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Recovering Data From Broken Hard Drives and SSDs (Video)
Russell Chozick owns a small company in Austin. TX, called Flashback Data that recovers data from messed-up hard drives. And SSDs and Flash memory, too. How badly damaged does a drive have to be to defeat Russell and his crew? Apparently, smashed to bits. Not long aqo we did a video about a company that destroys data on hard drives, and we've had at least one Ask Slashdot where the question was, "What's the Best Way To Destroy Hard Drives?" In today's video, Russell is talking about the opposite of destruction -- except that he destroys data upon request, too. Obviously, checking the wrong box on a customer order form could cause big problems at Flashback Data, couldn't it? Let's hope they never do that -- and let's hope we all back up all of our data so we never need to use a data recovery service. You do back up all your data, don't you?
One hopes with this extra source of funds Slashdot might hire some editors.
Do one overwrite with zeros for magnetic media. They cannot recover that. Open the drive, take out the platters, bend or break them, they cannot recover that. SSDs are more tricky, but one overwrite with random data assures that no more than the spare capacity can be recovered.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...is to literally destroy the drive...
A small four-pound sledge and a suitable hard surface to act as an anvil and one can break the aluminum case into bits in a couple minutes and crease and crack the platters to the point that there realistically isn't anything being read from there. If you're REALLY worried, break out the plasma cutter and just cut the platters into bits...
Speaking of bits, Spanish colonial currency were "pieces of eight". "Shave and a Haircut, two bits" is a $0.25 cost. So, eight bits to a full unit... Coincidence for eight bits to a byte, or intentional?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Does this company offer a way to recover a Slashdot that doesn't disguise advertising as a story?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Thanks to Slashdot's video implementation, I get a big div in the middle of the screen that says,
This plugin is vulnerable and should be updated.
Check for updates...
Click here to activate the Adobe Flash plugin.
Now my Firefox is up to date and the Flash plugin was updated earlier this month.
I assumed the video was just a shameless promotion for the company, but clicked it anyway. Then, I saw that I was supposed to sit through a 30 second advertisement for some other random $#!T just so I can see an ad for this company ?
Sorry, No.
s/that recovers data from messed-up hard drives/that has learned the value of sponsored content advertising through the dice network/
Good people go to bed earlier.
>> I imagine it makes a lot of sense to keep the size of a byte as a power of two (for addressing reasons, maybe?)
I hope you're kidding, but in case you're not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
This is such a random interview, he should of sat down and planned what he was going to say, this just sounds quick, dirty and unprofessional. I can't take a company seriously where the interviewer doesn't answer questions using a solid brief format. He's not even answers the questions properly, I give this a 2 / 10, to be fair I give most interviews about a 4 / 10, If you include PR you lose marks. Sit down, right out all the question and answer you want to talk about, practice it, re practice it and then go. Every time you stutter or have throw off a question you just look bad to the camera, I hate to be hating on this guy but it's pretty bad.
Why is this stupid marketing BS still displayed?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Did you basically just use Youtube's auto-closed-captioning function? The quality of the transcript is so bad it's virtually unreadable.
Please help metamoderate.
Not disagreeing that the video was pretty bad - I can't say I'd do any better if asked to do an interview off the cuff. Definitely not a well planned advertisement if that's what it was supposed to be.
I've had customers that have used these guys with about a 50/50 success rate at getting 100% data back. The times they couldn't get the data were due to head crashes that had scrapped the platters clean.
It never seems to fail, customer declares they absolutely don't need backups for their workstations, they only need it for their servers and that their users will always remember to put the data on the server. Except they don't . . . and there ends up being something business critical on Joe User's laptop that they just dropped/spilled on/etc.
The way Flashback works is they'll do an eval on the drive (which they used to charge a couple hundred bucks to just do the eval, but they've gotten cheaper on the more common drive types) - after they get you the list of files that they can get back, they'll quote you what it takes to recover the data and you can choose whether to move forward. If they can't get anything, they let you know and you aren't out thousands of bucks with nothing to show for it.
As much as we try to avoid the situation where an individual drive matters when it comes to data, the human part of business seems to generate conditions that causes these guys to be needed. I rarely have had to take anything to these guys, but overall I've been happy with the turn around, the pricing is reasonable compared to the national-mailin type chains and they don't sell you on things that are impossible. Usually I end up just bringing them a boxxed drive to dump the data on if they can get it, but they've been flexible at getting the important files up on a site that we can ftp it if the customer desperately wanted it.
