How to Backup your PC with iDrive

How much confident you are that your sensitive data is safe and backed up?

Just imagine your PC with all essential data was stolen, or crashed after your child spills water on it, or destroyed in a fire!!  So what do you do?

Usually, you will be forced to rely up on backup files when some computer disasters happen and your data is in danger. Here’s how you can securely store your crucial data and files

iDrive – Store and Backup all your data on Cloud

From its early stage to till date, cloud storage and backup services are very popular. Finding the best backup service should not be a difficult task!

iDrive is one of the popular cloud backup services available to those looking for best backup and features. So here is an interesting review of the service including what it is, how to use it to backup data, and the features you can enjoy using the cloud storage.

What is iDrive?

As it is mentioned before, iDrive is a cloud service that is specially meant to offer storage and backup for all your files, folders and digital media. With many free services available in the market, iDrive cloud storage and backup is one of the least expensive ways.

Backing up PC files with iDrive

First of all you need to create an encrypted hard drive of 5GB (just for instance) with a secure password. To perform encryption, you can use a method called VeraCrypt.

Once done with that, it’s time to create an encrypted cloud iDrive backup of your encrypted hard drive. Just follow below instructions…

Step 1: At first, sign up for your Free 5GB iDrive account.

Step 2: To make things simple, set your own Private encryption key using the same secure VeraCrypt password.

Warning – Don’t lose this password or you will not be able to recover your files! 

Step 3: Click Continue. It will prompt you to download the iDrive setup file. So download and install the program, launch the iDrive and log in using your newly created account.

Step 4: Click on Change to remove the default folders to backup.

Step 5: Deselect all the default folders and drives. Now select only the newly created drive.

Step 6: Move all of your important documents to your newly created hard drive.

Step 7: Finally when you are finished, click on Start Backup Immediately in iDrive anytime you would like to backup your files.

Need more than 5 GB to backup your important financial documents? iDrive has a very competitive pricing plans for Cloud Backup and Storage – 1PC, 5 PC, and Unlimited.

Not only this, it has a vast support for Windows, Mac and Servers including 64-bit support. It also provides a scheduled backup and continuous backup plan, online storage and backup, free hard-drive transfer, instant access via web and mobile access via app, file synchronization as separate service, and of course a free 5GB account.

iDrive offers many other minor features within their plans and service to prove that no other way is as secure as cloud storage in backup most important credentials through a very less effort.

However, Cloud backup services are all about providing unlimited storage space where you can store all your digital data and restore them at any time. You can be very much sure that your data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Even though you get plenty of external hard drives to safeguard your files and folders, but at times you may come across data loss cases. Once who come across such cases you can make use of any trustworthy data recovery tool and get your crucial data back

Protect your confidential data today!

How is Data Stored on a Computer Hard Disk

Whatever you own on your computer, it will be on hard drive. From videos, songs, and pictures to programs and preferences, they are all on your computer hard drive. What else you can expect? Even operating system resides on hard disk!

But have you ever wondered how they actually get stored?

To understand how the data is stored on a hard drive completely, you need to first have knowledge on the working of hard drive.

Generally, the hard drive consists of discs placed one on top of another with a gap of few millimeters. We call these discs as “Platters”, which have the capability to hold large amount of data.

Next comes the Arm, which is specially meant to read and write data on the disc. This arm plays an important role in storing the information by stretching out on the platters and moving over them from centre to edge through tiny heads that floats over the platter.

Storage

Usually, the hard drive stores data in the form of zeros and ones.

Whenever you save a file or any information, the “Write” head on the Arm writes the data onto the platter as it spins at high RPM (Revolutions per Minute), often in the range of 4,000.

However, the file just doesn’t disappear anywhere as the computer must be able to locate the file later. When you attempt to open it, the hard drive should locate that particular file. To understand how it works, let’s take an example –

You are trying to open an image file.  Now, the CPU (Central Processing Unit) will inform about the file you are attempting to open. The hard drive will spin fast and finds out the image within nano seconds of time. Then, the drive reads the image and send to CPU back, which further be displayed on your computer screen.

One more instance –

Editing an image, where the hard drive has to save all the changes made on the file! If you click on “Save”, the information along with edited ones will be sent to the CPU which in turn processes it and sends it to the hard drive for storage. Now the hard drive will spin up and the arm will use its “Write” heads to overwrite the previous image with the modified one. That’s all!

Note – Read and Write operations on hard drive will not disturb or delete any other information already available on the drive. That’s why the discs or platters are separated into sectors and tracks. Here, the tracks are the long circular divisions, whereas the sectors represent the small sections of tracks.

This is what the hard drive in your computer does in storing up the data. Now, let us wrap up this discussion with a friendly word of advice:

One of the sad truths about hard drives is, when it is damaged all the data present on it will be lost.  But is possible to recover data from hard disks using reliable tools. This is why the reason you need to have a backup system plan on regular basis, so that you can easily escape from data loss cases if you come across any.

