operations and give you an increased sense of security about your data. Let us show you the advantages of our solution over your current backup process.

For more information please contact Larry Shulman via phone at 905.660.4936, extension 25, or by email at [email protected].

Better not leave your hard drive just lying around, or it may just float away. Or at least that may be the case after 2013, when at least one hard drive manufacture, Hitachi Global Storage (now owned by Western Digital) has plans to start filling hard drives with helium.

http://www.hgst.com/press-room/2012/hgst-announces-radically-new-helium-filled-hard-disk-drive-platform

We all know helium as that “lighter than air” gas that has been used to fill and float party balloons for years. But due to it’s lighter then air composition, operating in a helium environment also allows mechanical devices like motors, to spin with less effort, produce less air turbulence, and to operate with less heat and noise. Hard drive manufactures have known of these advantages for years but the problem was keeping the helium from escaping the sealed internal chamber of a hard disk drive. Now that a solution has been found, it will be possible to install more disks on the same motor by spacing them even closer together. Presently, 5 disks can be used in a normal air filled hard drive. Using a sealed helium environment will allow 7 disks for a maximum capacity of 5.6 TB in a single hard drive! WOW!

Helium is harvested as a bi-product of natural gas production and Texas has some of the highest concentrations in the world but the demand continues to outstrip supply. Helium is mainly used in the medical industry to cool MRI machines, and in cryogenics, arc welding and wafer fabrication. It is still unclear how the hard drive industries requirements could effect this shortage but it will no doubt help drive up the cost of hard drives should it become common place.

As for data recovery, it could be a tough barrier to overcome. Assuming that the process used to seal in the helium is a one time affair it may not be possible to reload the hard drive with helium. Consequently we may not be able to replace damaged heads or open the sealed disk chamber in any way … or perhaps we will need to operate in a helium filled clean room .. I can hear the recovery techs speaking in high pitched chipmunk-like voices now … .. is that you Alvin?