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How To Format My San Disk’s Micro SD 2 GB Memory Card

I’m Unable To Format My Micro SD 2 GB Card

Query:
I bought a 2 GB Micro SD card from San disk. It was working fine for a while, however, one day when I plugged it into my laptop I was unable to read any data from it. When I check the properties it shows zero byte free space and zero byte used space. If I try to format it, it doesn’t work. Any solution ?

Answer 1:
Actually, I had a similar query recently,the properties of the memory card was zero byte free space and zero byte used space, and the user was unable to format the memory card.

Most of the times this situation points that the memory card is corrupted beyond repair, however, I came across this format tool which can be used to resurrect your corrupted tool.

Download the HP Disk format tool from the following link, and once downloaded install it on your system. Make sure your card reader is plugged to your laptop / desktop / PC, and plug your memory card into the card reader. The card reader will detect your memory card, and once it does, you can format your memory card.

Let me know if this works.

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RCG Personal PC Data Protection Key

Digital technology has changed every aspect of our lives – right from when we wake up to when we go to sleep. Particularly, in the aspect of data storage, we are faced with increasingly minute and higher capacity memory units. However, with the increase in technology there is also the flip side – digital theft. It is to tackle this need of preventing digital theft that the RCG X-key has come in to the market.

Digital theft is fast becoming a cause of concern, as simple and swift transfers of files from one drive to another can compromise the security of an entire nation. In fact, in a recent instance, members of the French cabinet were told to stop using BlackBerries for fear of the US intercepting state secrets. Hence, safeguarding sensitive and confidential information is both vital and necessary.

How does RCG X-key protect your data? This security tool, about the size of a standard pen drive, offers multi-level protection with the unique PC lock feature, and the X-key protects access to your PC or notebook just by plugging it in your USB port.

The RCG X-Key also provides file-level privacy protection that allows you to hide your files/folders swiftly and smoothly by simply plugging / unplugging the key. You can also run the hidden files / folders in a specially designed “stealth” mode. In stealth mode, only the X-key will be able to reveal your hidden files with a pre-set “hotkey” when the key is not plugged in.

RCG X-key can be used for both business and personal use – whenever there is a need for protection of your data from unauthorized use.

[ Visit RCG X-Key Site ]

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Online Data Storage Service – How Reliable Are They – A Case Study

OmniDrive was an online virtual storage system. It was an intuitive online drive with a capacity of 1 GB. This drive allowed users to easily share, access and publish their files from any part of the world. One could easily share your files saved online or at their desktop, at the convenience of a single click. This application integrated all the storage devices located in several computers. It would let you gain an access to all the files and folders shared by your friends.

One of the most impressive features of OmniDrive was that it can be easily accessed through a web client or desktop client. Further, it could read and write directly on the stored file using the applications like Office / remote server. This meant that you could conveniently, open, edit and save the file without having to download a copy.

In addition, it allowed users to instantly share their online creations with their friends and colleagues. It gave freedom to users to decide who all among their friend list could view their creation. Further, with this application one could easily edit their  spreadsheets on Zoho’s web. It also had the inbuilt facility to maintain a folder for saving all the updated data. “Live Folder” was one such feature that if subscribed to RSS feeds all the new content that appears on net would automatically downloaded in this folder.

All this was in the past – read the current state of OmniDrive , well this is the sad part about saving your data online, you never know what will run long enough. It’s always better to have two copies of your important data, one offline and one online !

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What Are Tape Libraries ? When Are Tape Libraries Used ?

Data storage is one of the many important reasons, why computers are used. There are various data storing devices we have discussed in the past, each one of them are built for a different purpose. Today lets take a brief look at Tape Libraries.

Tape libraries come handy to store huge amounts of data ranging from 20 terabytes up to more than 50 petabytes. This amount of data capacity, normally is about one hundred thousand times the capacity of a typical hard drive, which even exceeds capacities achieved with network attached storage.

Tape libraries are made up of tape drivers which are slots to hold tape cartridges. There will be a bar code reader to identify these tape cartridges. Tape Libraries automate the procedure of loading tapes. The cost criteria is less on a typical entry level solution costing around ten thousand dollars and high-end solutions go upto more than seventy thousand dollars.

