Windows Server 2003

Publisher's Description

From Microsoft:

Windows Server 2003 (sometimes referred to as Win2K3) is a server operating system produced by Microsoft, released on April 24, 2003. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. Its successor, Windows Server 2008, was released on February 4, 2008.

According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2003 is more scalable and delivers better performance than its predecessor, Windows 2000.

The following features are new to Windows Server 2003:
    Internet Information Services (IIS) v6.0
    Significant improvements to Message Queuing
    Manage Your Server – a role management administrative tool that allows an administrator to choose what functionality the server should provide
    Improvements to Active Directory, such as the ability to deactivate classes from the schema, or to run multiple instances of the directory server (ADAM)
    Improvements to Group Policy handling and administration
    Provides a backup system to restore lost files
    Improved disk management, including the ability to back up from shadows of files, allowing the backup of open files.
    Improved scripting and command line tools, which are part of Microsoft's initiative to bring a complete command shell to the next version of Windows
    Support for a hardware-based "watchdog timer", which can restart the server if the operating system does not respond within a certain amount of time.[3]

The ability to create rescue disk was removed in favor of Automated System Recovery (ASR).

Editions
Windows Server 2003 comes in a number of editions, each targeted towards a particular size and type of business.In general, all variants of Windows Server 2003 have the ability to share files and printers, act as an application server, and host message queues, provide email services, authenticate users, act as an X.509 certificate server, provide LDAP directory services, serve streaming media, and to perform other server-oriented functions.

Web

Windows Server 2003 Web is meant for building and hosting Web applications, Web pages, and XML web services. It is designed to be used primarily as an IIS 6.0 Web server and provides a platform for developing and deploying XML Web services and applications that use ASP.NET technology, a key part of the .NET Framework. Terminal Services is not included on Web Edition. However, Remote Desktop for Administration is available.. Only 10 concurrent file-sharing connections are allowed at any moment. It is not possible to install Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange software in this edition without installing Service Pack 1. Despite supporting XML Web services and ASP.NET, UDDI cannot be deployed on Windows Server 2003 Web. The .NET Framework version 2.0 is not included with Windows Server 2003 Web, but can be installed as a separate update from Windows Update.


Windows Server 2003 Web supports a maximum of 2 physical processors and a maximum of 2GB of RAM.However, an instance of Windows Server 2003 Web cannot act as a domain controller.It is the only edition of Windows Server 2003 that does not require Client Access Licenses when used as the internet facing server frontend for Internet Information Services and Windows Server Update Services. When using it for storage or as a backend with another remote server as the frontend, CALs may still be required.

GetDataBack for NTFS

Publisher’s Description

From Runtime Software:

GetDataBack is highly advanced data-recovery software that will help you to get your data back when your drive’s partition table, boot record, Master File Table, or root directory is corrupted or lost, when a virus hits the drive, when files have been deleted, when the drive has been formatted, or when the drive has been struck by a power failure. GetDataBack can even recover your data when the drive is no longer recognized by the operating system or not only the root directory but all directory information is lost. Advanced algorithms will make sure all directories and subdirectories are put together as they were, and that long filenames are reconstructed correctly. GetDataBack is safe because it’s read-only, which means the program will never attempt to write to the drive you’re about to recover.

ITUOnline Editors’ review

Accidentally deleted your files? GetDataBack Data Recovery can track them down–for a price. It even works with corrupted drives and those not recognized by Windows. This version only recovers files from NTFS drives, but it does offer a search tool for quickly locating a file by its date, name, or size.

If you suspect your actual disk is about to bite the dust, you can create a drive image to use during recovery. The utility can’t make rescue discs, however, so if you want to do that, you’ll need to build yourself a bootable Windows PE disc and add GetDataBack Data Recovery to it–the publisher’s Web site has instructions.

Although the application proves quite adept at locating deleted files, and you can view their contents, the demo won’t recover them. We can’t vouch for how well this core feature works. GetDataBack Data Recovery seems worth trying, but if you actually want to recover any lost work, this demo won’t do you much good.