WWWalker's Disaster Recovery
My Site: Remote, Onsite and VoIP Support | Terms and Conditions | data integration | Mobile | Groupware | Russia | China | Ukraine | GDPR Compliance | Publishing | Library Consulting | Finance
Backups (Disaster Recovery Plan | External Drives | NAS | Cloud | Find Lost Mobile | Mobile Backups (Samsung Cloud Contacts) | Windows Backups | ResourceMate Library Catalogue Restored from Backup | MSP) |
Security (Linux Attacks | Data Breach | Spam Assassin | Facebook Security | Malware Removal | Meltdown and Spectre | WannaCrypt Attack) |
Web-Based Systems (reCAPTCHA | Data Integration | Monitoring | Mailing List Archive Backups) |
System Upgrades (Windows | Linux) |
Virtualization (Testing | Tools) |
Communications Infrastructure
Every business requires a disaster recovery plan. We can assist you with setting this up and maintaining it to make sure you have your system restored in good time.
We have survived a number of disasters in our computer systems ranging from disc crashes to monitors failing. You need a backup strategy and several copies
scattered all over the place to ensure survival. Redundancy is very important. These days this is called cloud computing where files are stored on the Web and do not require the local PC to be as protected. If the PC crashes, a new PC is bought and the work continued using the system on the Web.
Many sites and small businesses now backup their entire system remotely to enable them to recover from disaster or loss in their main site.
In January 2017, I bought an HDD all in one docking station on eBay for 2 external hard drives that no longer responded due to interface cards failing. I got drives out of external drive chassises then loaded them one at a time into docking station and read them OK via USB on PC!
This saved 7 years of backups being lost!
In March 2011, we were going to do remote backup using NETGEAR ReadyNAS but by October 2017 we had done nothing and will cease supporting NETGEAR due to PowerShift Partner site going down indefinitely and NETGEAR staff moving to USA and Australian staff changing.
Backup and restore of EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services can be done via snapshots.
In February 2017, Cloudflare had massive data breach to all sites using them as DNS servers (domain cloudflare.com). Domain registry needs to have password reset.
In January 2017, we migrated our Website hosting from Linux hosting to Amazon Web Services EC2 Linux instance. This involved backing up site and mail and using Amazon Web Services S3 to migrate to an EC2 instance. We then used third party DNS to delegate the site.
Instead in June 2012, we did backup and restore to Amazon Web Services S3 storage in the Cloud to move a huge mailbox from one hosting site to another. This is a very quick and easy way of moving large amounts of data for small business applications such as hosting, email or backup files. We did this again in November 2012. In June 2013, 12 month free tier ran out and I am now paying a small amount per gigabyte per month till I backup all data to a local drive on my laptop.
In February-March 2012, Symantec Netbackup and EMC MozyPro cloud-based backup services are being offered which we can setup for small business clients to give them extra flexibility and robustness in these tough economic times. A server can be rebuilt on a physical or virtual server from a backup stored in the cloud.
NAS can be used for remote backup akin to Dropbox.
In February 2019 I discovered if Windows Phone is lost, go to account.microsoft.com and select device then click 'find device'. This only works in IE not Firefox. It also assumes phone is registered with Microsoft before it is lost. Last known location of phone is shown on map.
iOS and Android phones also have similar find lost phone feature.
Windows Phone location is updated every so often and this is logged with Microsoft so phone can be tracked down to nearest location.
I had to backtrack and find Windows Phone manually as I was using Firefox and account.microsoft.com did not show me location. Later I discovered only IE worked for finding phone on map.
I rang phone using Skype but person nearby did not answer it so it went to voicemail. It is impossible to get round people problems like this.
Only Windows 10 has 'fine my device' feature not Windows 7. With Windows 7 use account.microsoft.com.
Cloud
In January 2012, we also imported contacts from another phone's SIM to a Nokia MeeGo phone.
We used Nokia Account to backup contacts from Nokia MeeGo to Web and then restore them from Web to Nokia MeeGo when phone was flashed. We also imported the contact CSV file into a private Web database.
We will also import contacts from another phone via Bluetooth.
We downloaded lost apps from Nokia Store.
SMS messages were not backed up so were lost when the Nokia 6230 was lost. Backup at Nokia Care did not work on the old Nokia 6230's SMS messages but on everything else - phone numbers, images, audio files, video files.
Migrate Phone Numbers to New Phone
In September 2018, my Samsung Galaxy Pocket Neo power button stopped working so I moved the micro-SIM to a Windows Phone 8.0 Nokia Lumia 820. I then imported contacts from Microsoft Outlook Live account by logging into Microsoft Hotmail/Live account and synchronising. Google Contacts also had contacts which would be imported manually as Google Account won't login due to security issues. I upgraded from Windows Phone 8.0 to 8.1 (600MB 35 mins) but that model won't upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile and may apps won't work so I used browser or another app. I transcribed data from car app to spreadsheet before crash. I lost SMS messages and notepad notes. I needed to export them using Samsung Smart Switch Windows tool and Android app and USB cable or WiFi before crash. Samsung also had Samsung Members app for Android for support I did not know about till after the crash.
In November 2018, after I had restored Samsung Cloud to Samsung Galaxy Note II, I found Smart Switch does not backup contacts only messages and other data from new phone to PC. I used dr.fone to backup the contacts and messages etc on phone to PC but it only works direct to phone. No data is available to be exported into CSV etc.
In June 2014, my N950 died so I had to export phone numbers from account.nokia.com as CSV and convert them to VCF with a Windows tool and import them into a Samsung Android phone. Some of the phone numbers were not imported, just the person's name.
- Samsung Cloud Backup Terms
- "To protect personal information and procure resources necessary for use of the services, we have added Paragraph 9 to Article 3 to state that data regarding customers who do not use the Samsung Cloud services for a long period of time (i.e., 12 months) will be deleted and Paragraph 10 to Article 3 to further state that backed-up user data which has been unused for a long period of time (i.e., 12 months) will be deleted."
In November 2018, I got a Samsung Galaxy Note II which I did a factory reset on by holding volume up (left), bottom button and power button (right) simultaneously. I then setup Google and Samsung accounts on new device and restored contacts and messages using WiFi.