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Data Recovery - Put to the Test
Kurtis Kronk @TheTechLounge writes "Today we get a close look at perhaps the leader of this industry, ACR Data Recovery. I worked closely with Doug Roberts of ACR to find the answers to questions you might ask. Not only did I ask Doug an array of questions, I also received a sample of their Media Tools Professional 2003 to see for myself if it really works, and moreover, how well. Check out this article for the full story."
Is this STILL necessary? Have we not got used to the idea of backups yet? REALLY!
Not the pr0n stash! *panics* Now if I can think of a way to lie to the Data Recoverers and say I dunno how 60gbs of pr0n got on my computer... Must have it back though!
I know in TIME there was mention of a company that recovered data lost from a hard drive that had been shot with a gun, one that was in an office fire, etc. Have you dealt with a lot of cases like these?
"That company uses our software technology in their labs. I cannot mention names because of our agreement, but I know the article and to whom you are referring.
Wow. I read that article, I thought that was just bad reporting. Sure it's technically possible but it's still impressive..
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
Whenever I think of Data Recovery, I always get this mental image of a hard drive in an operating table, and all these geeky guys with glasses and long white coats poking and prodding it with scalpels.
...because Ninnle never crashes!
Looks more like an advertisement to me.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
ntfstools, esp. ntfsundelete, works wonders for ntfs data recovery. Just modify ntfsundelete to not look to see if a file is actually deleted... That way it won't assume that that fragment of the file is "overwritten", but actually part of the file.
reminds me of an old program i actaly payed for,
McAfees 'Lost and Found'
it only relay had two options at recovering,
but at the time it was the best avible,
I bought it cause of a review i read and a
sample they gave out with the cd, good stuff
too.
Damm shame when 2K came out Lost and foudn was pritty much droped, or compleatly renamed and hiden.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Perhaps I'm too lazy to search, but...
When I have a drive that the motor has died, has been exposed to the elements, and just plainly won't work, how do I retrieve the data off it?
This is an advertisement. ACR is allowed to prattle on endlessly about all the things they've done w/o any analysis or even details...this is Slashdot, and for an article to work it needs to have the details. This is just cheerleadering at its worst--I won't waste time and ask, "why was this posted" but instead simply cut to the chase--this article isn't worth anyone's time.
BTW - if you have *real* data recovery issues try Ontrack They can recover data from dead hard drives.
This wasn't an article, or review. I'm thinking it's 'looking for people to send me free stuff to review'-esque.
sometimes infomercials/advertorials are interesting, but worthy of article status?
Then:
He's admitting that his own company is a chop-shop! Thanks for the heads-up...
Game dev and music blog
And put them into a working drive chassis.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
From the article (attributed to Mr. Roberts):
:D
Another warning sign is when a company gives a success rate. Companies do this to play off your insecurities. They know you want your data back and are telling you what you want to hear. In other words, any company that gives a success rate is lying.
Ummm... or maybe they understand that my number one criteria is success rate and they are honest, scrupulous, hard working individuals, trying to portray their market standing.
Of course I'd prefer if someone could do an independent review...
Damn I wish I had a couple grand of hard drives to destroy
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
This "story" seems to be nothing more than a thinly disguised ad for the products and services of a specific company. There's nothing of any technical interest or value here.
/. going to get story modding rights so we can remove this stuff from the front page?
Now when are readers of
John.
This was billed as an "article", which strongly implies news, or analysis of some sort. Instead, all I saw was a page full of someone asking softball questions designed to give the company rep a chance to talk about how cool his product is and how you shouldn't trust their competitors, and then a page about how to use the product itself.
No analysis, no questioning (or support) of the claims made, nothing like that. Even the very real problems the reviewer briefly mentions (can only write data to a FAT32 partition, for example) are quickly handwaved away and ignored. Indeed, if it will only write to a FAT32 partition, then how do I know it will read my ext2, ext3 or ReiserFS partition? This "review" or "news piece" sure doesn't tell me.
This is not news, and not helpful. In fact, this story doesn't seem to matter, either.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
Seems to me like this interview is more of an advertisement. No technical details, no ethical questions, just "why are you the best?" and other such nonsense.