Get another hard drive and copy all your important files onto that.

How To – Format a Mac’s Drive using Disk Utility

Formatting Mac’s Volume is conceptually the same as deleting it. The major difference is that you will select a drive, not a volume, from the list of hard drives shown on your Mac Machine.

If you really want to format, then I would like to recommend that – formatting process will take a little longer time than the basic erase method applied in Mac machines.

Mac Disk Utility supports various capacities, all including at least one disks, volumes, or partitions.

Utilizing Disk Utility Mac to format a drive, paying little mind to the sort. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s an internal or external disk, or if it’s a hard drive or a SSD.

A matter of thing,

Before stepping into formatting process, make sure you have proper backup of data existing on that drive which you’ve decided to format. If you don’t own data backup, then do it now without any second thoughts.

If you’re all set, then let’s get started with the steps of formatting Mac hard disk,

Where to find Disk Utility?

Instead of digging deeper into your Mac system, open ‘Application’ folder and then you can see ‘Utilities’ folder. Now select ‘Disk Utility’ option (you can also get it in Finder).

Getting Started

Once if you find OS X Disk Utility, you can start formatting Mac hard drive by following below mentioned steps –

Launch Disk Utility – Once it is opened, from the left-hand pane, you can see a list of drives and volumes connected to your Mac, select the drive you wish to format. The selected drive’s information will be displayed.

Choose your format option – Mac’s Disk Utility will automatically choose OS X Extended (Journaled) option as the most common and default for the drive format, if you’d like to use something else, then click on the Formatting options to check its drop-down window. Other format options you will see are:

  • OS X Extended (Journaled)
  • OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
  • OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)
  • OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted)
  • MS-DOS (FAT)
  • ExFat

Piece of Info – For external drives on Mac, it almost always makes sense to format in ExFAT format option.

Name your drive – Once if you choose the drive to format, you will now need to give the disk a name. This can be anything you wish. Select ‘GUID Partition Table’ on the options window.

Choose Security option – This Options sheet will display multiple secure erase options, one is Fastest and other is Most Secure.

Fastest will erase the drive by removing the drive header information, but will leave the underlying files intact, although they will be in hidden mode. This means you or someone else could resurrect the files easily using result oriented Mac Data Recovery Software, which isn’t necessarily a good idea.

For a fresh install of OS X, we’d recommend you move the slider to the second option where it says “This option writes a single pass of zeros over the entire disk.” Most Secure option will overwrite the entire drive seven times at once.

Finally – Time to click on “Erase” button. Formatting a drive can take a while depending on the size and amount of data stored in it. Progress bar will show how the formatting of your Mac hard drive is going and how long it will take to complete.

Once the procedure is finished, you can do whatever you like with the Mac hard drive!!

Windows 10 : How to Avoid PC Restarting while Working

You can control Windows 10 from being automatically restarting during its usage with no apparent reason; here you can get to know how to do it.

If you’re Windows 10 user and going through the situation where your system is restarting while working. Restarting of PC while working that too without any notifications.

It sucks!

Then it may be due to one of several problems.

One common thing –  Windows 10 will restart automatically when certain system errors occur.

But don’t worry; you can avoid PC restarting problem by just following these simple rules:

Rule 1: The automatic restart option for viewing error messages should be disabled

The errors relating to operating system and hardware drivers would sometimes throw specific error statements before stopping the operation or shutting down the system. When the option Automatically restart is enabled, those error messages might not be displayed. Hence, it is suggested to allow computer to display error messages. Want to disable automatically restart option? Follow these steps

  • Search for View advances system settings and open it in Windows
  • Under Startup and recovery section, choose Settings
  • In System failure section, uncheck Automatically restart and click OK, and then restart the system

Important – The system will not restart automatically when there is a problem. Rather, it displays a blue screen with useful information, which you can use for finding a resolution.

Rule 2: Finding out a failed hard drive

You believe or not, the issue of automatic system restart may also occur if any failures happen in hard drives. However, the failures in hard drive may be due to excess heat inside the computers. When cooling areas a clog with the dust, the temperature inside rises. So to avoid automatic restart, avoid these things.

Rule 3: BIOS update

Updating BIOS can resolve the problem of unexpected restarting of Windows 10 computer. Carefully follow the required steps to update the BIOS.

Rule 4: Perform System Restore

If the problem is recent one, the best option is to restoring the system to a point before the problem began can resolve the problem easily.

Rule 5: Recovering the computer

When all of the above methods fail to resolve the issue, just go with recovering all the software on the computer back to its original configuration.

yeah!!

Wrapping it up

Well, automatic restart of the computer is an important system process required for dealing with system crashes in a proper manner. However, it also makes troubleshooting the cause(s) of the restarts difficult, and is troublesome as well. Thanks to the simple method illustrated above, disabling it is as simple as it can get.

Try it out!