I should also add, that in ones persuit of happiness, they are free, unless that pursuit infringes on someone else's rights, then it's not allowed. Mandating healthcare for everyone for the supposed betterment of others is infringing on my rights in my pursuit of happiness.
If i understand the US-founders correctly they had a country in mind where everybody is equal and even the poorest have right to a respectable life in America.
Wrong! When they said Equal, it meant equal under god, in that we all have the same rights, no one is "nobel" vs. "peasant". It also meant, that we all have the equal right to "persue" happiness (in an individual sense). Your version of "happiness" might not be the same as mine, however, we both have the same right to persue it. No where does it say that the government has the autority to grant "Rights", as true "Rights" are from God (or Creator) and not from the government. If the goverment can create new rights, then they can surely take them away. No where did our founders say that there was a bare minimum of quality of life that citizens are guaranteed. You need to re-read our history if you believe that was their intentions.
Several years ago, there was a company called "Wherify" that made a GPS enabled wrist-watch device for this purpose. You could put it on your kid, and it it locked on with a key so it couldn't be removed (it also had a cut-resistant band to help thwart would be kidnappers). You could see your childs location from any web-browser. You could set way-points in so that if you're kid was supposed to be home at 3pm afterschool, and they didn't show up, you would be notified by email. It also had a "panic" feature on it that would allow the child to activate if something bad did happen, that would cause the GPS coordinates to be sent to a dispatcher and you for immediate action. It was water proof etc. Sounds exactly like what you're looking for.
Here is a link to it, but I don't know if their sold anymore...
http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/wf200.html
Like many have mentioned, I've used a Knoppix boot CD for my most intense recovery to date and it worked. It was a corrupted NTFS file system that would cause any windows based computer to crash when it mounted the drive, so using another computer didn't work. Knoppix was able to mount the drive in read only mode.
Making a clone of the disk is also a good idea and what the "Pro's" would do for the reasons mentioned already. If it's a physical problem, and the data is important enough, I've seen companies that will go as far as taking the drive to a clean room, and physically disassembling the bad drive and moving the platters over into a new case to get it working, then cloning it, then performing all the software tricks on the clone. You wouldn't want to try this without a clean room though.
For damaged/corrupted data (like from a damaged platter) I remember seeing a brief video where some FBI guy was going through the harddrive on a byte level and using error correction software and manually guiding the software to try to rebuild the damaged bytes. I think this would only be effective for single file recovery though, where you know what kind of data 'should be there', and also because going through a 500GB drive byte by byte would be a lesson in futility.
I've also heard that some of the more prestigious data recovery companies use proprietary software that will help rebuild missing data using the data that is available. The FBI thing I mentioned may be a similar situation. Remember, that recovering a file and recovering a USABLE file is two different things. You may be able to get the file back, but if bytes within the file were damaged/lost, then the file still might not be usable without some kind of error correction method.
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I should also add, that in ones persuit of happiness, they are free, unless that pursuit infringes on someone else's rights, then it's not allowed. Mandating healthcare for everyone for the supposed betterment of others is infringing on my rights in my pursuit of happiness.
If i understand the US-founders correctly they had a country in mind where everybody is equal and even the poorest have right to a respectable life in America.
Wrong! When they said Equal, it meant equal under god, in that we all have the same rights, no one is "nobel" vs. "peasant". It also meant, that we all have the equal right to "persue" happiness (in an individual sense). Your version of "happiness" might not be the same as mine, however, we both have the same right to persue it. No where does it say that the government has the autority to grant "Rights", as true "Rights" are from God (or Creator) and not from the government. If the goverment can create new rights, then they can surely take them away. No where did our founders say that there was a bare minimum of quality of life that citizens are guaranteed. You need to re-read our history if you believe that was their intentions.
Several years ago, there was a company called "Wherify" that made a GPS enabled wrist-watch device for this purpose. You could put it on your kid, and it it locked on with a key so it couldn't be removed (it also had a cut-resistant band to help thwart would be kidnappers). You could see your childs location from any web-browser. You could set way-points in so that if you're kid was supposed to be home at 3pm afterschool, and they didn't show up, you would be notified by email. It also had a "panic" feature on it that would allow the child to activate if something bad did happen, that would cause the GPS coordinates to be sent to a dispatcher and you for immediate action. It was water proof etc. Sounds exactly like what you're looking for. Here is a link to it, but I don't know if their sold anymore... http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/wf200.html
Like many have mentioned, I've used a Knoppix boot CD for my most intense recovery to date and it worked. It was a corrupted NTFS file system that would cause any windows based computer to crash when it mounted the drive, so using another computer didn't work. Knoppix was able to mount the drive in read only mode. Making a clone of the disk is also a good idea and what the "Pro's" would do for the reasons mentioned already. If it's a physical problem, and the data is important enough, I've seen companies that will go as far as taking the drive to a clean room, and physically disassembling the bad drive and moving the platters over into a new case to get it working, then cloning it, then performing all the software tricks on the clone. You wouldn't want to try this without a clean room though. For damaged/corrupted data (like from a damaged platter) I remember seeing a brief video where some FBI guy was going through the harddrive on a byte level and using error correction software and manually guiding the software to try to rebuild the damaged bytes. I think this would only be effective for single file recovery though, where you know what kind of data 'should be there', and also because going through a 500GB drive byte by byte would be a lesson in futility. I've also heard that some of the more prestigious data recovery companies use proprietary software that will help rebuild missing data using the data that is available. The FBI thing I mentioned may be a similar situation. Remember, that recovering a file and recovering a USABLE file is two different things. You may be able to get the file back, but if bytes within the file were damaged/lost, then the file still might not be usable without some kind of error correction method.