Nothing to see here, move along
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
Is that the same Kurtis Kronk that posted inane comments on this forum?
Surely there can't be that many people in the world bearing the same name.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I lost a document that i _NEEDED_ on my laptops hard drive, i had deleted the partion formatted and installed linux. (go figure) I got it back by using some dos hard drive hex viewer program i got off the net for free (forget the name now). But after 8 hours of searching i found it and peiced the document back together, as it was in about 50 million fragments, thanks to ntfs and M$. All in all I would go thru it again if i needed too but the automated tools i tried had no joy trying to find it. Only with the hex editor was i able to get anywhere.
We'll assume it was porn.
Maybe SCO can use these guys to find their code in the Linux kernel! Then they wouldn't have to resort to displaying random functions in slide presentations and waving their hands a lot (presumably to dissipate the ensuing stink).
Do they sell any software I can use to recover the time I wasted reading that "article"?
Next time just send it out as spam so my filter will eat it.
How can the reviewer dump all over non-dos data recovery software without at least doing a comparison of what the alternatives were able to recover?
I've used R-Studio to recover 3 dead hard drives now, and it got absolutely everything every time.
Last time there was a physically damaged SCSI hard drive which I got _everything_ off. (It showed up as an unpartitioned drive and had tens of thousands of bad sectors).
R-Studio is idiot proof windows software which does things like let you save off an image of the entire drive to another location before you start playing.
This guy gives a glowing review to software which has a user interface from the mid-eighties and limited him to recovering 32GB.
Even then he didn't get all of his files back! How can he tell whether this is because they're gone or the software is lousy????
When I destroyed a fat16 hard drive lately, A friend of mine and myself didn't like the tools we found, so we wrote our own. http://www.mit.edu/~raindel/ This tool: puts together 2 fat tables to make one. searches for fat chains. locates directories and builds whatever directory structure is available. sooner or later I will get around to make a general purpose free software tool out of this, but I have other stuff to do first. Me. P.s Backup is simply not enough.
Clearly the subject story is an infomercial for this vendor.
Due to a partition-magic mishap I whacked my wife's hard drive...which she had fallen out of the habit of backing up. I need to do some recovery. It's a win98 system with a fat32 filesystem.
I had a copy of norton utilities, which did not help much.
I downloaded a demo of ontrack's tool, which seems to get reasonable results but crashed a lot when previewing (presumably bad) jpeg files. It took forever to run ant the $100 version could only recover 25 files at a time. If it weren't for the crashing i'd probably just buy it - she doesn't need more than maybe 100 files, but trying to recover all 4000 jpeg files on the drive, 25 at a time, to then be able to review which ones she wants...
I tried a unix/linux based tool set called "forensics tool kit" which wasn't able to read an image of the drive.
any other suggestions?
No one reads the articles anyway, they are either ads, crap or slashdotted.
From: cberfield@microsoft.com
To: Slashdot editors
I am the Marketing Director at a big IT company, can you please email me the prices for infomercial articles on Slashdot.
Thank You!
Chris Berfield
Marketing Director : Internet Division
Microsoft Corporation
"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on FTP and let the rest of the world mirror it"
- Said a wise man
I hope you got a decent cut from this "sponsored by" infomercial, because you're now on my shit list along with those duping buffoons michael and Taco. Or is your share just from the ads that get served on Slashdot to everyone that's currently pointing out what a lazy, slipshod muppet you are? Hey, subscribers; did you enjoy paying to read this infomercial before anyone else did? Did that give you a warm fuzzy?
On the bright side, at least Hemos got to post this first. When michael or Taco dupes it later, Slashdot will have hit its nadir.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When I think of the leader of the Data Recovery Industry, I think of Ontrack.... I don't know who these other guys are.
If you can "recover" a hard drive, does that mean I can go to Computer Success and buy a bunch of old machines, and "recover" the data, and use it, or do I have to have the original license? I feel like if one person "trashed" it, and I recover it, that's just the same as me going to the dump and buying trash from them that I can somehow convert back into useable goods.
stuff |
If you pull apart a fried drive, you'll see that the platters are tied down pretty tight, but that if you pull the platters off then it is basically impossible to re-synch them. I would love to know about the tools they use there.
