The common interest in playing online games helps you find a lot of friends. Playing online games not only help you make new friends but you can also connect with and play online games with your friends without having to visit an internet café. It also helps you to remain connected with your old friends who working elsewhere in the world, by logging on at the same time and enjoy a couple of hours of fun, unbridled fun through online games.
Playing online games increases your chances to interact with a large crowd on the net with common interest of having fun and not prowling around periling the lives of others. While playing games you get connected with each other through the website chat or communicate function available right there in the website. But before that you need to sign up. There are various online games website that requires you to sign up in order to play their online games; but there are also some websites that do not require to sign-up. Ensure that you do not reveal your complete address online, anywhere. It is important that you sign-up because the information that you input into the online games website will become your member’s profile that will help other members to view your profile. They will come to know about your likes, dislikes, favorite games, favorite movies, and personal characteristics thus enhancing the chances of finding friends through online games.

The forums and chat rooms that online game has to offer to the fans help them to connect, share tips, communicate, make alliance, and chat with online thus functioning as the solid foundation for their friendship. Playing online games helps you to gauge the person opposite to you. It becomes easy to determine whether the person playing opposite to you is an aggressive person or a strategically-minded person who is capable of planning everything from scratch? You can also get the idea of his/her favorite character. You can even find how does he/she employ that online game character to his/her benefit?

No wonder online game proves to be one of the best ways to stay in contact with distant friends by challenging them to an online game. Even for those who live nearby but unfortunately do not get to see that often can be connected by inviting them to play online games. Thus accepting and sending challenges through online games helps you to create a social networking atmosphere where you get connected with the old friends and continue your relationship and also make new friends.

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Forensic computer investigations seek to gather evidence for determining whether computer systems have been used for unlawful or unauthorized activities. The evidence can reside in computers, storage devices and the network.
The investigations have to be conducted in a forensically sound manner acceptable to a court of law. Essentially this means that the evidence must be gathered in a manner that cannot be challenged in a court of law on grounds of tampering, inaccuracy, etc.

Forensic computer investigators require an awareness of legal issues involved as well as technical skill and familiarity with computer systems.

Collecting Evidence From Computer Systems

Taking digital photographs of the room, computers and surroundings is a typical starting point. This is done when the system is seized and before anything is changed.

A forensic computer investigator should be aware that the suspect who committed the unlawful activities could be an expert. This means that the person is quite likely to have installed anti-detection measures such as wiping out evidence whenever certain actions of an investigative nature are initiated.

Hence, the investigator should proceed in a manner that simulates an ordinary user when handling the computer.

When working with live systems, much of the data is in a highly perishable form. For example, the contents of RAM, which can include passwords, encryption keys and system/program settings, can disappear if the computer is powered off.

The investigator has to proceed in a manner that the more perishable data are collected first. The typical order will be:

* Network connection that can reveal the points with which a computer had been connected to and what data was being transferred

* RAM that can provide details of programs that were currently running or were recently run

* System settings that can identify all users, currently logged in users, system date and time, currently accessed files and current security policies

* Hard disks that can contain much of the data needed for the investigation must be imaged in such a way as to not affect the original drives data or impair any investigation using the image.

The forensic investigator then proceeds to collect all removable computer storage media such as CD/DVD, USB memory cards, music players, digital camera cards and so on. In addition to computer hardware and media, the investigator will collect printouts, notes and other physical evidence lying around.

Notes can contain user id password combos and security related instructions that make the task of investigation much easier. An even more valuable source is the user of the system, who can reveal passwords, encryption methods and other information that can help the investigation immeasurably.

Forensically Sound Computer Investigation

Courts scrutinize all evidence produced before them for acceptability. Defense lawyers can challenge the evidence by pointing to any actions or circumstances that make the evidence unreliable. It is thus highly important that all evidence be collected in a manner that leaves no room for such challenges.

The investigator has to document every action the person has taken. The evidence must be kept under safe custody in a manner that only authorized team members can access them. Analysis of storage media is done with copies and not with the originals, because the analytical procedures can change the contents.

