Another solid review from JoeTech.com. View the article here:

http://www.joetech.com/wipe-data-completely-with-mediawipe/

Outliers, Tipping Point and Blink author Malcolm Gladwell at TED 2004. Interesting points about pricing and perception.

RAID Data Recovery: Its easy… run a utility!

Recently I received a RAID for data-recovery. Should be easy, the tech said… its just a ‘lost configuration’ situation. He said the RAID had an error so he rebuilt and swapped the bad drive – but when he rebooted – the RAID was gone…. uh-oh. So should easy, right… just a lost-RAID-configuration.

Whats this configuration you ask? A RAID is composed of multiple drives, that are setup up in 1 of many optional configurations. If that config information is lost then you can’t access the array. In reality a lost-RAID-configuration can be very complicated to fix. There can be many permutations of possible answers:

• Are there hot spares?
• Is it RAID-0? RAID-1? RAID-5? RAID-50?
• Which drives are current and which may be stale?
• Are the data clues from the current OS or ghosts from a previous life?
• Did they rebuild the array? Reset  parity? or rebuild a spare?

This was 5 x 320 gb hard drives, possibly from a Buffalo NAS box, ( it doesn’t matter to me because I always analyze the bare drives and then figure out the truth…) Lucky for them they stopped playing when it didn’t work – many techs will just keep swapping drives and start rebuilding and cause more damage.

I wrote my RAID recovery utilities years ago. The scans told me that there should be a 960 gb volume. Three drives were in their own metal cage. So it could be a 3×320= 960gb RAID-0 stripe set.  However, when I tried to assemble it that way I found that it wouldn’t line up. Hmmm…could it be that its really a 4 x 320gb RAID-5 ? You see a 4-drive RAID-5 and 3-drive RAID-0 are the same size. Yep – thats what it turned out to be – a 4 x 320 RAID-5.

But the RAID wasn’t done with me yet….

• One drive had a broken board  that needed fixing.
• Then there were bad sectors on another drive.
• …and it was out-of-sync – which meant that only 3 drives out of the 5 drive set would give the best result.

The take-aways from this are:

• Easy lost configuration problems can be anything but..
• If you or your techs have a problem STOP – you are in real serious danger of making it unrecoverable.
• Utilities are helpful – but tools but have their limits.
• Experience and a complete understanding of RAID levels and layouts are required (can you look at hex dump and tell parity from data?).
• Understanding low-level on-disk file-system structures are required (can you interpret a MFT or XFS superblock – in hex?).

The customer got his data back 100% – but only because his tech stopped while he was ahead, and sent it to a professional.

Data from a 2002 Ontrack survey.

At the same time we were working through a list of names for our company we were also looking for proper domain names.  We landed on FreshCrop and naturally wanted the .com address. Going to the address we ran in to a typcial squatter landing page…loaded with Adsense ads.

It follows that a good domain name should be short, easy to remember and hopefully not already taken. In 2010 this is getting harder everyday as domain squatters buy up hundreds of domains at a time in the hopes of selling them for profit. One big sale can pay for thousands of domains.

The FreshCrop.com landing page had a “This Domain is for sale” link. I clicked that and ran in to a domain squatter who wanted $5,555.00 for FreshCrop.com. Ouch.

If you want the domain in question you have to approach this carefully. Don’t come in lessening the value of the domain. This is what I did and was immediately sent packing. I didn’t think it was worth much more than a few hundred dollars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many employers are forced or make the decision to lay off or fire long term and costly employees.

Then seemingly days later add those same roles to their jobs list online in hopes of getting a ‘deal’ from some unemployed person with a lot of experience and talent or graduate fresh out of college, but pay them half of what they should be getting for the work they will do.

This type of business is short term and yields a high turnover as soon as those new hires find a better job somewhere else. In the end the employer who takes this approach loses their original talented staff, the trust and dedication of the remaining employees and productivity goes down.

The best way to avoid these kinds of problems is to do the following:

1) Use a lot of common sense and have plenty of understanding.

2) Give credit and praise where it is due.

3) Pay close attention to what all of your employees are doing for you and think deeply about what will be lost if they are gone one day for whatever reason.

4) Never do anything to anyone that you would not feel is right to do to yourself or people you know. There is nearly always other options available.

5) Always keep communication open as to troubles the company may be facing so that your dedicated team is prepared to support the company.

Jason Fried at Business of Software 2008 on Getting Real.

You have to walk before you can run when it comes to business. It isn’t possible to sustainably go from a few thousand dollars in sales per month to millions without the proper infrastructure.

In running it takes years to go from one level of fitness to another. If you are running 6:30 minute mile pace for a 10k, you may only knock off another 15 seconds per mile after a year of running 50 mile weeks based on your current level of fitness.

In business you can’t expect to grow at a manageable pace without putting in the proper infrastructure. Runners build a strong cardiovasucular, neuromuscular, energy and motor systems from years of daily work. You must build a strong product development, delivery, support, employee, accounting and marketing system for success.

One of the best sources of new contacts and business is a trade show.  I’ve been attending various shows since 2003 and find value every time. It is a great opportunity to catch up on new technology, keep an eye on any competition, getting the pulse of buyers and most importantly meeting new people in your industry.

Some of the shows we like to attend are CES, PMA, RetailVision, E3, Interop, CTIA and Photokina.

Attending a trade show is generally a great ROI, but having a booth is even better. You don’t have to go the uber expensive route with a large expo area near the doors. There are several great options for smaller companies.

Many times you can pick up a table near the back of the room at a reduced rate either well in advance of the show or with a few weeks of the show when they are trying to close out inventory. Our first few booths were under $1k.

No question, it was worth the investment. You’ll be amazed at the different type of people that stop by; your end users, potential resellers and high up executives with entourages.

If you are a more mature company with a longer roster of contacts you can do a hotel suite. This is actually the best bang-for-your-buck. Invite your contacts up for a private meeting with no distractions. It is best to pick a location near the venue. If you cant arrange this you may need to hire a driver or have someone on staff handle driving duties with a rental vehicle.

Attending in one form or another is the goal. Be in the space and be confident, attendees are open to hearing and trying new ideas. Get out there and shake hands!