There are some nice software recovery tools out there, and some decent ones for about 100 bucks (check out www.z-a-recovery.com)
but the equipment for when you can't talk to the drive ... that's something else
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The articles strongly imply that the disk drive must be functional. There is nothing about what you have to do if (as happened to me) the computer's power supply dies, and, in dying, fries the circuit board on the drive. So far, no luck in finding an exact duplicate circuit board....
Hey, have you heard of my girlfriend's girlfriend?
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Stuck together
Now
In their '62 'vette
Sharing one cigarette
In a black light trance then
Go go dance
Then
Go go trance
Then
They keep me warm on cold nights
We must be quite a sight
In our meat triangle
All tangled
Wow
My girlfriend's girlfriend
She looks like you
My girlfriend's girlfriend
She's my girl too
Her and me an her and she and me
An uncrowded couple are we three
Hey we don't care what people say
When walking hand in hand down kings highway
Two for one today
My girlfriend's girlfriend
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My girlfriend's girlfriend
She's my girl
This was a terrible, terrible article. I waded through a bit of the "interview" (maybe it should be called, "Please repeat your "mission statement" and "marketing catchphrases" for us, several times) because I thought the article would eventually be testing the limits of data recovery: throwing disks on the floor, burning them, overwriting the data, etc. You know, something interesting.
But it wasn't. And the article was filled with so many technical inaccuracies and miswordings ("There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level." ?!?!???) that it was clear neither party actually understood anything about data recovery.
It was just a fucking advertisement, and a completely uninteresting one at that. Shame on you, slashdot.
This isn't an article...its a advertisment.
While the article itself is something of an advertisement, I _do_ have the Media Tools package and it _does_ work pretty well...horible documentation, though.
Now...staying relatively on-topic...lemme tell you just how bad OnTrack stinks. I needed a notebook PC's data recovered after a system crash. Instead of dinking around with it myself and possibly losing the data forever, I forked over some dinero to have OnTrack perform a recovery.
After two days of phone calls and emails, I finally get the info for shipping the HD. After it arrived at OnTrack's facility, I never heard word ONE from them...I had to call and badger them every time I needed a status update. After two weeks of waiting, I called only for them to tell me "Oh, I'm sorry we can't do anything with the disk." More than a month later, I finally got my HD back from them and that was only after I called a final time, talked with no less than three different people, and got a stammering apology. UPS delivered a NFG HD to me the next day.
If you plan on using OnTrack - don't. If you need data recovery - don't use OnTrack, try the recovery yourself or use a different vendor. I have crossed OnTrack off our corporate list of approved vendors and have promised to tell any of my peers who are looking for data recovery service to steer clear of OnTrack and their (very) dismal customer service.
-PONA-
+that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
"If you are wondering why there isn't more data recovery software programs developed in DOS, it is because 'low-level' programming is a rare trait. There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level."
hmmmmm, last time I programmed in C++, (2 hours ago), it was far easier to write a dos based program with a text based interface, than it is to write an equivalent program that has a graphical interface in windows
writing a program for either dos or windows does not make the program inherently low or high level, it is merely a matter of whether or not it is more important to give the programmer or the enduser an easier time
the interview is full of shit. first he gloats about his "secure" areas for qualified personnel, while if theft there is, most likely it will be done by inhouse techs.
second, anyone that thinks DOS is "low level" needs to get a better grasp on reality. DOS is anything but low level, while it DOES give access to some low level interfaces (ie, IRQ), it is no way a DOS property.
and third, he contradicts himself when talking about "chop shops".
nothing more than a self-glorifying AD for clueless marketdroids, move along
Besides Ontrack, there's also Drive Savers, which has an excellent reputation. We've used them here and had excellent service.
Of course it's pricey. Much better to have a very, very solid backup system.
-Geoff
he also said that.
A couple of weeks ago the power supply in my server died. When I tossed in a new power supply I discovered the system would no longer recognize the drives. I yanked the drives and put them in another system thinking the motherboard had been damaged, but the second system wouldn't recognize the drives, either. I called a data recovery service only to discover they charge outrageous amounts for data recover (thousands of dollars per drive).
