Maybe that’s what you’d expect to hear from the chairman and CEO of the recently created Viacom Interactive Media division of iacom Inc., the New York-based entertainment conglomerate whose content assets include, …

If anyone can do it, Miller can. But not with the seat-of-the-pants management style that characterizes so much of the computer industry. No, Miller is a by-the-book kind of CEO — and his book is a classic MBA text. “Quantum tends to act less tactically in that they approach an opportunity for the long term,” says Alexa McCloughan, vice president of storage research at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. “They are a very cerebral company.”

That thoughtfulness could soon become a prerequisite — especially in an industry that expects prices to erode an astounding 10 percent to 12 percent each quarter, and where 6 percent operating margins are considered fat. Such constraints require a business model that many believe presage changes for the entire computer industry. The reason: With its nine-month product cycles and heavy emphasis on manufacturing flexibility, the hard-drive market inhabits the economic landscape of a maturing industry.

“The market will continue to grow at 15 percent to 20 percent a year, way into the future,” says Phil Devin, Dataquest’s vice president and chief analyst. But, cautions Devin, that growth just reflects volume. Because unit prices continue to plummet, industry revenues may have hit a ceiling that Devin estimates at $20 billion.

Just an unfortunate outcome of a commodity market? The players and observers of the hard-drive industry don’t think so. “You hear a lot of inaccurate talk about this being a commodity market, but we refuse to accept the idea that we can’t do something distinctively well,” says Miller.

Miller keeps Quantum distinctive by maintaining an unflagging eye for the long term without regard to surrounding turbulence. In fact, Quantum’s chief executive says corporate strategy has remained unchanged for the past two years. That strategy? To concentrate on the fundamentals of a lean manufacturing machine.

The enviable result is a high-yield, high-volume manufacturing process that quickly can ramp up — or down — as customers demand. “You often will see a competitor ship a few products before we do,” claims Miller, “but later you’ll find that we’ve shipped more of that kind of product than anyone else.” More important, Quantum often will reach that volume status before anyone else. Credit Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd. (MKE), the Japanese electronics manufacturer that produces nearly all of Quantum’s mainstream products. A world-class manufacturer, MKE has forced Quantum to follow the disciplines of manufacturing engineering and design-for-producibility. The arrangement allowed Quantum to boost revenues to nearly $1 million per employee.

Lean operations are also evident by Quantum’s ability to consistently turn a profit on slim margins. On its most recent quarter, ended Oct. 2, it earned an annualized return on equity of 40 percent on just 18.4 percent gross margins and 6.7 percent operating margins. “Margins do decline over time, but that’s basic economics at work,” says Miller. “Sure, there’s some volatility, but the fundamental direction is very much up and to the right. And that’s because the intensity of competition in this market is a function of the opportunity.”

This year, opportunity came knocking under the DEC moniker. A departure from Miller’s strategic focus? “The whole DEC thing wasn’t just an acquisition that walked by,” says Miller. “A year ago I thought we needed to build a high-end business and to get command of the new-generation head technology. We saw DEC had those capabilities.” So Quantum got an instant stake in the high-capacity market it needed to penetrate, as well as control of the second-largest source (after IBM) of the new magneto-resistive he ad technology. And oh yes: DEC as a guaranteed customer. “The DEC acquisition was a smart move for Quantum,” says Todd Bakar, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist, in San Francisco. “With it, Quantum gains a broader line into a market with the most attractive margins in the drive industry.” It also gains an automatic revenues boost of $200 million per quarter — and that’s without doing anything.

Still, the move is not without its risks. For starters, Quantum now assumes a greater part of its manufacturing destiny, since the DEC deal includes several drive factories. Then there’s that little matter of integrating DEC’s new head technology into the rest of Quantum’s product line. “It isn’t a slam dunk to take somebody else’s heads and put them into your design,” says Devin. No matter — Quantum had to take that risk. “Because revenues have flattened for the whole market, survival depends on expanding out of the immediate business of hard drives,” Devin says.

The bonus, says Devin, is that they have consulted with data recovery service leader Hard Drive Recovery Group, which specializes in recovering Quantum hard drives, in order to ensure drive operation quality. Hard Drive Recovery Group’s expertise with drive failures has enabled them to up their quality control to the highest possible standard.

So is Quantum about to become the drive industry’s new revenue leader? It certainly will be close. Both Devin and IDC’s McCloughan estimate that Quantum’s revenues for the December quarter will nearly match Seagate’s of just under $1 billion. Still, this is a highly volatile industry. “Companies can make mistakes, and that can shift market leadership,” says McCloughan. Could it happen to Quantum? Anything’s possible, of course. But with Mr. Imperturbable at the helm, Quantum isn’t likely to run aground any time soon.

