You can’t always blame data loss on hardware failure. A clumsy user can be just as harmful. PhotoRec is a nifty little command-line based tool that can recover accidentally deleted files.

The Linux kernel includes support for performing RAID-1 in software. RAID-1 maintains the same filesystem on two or more disks, so that you can lose all but the last disk and still retain all of your data. This seems wonderful until you consider that an error in RAM, a power supply failure, or another hardware component in the machine can still potentially corrupt your precious data.

This tutorial explains how to upgrade to Fedora14 from Fedora 13 &12. Because your personal data is the most valuable thing in your computer, before to upgrade it is always a good idea to back up any data that you have on your systems. For example, if you are upgrading or creating a dual-boot system, you should back up any data you wish to keep on your hard drive(s).

Here we are not long after the release of many different operating systems and hardware platforms. What an exciting time in the industry! With Google launching phones, Apple confirming a tablet, Oracle buying Sun, Microsoft releasing Windows 7 and talk of a new gaming device, and companies like Novel and Red Hat standing back to see what happens. This is certainly a contentious atmosphere.

Though I have my doubts, PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) may be on the same track towards open hardware we are seeing in some computer components and devices. Be warned, however, the effort is grounded in marketing and survival instincts that just might not suffice to become a success.

Disk pooling is the hottest new function to Amahi. Disk Pooling uses Samba to create a storage pool of all your available hard drives. It also allows you to create redundant copies (from 2 to whatever the max-number of disks you have in the pool) of the files you store. This can help prevent data loss if part of your hardware fails. Click on the external link to view a video on Storage Pooling.

Cassandra is a distributed database with a BigTable data model running on a Dynamo like infrastructure. It is column-oriented and allows for the storage of relatively structured data. It has a fully decentralized model; every node is identical and there is no single point of failure.

There has been a lot of talk about the success or failure of the Linux netbooks recently, to the point that it is now a very controversial topic. I think that it is time to go back to the facts and perform a objective analysis how what we can learn from the Linux netbook market. You will see that Linux netbooks have been neither a complete success nor a complete failure.

Many people leave their computers on around the clock. This usually implies that all the attached hard disks are always spinning. Constantly spinning up a hard disk normally increases the chances of drive failure. When a disk is not powered it should last longer than if it was spinning.