Before you you chastise me for not backing up, I should mention I had installed a Traven Tape drive in the system, but could NEVER get it to work properly (despite Seagate's bogus claim that the drive is supported natively by Linux). I posted on news groups for advice (and tried what was suggested). I also recompiled my kernel serveral times. Nothing worked.
It seems to me that the drives could have been saved by a damn 50 cent part, but the drive makers aren't bothering with it (how often would it be needed?).
So I'm screwed. Most of my data is sitting on a couple of drives that can't be accessed. Unless I win the lottery I can't afford to recover the data. One of the drives is still under warranty, but that doesn't help me. The data is far more important than the cost of the drive.
When I replace the server I will also get a USB 2.0 DVD Burner (with USB I can move it between systems).
BTW, one drive is a Maxtor 8.4Gig (about) and the other a brand new Western Digital 60Gig. Both are enhanced IDE.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Sheesh. They can't even mod correctly on a post like this?
> And why isn't anyone making a linux 'live-CD' data recovery disc?
I'm working on one. "Live-CD" is probably not what you want. At least
not with your full system. It is probably too big to fit on a single CD.
Instead, go with a CD that gives you a stripped install, and can overlay
the rest of your system from CD, DVD, tape, or from somewhere on the
network. I've got an older version based on 2.2 kernels that works for
simple systems that just need to be partitioned and loaded from CD.
The next version will handle LVM/MD/DM/EVMS for mirrored setups on
2.4/2.6 and will know about the network..
Of course, the idea is that it is all scripted, and you just feed it
media. If you want to, that is. You can also do everything the old
fashioned way, if you want to make changes at recovery time.
Take a look at RecoverMyFiles. There is also a review at ZDNet Australia (RecoverMyFiles.com is based in Australia).
It will scan your hard drive to look for different kinds of files (JPEGs, Word, Excel, whatever) and let you preview many of these file types before you save them. The scan runs faster if you limit the number of file types that you are searching for.
You might want to look at these instructions on how to make a version that runs from CD, although it involves installing it on a different machine from the one you are trying to recover first, and making the CD on that machine. That way, you can run the software from the CD, and you won't overwrite files on the drive you are trying to recover.
It costs $70, but they let you run a full version of the software for free that does everything except let you save your files. Paying the $70 gives you a registration key to unlock the software so you can save the files it found. So, on the one hand, they are holding your files hostage until you pay; on the other hand, you don't have to pay anything if the software doesn't find anything.
The reason I know about this software is because my friend just formatted her drive by mistake, and she had pictures on it that weren't backed up. I did some searching on Google and found this software. I went over to her place with the CD I made, and it started finding JPEGs. I had to leave before it was done scanning, but it seemed to be finding a lot of files. It didn't seem to have a limit on the number of files you could recover at one time, when I left it was up to about 70 files and counting.
Indeed. I suggest a new catch phrase: "Journalistic Integrity - put to the test".
Er, wait, how about: "Journalistic Integrity - thrown out the window"
Please help metamoderate.
"Use our software, it was made in DOS, and works Real Good (tm)"
I want to hear about how you get data of a drive that's been shattered, or shot, or burned in a fire, not how amazing your marketing department is.
Weak.
CIA Industries - Running the world for fun and profit
It's here! And it's for free!
Now you can recover those heavily scratched CDs yourself and the best part is: you can have the tool for doing so for free! It's actually released under GPL!
So don't longer hesitate, download recoverdm and recover your precious data!
Free!
www.vanheusden.com - home of Multitail, HTTPing, CoffeeSaint, EntropyBroker, rsstail, bsod, listener, nagcon, nagi
I for one welcome our new data-recovering article-buying overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted Slashdot poster I can round up other readers to work in their underground infomercial mines.
Or something to that effect...
You're installing windows?
"So, make sure you have a back up before running Windows products. If not, you are flipping a coin to decide the fate of your data."
Seems to be the only time they tell people they need to back up their data.
Fuck you.
Too bad the article did not talk about any difficult recovery scenario, like when part of the physical platters are destroyed. All that article talks about is how to recover deleted files or slack space.