(and that's probably a better slashvertisement than what ended up coming across in the video - there was still some good info in it about how the ssd recovery differs from platter based if you can sit through the eye twitching and 'ums'). In any case - they haven't come across as the usual scum/basement recovery operations.
This stuff isn't It's not easy,and the costs can go rediculously through the roof. Having done a TINY bit myself, shipping out some work, etc..
See my Sig though, it's all right there.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I thought this was going to inform me on a few ways I could do it myself. I don't really care to hear what someone else can do for me.
We can flag comments as spam, but not "stories" such as this. Hmm.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I worked for awhile in a companies laptop repair depot. We received a laptop back from a user requesting data recovery. The laptop had been run over by a truck, and when you shook the hard drive it sounded like sand inside.
It depends on if the controller is good and if the platter(s) are damaged.
All the software in the world won't fix a bad armature, controller, motor, though a platter can ,if lucky, be read a gazillion times and bit for bit avgd to try and sum up what the original bit shouldhave been. EAC uses a similar things to get audio from damaged CD's
I attempted to fix a fullsize portable backup drive that was 'Knocked" when the poor thing was knocked off the counter onto a tile floor. It got hit just right, slamed into the floor, and the head scraped a concentric ring into the drive. I was looking at it for a friend, I told her she could try a specialized recovery place, but if they "Could" get it back it would be pretty pricey...It's why you don't use a backup drive as your only source of storage....
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Perhaps Slashdot should follow Fark's lead and put a "sponsored" flag on stories like these and disable commenting? That way it would be clear that the story was an advertisement and they could avoid alienating their user base. Slashvertisements are usually fairly obvious and when they do appear the comments tend to all be very negative against whatever was being advertised. This way Slashdot could get their ad money for the promotion without pissing of the readers and filling the comments with vitriol.
I doubt after your hard drive goes through a chipper/shredder that they could recover the data.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Overwrite the entire drive with Rick Rolls.
There is a light side and a dark side.
Use the tape wisely.
No brain, no pain.
Web advertising is not traditional advertising. Traditional advertising didn't track you.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
While DIY data recovery has its risks, most "damaged" disks really just have minor filesystem corruption.
The wonderful (free) photorec tool from the photorec package can be used to do an amazing amount of recovery. I've never had it fail on SD cards with FAT32 damage. It can also recover all sorts of other document formats, despite the name, and works fine on hard drives - though you should *ALWAYS* disk image the drive and then attempt recovery on the image.
For imaging, look into ddrescue, it's a vital first-stage recovery tool.
Just prepare a 512-byte buffer with all "U" (uppercase letter U) and write a serial number on TOP of it starting with 1. Then dump that buffer, incrementing the serial number as you go, until the disk is full. 1) Flash disk compression will fail because of the serial number, so all "spare areas" will be filled. 2) The "U" is a series of alternating 0s and 1s - very high hysteresis for magnetic drives. 3) Anybody assuming that "deletion" is only removing directory entries will be unpleasantly surprised. Very easy with Linux and C.
We really need a way to exclude video stories. Also, where do I sign up to buy a front page story?
I generally visit slashdot at work, and I'm not some cool graphic designer who's allowed to sit there all day playing music through his headphones and not answering the phone. So I skip past any video link/story anyway.
At least they've started doing transcripts of interviews now.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yo Dawg I got you another backup so you can make backups of your backups of your backups.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sucks that I'll forever only have a few mostly crappy photos of my wedding reception
I find it hard to believe that nowadays you wouldn't have hundreds of reasonable quality mobile phone pictures from pretty much everyone who attended. Granted, they might not be professiional level, but does that really matter?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Surely it would be better from their point of view if the public thought that just disconnecting the hard drive made it somehow unreadable?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If I was that company I would make people write "I WANT YOU TO DESTROY THIS HARD DRIVE" before I would destroy it.
...is it possible to recover the data if all you have of the hard disk drive is the platter?
It is a great techniques to recover valuable data from damaged hdd. We often failure to retrieve data and experiencing with big lost.
Aaaaand, fail. The comment was humorous. Rather obviously so.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.