Psychologist Consoles Data Loss Victims

(ok.whatever) writes "A former suicide prevention counselor is employed full-time by a data recovery firm to console its callers. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: 'When the company receives a call from someone who's clearly lost it -- which can happen several times an hour -- Chessin comes on the line to help the caller rediscover their happy place.' Good grief!"

Comments

Change a suicidal mind in less than half an hour?

[devphil]

From the article (which is pretty good, btw):

With computer crises, though, this usually takes 10 or 15 minutes. With potential suicides, calls usually lasted twice as long.

Only twice as long? For some reason I find that remarkable (obviously; I'm remarking on it). I would have thought that potential suicides would need much more help than that in the short-/immediate-term.

Re:data recovery failure == tragedy

[Anonymous Coward]

Asianthumbs? Why the hell aren't you using "thumbnow.com" instead? It's FAAAAR better than any of the others.

They must still be busy with...

[Anonymous Coward]

...IBM GXP hard drives failing left and right.

I know I could have used them a few times myself.

50% Data lost

[GNT]

During a recent upgrade, the backup software only copied 50% of the data, backing up the D: drive but not the C: drive even though it copied the whole C: directory structure.

Then to add insult to injury, the RAID controller went haywire , destroying my only remaining copy.

I lost some irreplaceable stuff. I could have used a counselor. I was depressed for days!

ext2fs - e2extract to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so say someone rm's your box or something, and you lose all your files. Unless they were *wiped*, you better get yourself over to http://dreamscape.org/toolkit/ and figure out how to use stat_inodes, parse_directory_inode, and finally the recovery tool 'e2extract' once you have compiled a map.

I lost 8 years of work and brought it back from the abyss.

Relax, everything is going to be OK.

Re:It does hurt!

[MikeFM]

Absolutely right. Backups are easy. Just do it. :)

Damn dude removable hdd drawers are like $7. A 120Gb hdd is about $100. With shipping and tax that is all of $120. Back shit up. Most people have like a shitty 40Gb drive and maybe a fraction of it is actually important. You can make a shit load of backups on a 120Gb drive. It doesn't hurt to back stuff up to third party servers over the Net either. A cron job will keep all your files save that way. :)

If you're like me it's a little more work as you have lots of fairly unique data. This is where mirroring your systems works wonders. Keep an identical system in a secure (and different) location and just mirror all your data to it. A combination of the above mentioned method that won't kill you in ISP fees if you have 100's of gigs of data. :)

Re:It does hurt!

[packeteer]

- All CD backups kept forever ...Not true at all

Most Cheap cd's will last a decade and still be ok but i wouldn't count on them for much longer. CD's that use Cyanine dye should last about 50 years but cheap manufacturing will cause them to die out quicker. CD's using Phythalocyanine dye will last up to 100 years but are more expensive. When you are buying the quality discs you also are less likely to have defects create problems.

If you use some types of ink in pens or permanent markers to label your backups they can soak through the top coating into the data area and corrupt them. If you backup with cd's use cd safe markers.

Also cd's fall apart over time. They peel and fall apart. They stretch and strain. If you want them to last keep them in a constant temperature safe place. Change in temp. causes the plastic to expand and contract which makes it brittle and eventually crack.

If you are willing to pay a bit extra for the good cd's its worth it. I have had cd's with minimal use not work after a few years but it feels great to pull out a 10 year old cd and find that it works better than many new burned cd's do.