"These sorts of software are mainly designed in Windows, which has created another data recovery problem. ANY Windows based product will try to write to the drive during the booting process. This means, Windows data recovery software can and will overwrite your data in certain circumstances."
At the very least it sounds overblown. During "the booting process" Windows isn't even running yet. And in any case, if you're running Windows at all, unless you disconnected that drive immediately after the data loss, it has already been exposed to whatever "the booting process" might do.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dark fibre? Sounds cool. What's that?
Test your backups by restoring them to a VMware virutal server. That way you not only have assurance your backups work, but you can apply patches to a near production environemtn for testing.
Well, _I_ thought it was a nifty idea.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Is there any particular reason no one's mentioned recovery using SystemRescueCD? (GNU GPL2 licensed)
Though not 'marketed' as a Data Recovery suite, it's got enough bits, parts and tools to handle %99 of what most of us run into in the field.
It's done near magic a time or two for me here.
http://www.systemrescuecd.org
From the article:
"To recover the data from the zip file, do not use WinZip or WinRAR. You will need a special DOS based ZIP program called PKZIP, which you can get here.(link)"
I guess "special" means "original." I STILL keep my PKZip 2.04G disk handy - just in case.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
And now for the obligatory Simpson's quote: "Mr. Burns: your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?"
The "interviewee" seems to have a different definitions for some common english words and phrases that we use every day. Please use this comment as a guide when you read the article.
any company that gives a success rate is lying.
Lying: making statments that make ACR look bad.
There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level.
Handful: Tens (perhaps even hundreds) of thousands
Something to note is that the data recovery industry has been around less than two decades. If you look throughout the Internet, most data recovery companies are claiming 20, 30 and even 40 years of data recovery experience. That's bull. These companies are 'chop shops' with a decent website that are luring suckers into data recovery disasters. We get more drives than you can imagine that have been attempted to be recovered by these 'chop shops'. Unfortunately, there is no watchdog for the industry, so be careful who you choose.
More drives than you can imagine: one or two
the companies you would think would be our "competition" are actually our friends
Friends: Liars. See above.
We have recovered drives from the bottom of the ocean, lakes, fires, and the list goes on.
Data Recovery: Finding the physical media that, perhaps, once contained the data by employing divers or firefighters, but not necisarily being able to access it.
What an uplifting aspect of the business, lyrically portrayed with loving craftsmanship by a true humantiarian. It's all about helping people, helping them be dignified.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
It started off as a hobby, sort of. I used to work for the old WordPerfect corporation where we had customers that sent in floppies that had "REALLY IMPORTANT" documents on them that had become corrupted or partially deleted, one way or another.
Data recovery tools weren't as advanced as they are nowadays so it was a much more arduous task. I had to scour the floppies and pull off as much data as possible, mostly using the old debug command under DOS. I was mostly doing it for fun as the WordPerfect corporation didn't want to become file recovery experts. I was just into it for the challenge and to offer a nice service to our customers.
I recovered data off a floppy that had a pencil stuck through it, floppies that had been formatted (easy) partially erased by magnets (tough), and various methods of corruption and deletion - including accidentally saving a blank document over the top of an existing document... OOPS!
I was once asked "How do you recover the data?" and I had a tough time answering, as each case was different from the other. I just told them that "Performing data recovery is like running a sausage mill backwards to manufacture pigs." What comes out of the process doesn't look pretty, but its better than starting from scratch.
I then went on to recovering data from hard drives. After WordPerfect I became a 'consultant'. One Monday morning, one of my customers had their WIN NT 3.51 server hard drive crash. It was a head crash, you could hear the heads riding the platter. An awful noise that once you hear it, you know you're screwed.
I spent 16 hours pulling data from that hard drive, and once I was done (I had pulled as much data as I could) we opened up the drive to discover that the head on the bottom platter had fallen down, and had been riding there over the weekend. It had etched away at the platter for so long that the platter had actually fallen down and was sitting in a pile of HDD shavings at the bottom of the drive. Sheesh!