The tools used must have been tested and evaluated to validate their accuracy and reliability. Exact duplicates of all storage media are made using such validated tools and it is these copies that are worked with.

The above are just some of the major concerns that illustrate how a forensic computer investigation proceeds. Only a trained investigator is likely to secure forensic evidence that can satisfy a court of law.

Conclusion

Forensic computer investigations seek to help determine whether unlawful or unauthorized activities have been committed using computer systems. The investigator collects data residing in network connections, computer memories, the computer hardware, hard disks and removable storage media.

The investigation is done using validated tools and in a manner that would be acceptable to a court of law. A forensic computer investigator requires legal awareness as well as technical skill to collect and analyze the gathered evidence.

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Hard drive rebuild, in the general sense of the term, can mean a simple operation of replacing the firmware (controller card) and reprogramming it using specialist software. Or it can mean replacing the drive’s precision components like its read/write head, done in Class 100 clean rooms by specialist data recovery technicians.
Hard Drives Are Susceptible to Failure

Hard drives are electro-mechanical devices that are spinning even when the computer is idle. Typical spin rates vary from 4000 to 15000 rotations per minute. They are thus susceptible to failure as are CD, DVD or tape.

A hard drive rebuild can become necessary owing to mechanical failure of the disk but a logical recovery of the file system may still be needed to make the data readable. The logical file system can get corrupted with errors during the failure of the drive.

Failures can occur through a variety of causes:- power surges, causing physical damage like a drive head crash, a natural disaster like fire or flood, dropping a laptop or external drive, or damage caused by faulty design of the drive or its firmware programming, even a virus attack or malicious intent could be an issue.

Hard Drive Recovery

Data recovery from a hard drive can be simple or complex.

For example, if the data was lost owing to accidental deletion of files, you might be able to recover them yourself by running a data recovery software.

On the other hand, if the read/write head has crashed and the drive is clicking or the motor has seized, you will have to entrust your drive to a specialist professionals. They will have a dust free clean room where they will open the drive and replace the damaged heads, and the necessary resources and experience with a range of drive problems to help you in your hour of need.

Data recovery professionals typically start by copying the existing image on the damaged disk to a backup location. They will work on a copy trying to recover the data using specialized tools. Only after they have succeeded are they likely to transfer the recovered data to a replacement drive or give you secure access to their servers so you can check the data is intact and download it directly.

Simply replacing a damaged part like the printed circuit board of the drive cannot put things right; it will require some reprogramming to ensure it is correctly matched.

Does Your Recovery Company Have Hard Drive Rebuild Experience?

Hard drives have come a long way since a 5MB RAMAC, weighing a ton, was introduced in 1956 by IBM. Today’s drives can be a tiny box in comparison offering many Terabytes (each terabyte is a 1000 GB and each GB is a thousand MB).

Today, there are many storage drive makers each offering models with different features. The drive can be a single drive or a RAID system with multiple physical drives with their own cut down operating systems and hot swap features.

The drive interfaces to the computer can differ. For example, it can be IDE, EIDE, SATA, SCSI, Lan, etc.

Data losses can be caused by many different factors, requiring different kinds of approaches to any recovery.

Only an experienced hard drive repairer can identify just the right remedy that is both effective and economical

Once you have decided on a hard drive rebuild, check that the company you select is experienced and has the resources in house, or is a reseller of a reputable established company who ensures any recovered data is managed securely for your protection and does not broadcast your company’s loss of information on their website without your permission.

Conclusion

A hard drive rebuild becomes necessary when you are unable to boot with the drive or to read the data you have stored on it. You will also be better off if you approach a data recovery specialist if your drive is making strange noises (that you have not heard before) or data seems to be disappearing, or your system is spewing error messages.

Considering the numerous makes and models of hard drives in the market, each with differing features, you should approach only an experienced data recovery company
with a track record of success but beware of the varying costs and just like any purchase expensive does not mean it is the best.

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