Slower access time as a result of mechanical manipulation of tapes is a known compromise. Thus accessing data may take anywhere from several seconds to few minutes.

Primarily they are used as backups and as final stage of digital archiving due to their slow random access and huge capacity. Tape libraries are typically used in organization’s for auditing and in hierarchical storage management.

There are a few package for commercial purposes. Open-source packages include AMANDA, Bacula, which I’ve heard a lot of praises for.

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What Are External Hard Drives ? What Is The Advantage Of External Hard Drive Over Regular Internal Hard Drives

One of the main reasons for the computers to come in existence is to manipulate and store data along with solving complexities. Hard drive is the component that holds the data in a computer. In most common cases, Hard drive is an internal store for operating system and user information.

The ever increasing need for storage capacity, coupled with threat from the outside world when exposed through internet, has surfaced external hard drive to be a better solution over traditional internal hard drives.

An external hard drive has its own enclosure and sits outside the computer. It is normally connected to a computer via a high-speed interface cable. This interface cable allows data to flow to and fro from the external drive to the computer. Most generally used interfaces are USB, eSATA and FireWire.

The external hard drive allows user to store backup of online or offline activities. Rendering capability to hold music files, movies, disk images, and even a backup of the contents of hard drive. The external hard drive could be turned off when connected to internet. Advantage of hard drives over flash drives is that they last much more cycles when compared.

These external hard drives are portable and operates on plug-and-play basis. Thus any computer which supports USB or Firewire or any of the other interface capability will recognize the external hard drive as storage device, with just assigning a drive letter to it. Once recognized the external drive can be accessed like any other normal internal hard drive on the system they are hooked onto.

These external data storage devices makes your life simple when you really are on the move!

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What is Fiber Channel RAID?

Any work done on computers needs to be stored, which means as we have discussed- data storage is an important aspect of having computers. There are many options available like using disks, HDDs.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

There are loads of storage devices, so, What makes RAID different from all those storage devices?
Total Disk Drive Failure caused due to electrostatic discharge or moisture will damage the disk.This is the pre-eminent failure mode that RAID protects against.

The loss of data can be prevented by using RAID.

Lets first get to know about Fiber Channel:

In our world where everyone wants everything to happen in a flash of a second, there is no time to waste. Data transfer can be, a time consuming process at times. Here comes the need to have high speed data links to transfer data faster. Fiber Channel (FC) was introduced and developed for practical,inexpensive purposes and this can transfer data quickly between workstations,mainframes, supercomputers, storage devices and other peripherals.

Fibre Channels operate at a wide variety of speeds ie, 133 Mbit/s, 266 Mbit/s, 530 Mbit/s, and 1 Gbits/s and on three types of both electrical and optical media.

According to the combination of speed and media the transmission distances vary.

Fiber Channel RAID(Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) supports multiple protocol disk interfaces.

It can manage many kinds of disk storage devices with different physical interfaces in the same time and different kinds of disks can also be bound in one logical RAID group.

Fiber Channel RAID storage solutions ensures that there is no failure and therefore protects the data i.e it offers true no single-point-of-failure data protection.

These solutions are SAN(Storage Area Network) ready so you can connect directly to your server using a  Fiber Channel HBA or purchase a fabric switch and start building  your own SAN.

The two main factors which is involved is increased data reliability and increased I/O performance. RAID technology is said to be in RAID array which means that the array distributes data across several disks but is seen as one single disk by the user.

RAID controller retrieve data from the array by using specific RAID levels. These levels 0, 1, and 5 are the most commonly found, and cover most requirements.

RAID 0 (striped disks)
It distributes data across several disks but all the data will be lost on all disks if any one disk fails.

RAID 1 (mirrored disks)
It uses two or more disks which stores the same data so that when one fails the other disks data is always available. Total capacity of the array is just the capacity of a single disk.

RAID 5 (striped disks with parity)
It combines three or more disks that protects data against loss of any one disk. The storage capacity of the array is reduced by one disk. The less common-
RAID 6 can recover from the loss of two disks.

With these many advantages with RAID technology, those looking for faster and efficient transfer of data will undoubtedly opt to use the RAID technology.