Over the years I collected numerous utilities for data recovery, but I started getting out of it once LBA mode drives came out and the actual hard drives were being managed internally, rather than by the OS. Not that it made it more dificult, but you saw fewer and fewer hard drive errors because MS was finally removed from their management position over the HDD data.
Anyhow, back to work...
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
ACR Data Recovery Media Tools Professional 2003. Really! I got one of those terrible deskstar drives, and recently it started going whiirr-click. When I tried booting Win2k it decided it needed to check for integrity and after about a 1/2 hour of "fixing" rendered my hard drive unbootable and fdisk showing no partitions! I tried 4 or 5 of the "big" software solutions to no avail. Media Tools was the 1st one that actually worked. I was able to rewrite the partition and fat information and "gasp" mount my hardrive! Much of the information was corrupted but at least I got some/most of it. The only thing that really sucked was Media Tools 25 drive licence, I used 5 of my licences just to get my data back from 1 drive. I am now using a highpoint 404 controller to mirror my new drives. Less than $200 for a drive mirroring solution. I learned my lesson!
Swear to god, this was just a strange coincidence.
I am still looking for a way to wipe my machine fully so that noone call pull data revovery and pull my old info off of there. I am no perv or hacker.. but i definatly belive that I have a right to privacy.
-For it is the very essence of imperialism to turn information systems into wild, bloodthirsty animals-
Despite how much this company sucks, many formidable alternates have been mentioned by slashdotters. I'm wondering about one thing: what is the best way to destroy data. Here, we have two forms.
a) Data and drive to be destroyed: Almost anything goes, the drive is to be disposed.
I'm thinking big magnet, hammer, and some strong acid should make the thing pretty much a goner? b) Data to be destroyed/removed, drive to be re-used: Not everyone wants to get rid of that 32GB SCSI or 200GB IDE drive when sensitive data is to be wiped. Maybe it's just being upgraded and the original disk moved to a less secure location. What are the best ways (likely software) to maintain the usabillity of the drive, but ensure that most cannot recover old data?
Oh, and lastly, I was thinking of perhaps a mechanism to destroy disks upon having a system compromised. Many people might think "illegal data," (which could apply, I suppose), but I'm thinking more about big companies who have somehow had their data/drives ripped off... in which case it would be nice to nuke said drives before thieves can steal important/private customer/corporate data. Would also be useful if the RIAA comes-a-knockin'
From the article...
One minor annoyance was that to recover the data you not only need a destination drive (in addition to the drive you are recovering), but that drive needs to be formatted FAT32.
But it gets worse:
The only drives you will be able to recover to will be labeled starting with 'C' and only FAT32 partitions will be available to write to...
So, what exactly would these recovery tools do that a Window98 Startup Disk with UNDELETE would not?
They can't even write FAT16 drivers, and I'm supposed to believe that they are "Data Recovery Professionals"? Please...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Respectfully, it would seem the vast majority of readers feel this type of sponsored advertisement "review" is not ideal front page "news" material.
Keep the interesting new flowing... much appreciated!
BlueF
The reviewer lost all my respect at that sentence. If the review didn't already sound like an advert, calling PKZIP 'special' and providing a link to the PKWare store just flipped my mind a bit. You should be able to find PKZIP at Simtel.
Ah, well, I'm keeping my copies of PKZIP (v1.1 & v2.04e) safe on many archive CDs.
"DOS does not attempt to overwrite data unless you instruct it to do so. DOS based programs are also more effective in extracting and recovering data than Windows based programs." - from the infomercial
Any OS will attempt to write to blocks that it does not think are allocated (such as the result of corrupted file allocation tables). I guess he is referring to Windows writing the cache file onto disk - as opposed to Dos that does not page out memory since it is single-tasking and originally designed to run in considerably less than 640K.
You could just as well run your disk recovery utilities from a small linux kernel and get the same result; additionally, linux itself pages out memory to a dedicated swap partition which would avoid writing into data sectors on the disk, and I would also put forward the idea that linux will run recovery apps more efficiently than Dos due to the inate ability to address and utilize all of the memory on the box, as well as the latest CPU instructions.
The article also mentions a lack of low level Dos system programmers - well, duh! Its an essentially dead OS. Now talk about unix or linux system level programmers - and you'll have them coming out of the woodwork.