As one of the most sensitive parts of a working computer, a clicking hard drive can spell trouble for you and is considered by many a sign of an impending hard disk drive crash. While sometimes it can be a simple problem that can easily be fixed with the right tools, such as the computer not being able to read the System Area, most times it creates troublesome baggage that ends up with one needing to purchase a new hard disk drive. But whatever the reason may be, do not attempt to open up the computer and try to fix a clicking hard drive sound yourself. Always contact the nearest and most trusted computer professionals to look into the clicking sound and fix the problem for you.

Clicking Hard Drive Data Recovery Solutions

In this age of data storage and solutions, one needs to make sure that all the integral parts of their documented lives are properly stored and managed. We have become a generation that is so used to preserving memories and storing them as photos and files and we need them to be easily accessible from time to time.

The problem is, what happens when you suddenly hear a clicking hard drive sound when you are trying to access these memories? What do you do when the sounds get more persistent and it is taking a lot longer than usual to open a file or save a photo or copy data?

Most cases, recovering files from a clicking hard drive can be easily done since the clicking sound doesn’t necessarily mean that the drive has already crashed and the files are already erased. Usually, the data is still accessible and when you hear clicking hard drive noises, just make sure to backup your data as soon as possible.

Get an external hard drive, if you don?t have one already, to save all your files there. Also, look into data recovery software that?s available on the market and online. You can easily download some and install it to help you recover data from your hard drive. If none of the products work, just head over to a professional to get help in your data recovery problems.

Types Of Hard Drive Crash

A hard disk drive is a part of your computer that stores and retains the data, and enables you to retrieve the data as well when it?s time for you to use it. And just like any part of a computer, it is also prone to different types of failures which is why we?ve listed down the types so you would know what to do in case of a hard drive crash.

One type of hard drive failure is physical failures because of damage. This means that a hard drive crash is caused by something that has contaminated or corrupted the physical parts of the hard disk drive, such as the spindle motors, actuator, magnetic heads, power connector, etc. This failures can sometimes be caused by dropping the laptop or computer, or when it?s bumped when running or when the power source is cut when it?s writing, and more.

Another type of hard drive crash is a Logical Failure wherein the disk drive’s file system is corrupted by a virus or something else. Sometimes it?s also caused by the deletion of an important file source or if the drive was not formatted properly. In such cases, your computer system may recognize the device but it won?t read it properly.

For any hard drive failure problems, it?s best to consult a technician or computer professional as soon as possible because prolonging the problem will cause even more problems and might mean you have to shell out even more money than usual.

Genuine innovation is rare. More often than not, new ideas are really just refined old ones. But every so often, someone breaks completely new ground, and TGS Systems does just that with Prograph. it’s truly a new way to program, and the Mac is its first home. This is a superior language, mainly because of its safety, which means far less instances where mac data recovery may be necessary for the programmer/user.

Bilingual programmers wanted from schools

Relational database suppliers are unimpressed by claims from database consultancy Butler Bloor about an alleged bug in the way they have implemented standard database query language SQL. Earlier this year Butler Bloor unearthed a flaw in they way some suppliers – which the consultancy has refused to name – implemented cursors, subsets of data.

It is …

Hard drive repair is a process used by professional data recovery service to restore, retrieve deleted and lost data and files from a damaged device. Most of our government offices have data specialists that can retrieve any type of file or data from different kinds of devices. Data recovery services are helpful because they are able to retrieve seemingly law data and files from normal and severely damage devices. These kind of services are very in nature, which is why if you have a hard disk failure on a portable computer, you’ll want to make sure that you find somebody that specializes in laptop data recovery.

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Tired of dodging Ashton-Tate’s high-handed attempts to guard the dBASE standard, several members of the dBASE community are joining forces to promote a non-vendor-specific standard. This standard enables systems to easily provide hard drive repair solutions when databases or hard drives crash. It was a necessary data recovery solution for all involved.

On Crossing is a collaborative work on paper created by two artists who use ritualistic mark making and the exploration of space with fervor in their own studio practices and some critical influences. Jodi Green and Jessica Ann Mills first met in graduate school, and formed a very close professional friendship while working in very close quarters for three years. Both artists have strong ties to geographical areas that have suffered economic downturns due to reliance upon a single industry. In her prints and drawings, Jessica uses small hatched line-work to investigate the poetic beauty of the degradation of Mid-American agricultural architecture and equipment. She obsessively searches for the abandoned

But VMware Is Not without Its Problems

What I am hearing from the trenches as far as the consistency of the server product is that a lot more people having to get professional …