This is a forum promotional contest. The user with the highest number of posts will get a 25USD Amazon Gift card free of cost. With this gift card you can buy anything from amazon market place. Music, Toys, Books, applications, videos cds, dvds etc.
The winner will be declared on Jan 01 2012 and will get the giftcard by email within one week. So why wait, start your posting as early as possible.

Conditions are as Simple as these:

• Your posts should make sense and must be useful to others.
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• No double posts

And btw thanks for Participating!

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Hard disk failure is major cause of the data loss nowadays.  There are lots of reasons for this. If taken a little care you could avoid the data loss. Hard disks are simply another hardware which will have wear and tire after prolonged use. It is the one thing that works almost always in a computer system. And some time our wrong doings can cause a harddisk failure. Here I am providing some details on the types of harddisk failures and the reasons for the issue.

Reasons: 

• No proper shutdown.
• Using computer without a secondary power supply such as UPS and power fluctuation.
• Connecting the computer to plug which doesn’t have proper earthings(to have a proper ground connection).
• Prolonged use. These are mechanical devices, so it will eventually fails one day or the other. After years of use, its performance will degrade because of the worn out parts.
• Extreme heat.

these are the main reasons for a harddisk to fail. While some of these can be avoided not all. Like the ensuring a secondary power source, if the primary fails, will ensure a linger life for the hard disk. Also the system should be properly shutdown always. If the harddisk is being written and the power goes suddenly, may create bad sectors in the harddisk. And you have keep the computer in a cold place. This is not just for the harddisk, all the components with electronic circuit board, will malfunction and eventually fails if it is continually operated in a hot environment.

Now Once you suspect your harddisk is failed, turn off your computer immediately and stop working on it. You better consult any data recovery agencies before you do anything with it unless the data is not important for you. It is important that you know the signs the harddisk shows once it starts to fail. Now I will list down some common signs here to recognize a harddisk failure.

Signs:

• Some weird noises from inside your computer, so first make sure its not the fan which is producing the sound.
• Disappearing or corrupted Files. Some times it will show you the “file access is denied” message. You need to further investigate if this happens. Sometimes there are chances for a user to deny the access from other users. If you are the only user and you haven’t done that, check your computer for malwares/viruses.  If this also doesn’t resolve the problem it can be a sign for hard disk failure.
• Computer shuts down suddenly, hangs very often, these all are signs for a harddisk failure.
• If your computer(in Windows OS) shows a prompt for disk check very often while booting, there could be some problem. So complete the check and read the information, you might get some clues regarding the problem.
• Hard disk producing too much heat, is a sign of hard disk failure.

When I first saw Apple’s Siri in action, I was incredibly amazed. It was the perfect anything can get. A Perfect Virtual assistant. You can chit chat to it, ask for suggestions, ask for weather predictions(in a weird way and it will reply with the most accurate answer) and lots more. the possibilities were endless. Now I realized the bad news, just like all other apple products, it can only be used with an apple product. That meant it will never come to any other devises unless its from apple. I was sad, so sad, that I wanted to buy one iphone. But I didn’t, not because I didn’t like Siri that much, but because I don’t quite like Iphone or any IOS devices.

But as I am writing this post about someone cracking the Siri, I am happier than ever. That means, now the technology is out there, its free from the apple’s prison. The guys from Appilidium has done it very well. Now I guess more and more people will try to accomplish the impossible, and one day it may even succeed. Yes I meant one day it may come to android/windows device.

As per the techcrunch post, the tl;dr is this.

 tl;dr breakdown:

• By connecting Siri to a local router and then dumping data as it came through, they realized that Siri was sending all of its data to a server that we’ll refer to as “Guzzoni”.
• All trafic sent to Guzzoni was sent through the HTTPS protocol. With the “S” in HTTPS standing for “Secure”, this traffic wasn’t subject to simple packet sniffing. So they had a new idea: make a fake Guzzoni server, and see what came through on the other end.
• After a good bit of ridiculously clever SSL certificate trickery, they got Siri sending commands to their fake server. With each command comes the “X-Ace-Host” string, which appears to be unique to each iPhone 4S.
• After figuring out how Apple was compressing (read: not encrypting) the data, Applidium was able to decompress it and parse out a rough sketch of exactly what was being sent (including which audio codec Apple was using), and what Siri expected in return.