I have to question the professionalism of an outfit that is banking everything on DOS, when they could run their apps off of a bootable linux CD to do the same job for their new 'target' customers (small businesses and home PC users).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
that he saved 20 times or so, which doubled in size each time as Word tried to retain the old revisions and saved 1600x1600 raster thumbnails of each clipart or chart.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
"Most data recovery software is designed for end-users who cannot afford data recovery services. These sorts of software are mainly designed in Windows, which has created another data recovery problem. ANY Windows based product will try to write to the drive during the booting process."
So my Window's HelloWorld program does more than print HelloWorld to the screen?
Mad Hatter
They even have a free version that can grok ext2fs on linux, with a nifty GUI.
Neato!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
OSX 10.3 now has 'secure delete' build into the OS. You can remove files using secure delete and it deletes the data and then nulls out the actual data on the drive with like 3 passes.
Good stuff, they've always worked as advertised.
/. now?
Speaking of "advertised", though, this article really lacks any level of critical thought, and the author's "test" isn't much of a challenge. Is ACR buying ad space on
I have heard tales of people who buy an exact duplicate drive and model, de-solder the ribbon cable that talks to servo and head array, removing the controller, and attaching a good controller from the other drive.
of course, this may have become more difficult as drive electronics become more complex, and the drives heat tolerant. But I'd wager a pretty penny that ADR uses this technique quite often.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
int 10
we're everywhere. putch() baby, putch().
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Linux is reporting the size from df because while the kernel couldn't query the drive for size information, it fell back to asking the BIOS, which reported the C/H/S you programmed in the BIOS setup.
;-)
/proc/ide/ide0/hdb/ doesn't exist or the files (cache, capicity, etc.) are empty, then you are S.O.L.
Whoops. You got exactly what you expected.
If
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I accidentally opened the article twice. The first window has that line about the Sponsor. That line has disappeared from later attempts.
There is an informative post scored 0 by an AC (really close to this post) that starts:
This is Kurtis from TheTechLounge. I wrote the article.
saying that the Sponsor line is because they provided software, not because they paid for the interview.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
It was an infomercial. It had no useful data. It was basically like some spokemodel saying "We do a wonderful job, the others don't!"
Cripes.
Even large magnets won't work, you need an extremely strong magnetic field (think active cooling), or you must heat up the drive platters before you apply the field.
Hammer is good, but platters can be examined using electron microscope and related technology.
Best idea: Write a bunch of random data to the drive (all sectors), at least 20 or 30 times, interleaved with writes of all zeros and all ones. See how long it takes to a few passes (like 5), then let it run for as long as you can wait, even if it's longer than 20 or 30 tries. The more passes, the better.
This takes a while, but it is nearly impossible to recover anything after this, even with a scanning tunneling microscope. The drive can now be reused (yeah!)
If you're really paranoid, dismantle the drive after this, and remove the platters.
Then burn them with thermite. That's the most thorough method of destruction. I don't think acid will do it. In fact, I don't think the platters will react well with it at all. There may be some chemical solvent that will destroy the platter recording surface, but it may be very toxic, messy, take too long, etc.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
OSX secure delete (aka ShredIT) is not based on the Gutmann research for secure deletion, AFAIK.
You can download wipe and build it using the OSX free software development tools. It's more secure.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
I spent two weeks recovering data after two of my drives got somewhat damaged (one seriously, probably because the mainboard was malfunctioning).
:-) ]
I tried five or six tools..
The two things I remember:
- "Easy Recovery" ($$$) crashed everytime before doing anything (during "system analyse"; one partition was really fucked up after(!) I tried an old copy of Norton Disk Doctor (3.0?) for DOS )
[Whoops! Just googled: Easy Recovery is made by "ontrack"
- "iRecover" ($) convinced me and did a very good job; feels like programmed by someone smart with some good ideas.
Can be found here
There is a freeware product called Storix that allows you to recover the entire system from a backup, as well as repartition the drives. It's not GPL, but their free version works great.
It appears that the ACR commercial software is just a spiffier form of the already free Lazarus tool from _The Coroner's Toolkit_.
I am totally agree that the article looked as an commercial, however I have had a insidence about a year ago where the FRTREE product was the only program managing to find my information again.
I tried:
Norton disk doctor 2000 (totally hopless)
Norton disk editor (failed to detect any partitions)
Nuts and bolts (faled misserably)
Stellar (no luck there)
I also tried a slew of other solutions without luck. When trying FRTREE i only tried their demo version and it found my partitions without problems, however did not want to recover them without buying the actual product. I noted however that it gave me the LBA values, and calculated the correct location of my partitions based on that.
Then I used Ransih partition manager and gave it the information I got from FRTREE, whoala : all partitions recovered without dataloss!
(It should be noted that I did make a copy of the physical disk before doing all this...)
They've saved my users many times (but not every time).
Anyone know how over-dubbed MiniDV and other digital tape formats might allow recovery of lost material? If an HDD data can be recovered "three writes down", then what about digital tape?
Did anyone else cache that pun?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
When I accidentally repartitioned and started an ext2 format on a windows drive with a LOT of data on it I wanted to keep, I used a tool called 'Repoman' from this group:
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/
YMMV but it worked well for me - it was able to recover the old partition information, and rebuild the filesystems sufficiently well for me to stick it in as the secondary drive on another machine and recover the majority of the data. Its not a free tool but for 30 odd dollars it was money well spent.
Two things:
"DOS based programs are also more effective in extracting and recovering data..."
yeah! DOS! my grandma!
Linux.
"If you are wondering why there isn't more data recovery software programs developed in DOS, it is because 'low-level' programming is a rare trait. There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level."
my grandma, again. 'low-level' is required for DOS programming, huh? how about what ANY c++ programming tutorial teaches you at the start?
Perhaps he means ASM but doesn't say it because us technical types wouldn't understand. Or maybe he has no clue.
This article's a big damn advertisement. I'm surprised Proxomitron didn't catch it.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I think they might be able to do grand things with damaged drives, but using 'DoD' to wipe a drive does not impress me. And so what if they do it sector by sector - it doesn't matter as long as you wipe the entire disk.
This article and this PDF explain more.
FATxx is mainly used in flawed systems or embedded ones (digitalcameras).
..oops.
/Q or a _Real_ one!
So when slashdot has an article about filesystems used in actual servers UFS.. FFS.. EXT2.. EXT3.. ISO9660 recovery tool then write about it.
Besides this tool is dependent on working block reads. If there's a physical read/write error
And note that the article doesn't tell if the "format" is a
Situation:
New Bionic Computer (Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger) for the Boss.
Goal:
Move data to new computer
Use old computer as New Bionic Hand-Me-Down Computer for Boss' Secretary
Process:
Backup C Drive of old computer.
Shutdown and remove old computer.
Setup new computer.
Copy all backup data to new computer
Verify Copy worked
Backup Secretary Computer
Shutdown Secretary Computer
Setup New BHMD Computer for Secretary
Repartition Hard drive
Format Hard drive
Install OS (Win98)
Install MS Office
Suddenly Discover that partitions D and E have not been restored to Bosses new computer!!!
Discover backup didn't know about D and E
PANIC!!!
Frantically shut down Secretary's BHMD computer as it's hard drive is where all the bosses data WAS stored.
PANIC some more!!!
Call Drive Savers in California
In a Panic, tell them what happened.
Get reassurance
Tell them you need it ASAP and are fedexing the drive to them overnight.
Panic!
Get call from Drive Savers next afternoon. All data recovered and on secure web site to be downloaded.
Download
Burn CDs
Copy to Boss's new computer.
All is well!!!
This sounds like an add for Drive Savers, and to an extent it is. Really, it's a real life testimony to the fact that sometimes you make mistakes. I was willing to pay anything to get the job done quickly and correctly and that is what I ended up paying, anything. It cost a lot of money and I could have saved a lot of money if I didn't need it fixed "Yesterday". As it was, the boss never new anything was wrong or that his data was ever "missing".
It is possible I could have spent $49 and used Norton to get the data back my self, but it was too important to take the chance of the recovery process that I would use in my ignorance would cause more damage than good.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)