You may read the whole post from this link directly from the guys who cracked it. There they have given a  collection of tools by which you might even try this whole thing by your own.

Replacing the Canon Ink Cartridges is some what an easy task. But doing it in the wrong way can damage your printer itself. So here is a how to article for helping you to do that in a right way.

1. As a first step you will have to find the right cartridge for your printer model. It can be specific to your model.
2. Now Switch on your printer and open the printer lid. There might be a small switch for opening up the printer lid.
3. Now after opening the lid, the printer will take some time to disengage the cartridges.
4. Now using your hand pull the cartridge towards you until it pops out. You may have to put your hand behind the existing cartridge to pull it out successfully.
5. Now remove the tape from the new cartridge.
6. Take the new cartridge into the cartridge carrier and press it gently until it produces a click sound. But before that make sure it is facing the correct position.
7. Now close the printer lid and try printing a test page.

It been long since I added an article on to this blog entirely by writing which is not based on how to. Anyway here it is and I hope it will be worth reading for you guys.

Data Recovery, is a big issue if your hard disk has sensitive informations. Like the saying its, prevention better than cure. Here you better prevent the data loss by making sure of a updated backup for the original data. so that even i fyou loose the original data you will have the copy.

You can do this back up in several ways:

1. Using Applications such as

• Norton ghost
• Sync Back
• Acronis True image

2. Using RAID

For normal home usage first option is better. So you just have to install an application in your system and do as the manual says. Raid needs higher knowledge about computer and requires some configuration changes in hardwares.

Data Recovery(not the worst case):

If you deleted some files and removed them recycle bin also accidentally, it would be very easy to recover if you just stop using the computer. If you use the computer for a long time after the deletion, it will be very difficult to recover the data. Now The best option is boot into a live cd of either windows, linux, or any custom recovery solution. In that case the recovery wil be very easier and less time consuming.

In windows, you can use lots of applications like recuvva, ontrack easy recovery professional, etc. In this Recuvva is free and the options are very limited. Ontrack is a very professional one but you will have to pay for that application. Like this you will get lots of applications for recovering the data. One thing you have to make sure is, use a external hard disk to save the data. Do not use the same device on which the data recovery is being performed.

Now in linux also there are lots of similar tools. But if you are into linux, it better you ask the support forum for the recommended recovery application. Include the reason, and what kind of files you are trying to recover.

Data Recovery(Worst Case Scenario):

Now if your HardDisk failed and you didn’t have any backups also, then you need to try other options to get the data.

First of all let me point out something in bold and underlined.

If you don’t know what you are doing, you could lose all the data, which would have been recoverable if you didn’t try anything but give it to a professional.

You can find lots of professionals for these by a simple google search. Data recovery is a highly competitive field and there are lots of good companies which give you optimal result. But the prizes will not be cheap. For good services you will have to give good amount of money. But most of the data recovery professionals give you a free consultation. Now by this you will come to know the gravity of the situation.

So only try these kind of things, once you are sure about what you are doing.

My favorite tool is testdisk. Google search it and you will find the package to install. But you will have to try it from linux, ubuntu recommended.

TestDisk have 100s of options and configuration set ups. It will be impractical to list them all. The best part of test disk is, this application will try to find and list the previous partitions and volumes. And if you found that to be correct you can just, try to recover it.

This Wiki Community Page from ubuntu will help if you chose to try this with ubuntu. But before trying you must read through it once or twice, and clear all your doubts before starting.

even if you lost the partition from windows, do try these kind of recovery stuffs from linux only. I recommend it because the options and file system support is more in linux than in windows.