Coming from the perspective of one who does data recovery for a living, I see a huge problem with SSD. Most people have been led to believe that their data is safe on solid state and don't backup. However, they are leaving themselves open to huge disappoint and very high data recovery costs. So, I strongly urge those who migrate over to SSD to be sure to have their data properly backed up.
As for the suggestions above with RAID 1, it should be noted that no RAID setup is an alternative to backup. RAID is meant to avoid downtime, but it by no means, an alternative to having your data stored in multiple places at one point in time.
I'm not saying that SpinRite is the cause of the final head crash. However, blindly running a program before dealing with physical issues will only lead to disaster.
"Before using SpinRite on any system for the first time, BACK UPTHE HARD DISK'S DATA!" Page 7 of the SpinRite User Manual
SpinRite remaps damaged sectors. If there are failing sectors on the drive, it may work, providing that the failing sectors aren't due to failing media or heads. A true data recovery program does not alter the original hard drive and does everything in its power to prevent the remapping of a sector. Once a sector is remapped, you cannot go back.
I strongly discourage SpinRite. I recently discussed this with an IT professional who didn't believe me. However, after running SpinRite on a drive that did detect before being run, the program did not complete and the drive no longer detected.
When the drive was brought in for assessment, it was determined that the heads crashed and that the data was no longer recoverable. If we would have received the drive prior to SpinRite being run, we would have changed the heads and recovered the data. Instead, the end user lost everything.
...it only cost the tech $89 to destroy the client's drive. Nice.
As an official Data Recovery Professional, most of the over the counter tools work well in various situations. But, most require a stable hard drive with minimal sector damage.
- The first step in data recovery is to stabilize the drive. (leave this to the pros...and we DON'T use freezers)
- The next step is to do a sector level mirror. We use very expensive hardware for this step. DD will work, but if the drive has a lot of media damage, it may be still worth getting a professional to do the job before the problem gets worse.
- The next step is to deal with the file system and recovery. This is where your software tools come in. Again, we use very expensive programs for this step, but we also play with some of the programs mentioned above.
When I talk to IT professionals about using our services, they have a preconceived idea that data recovery always costs thousands of dollars. This is usually because the IT professional does everything they can think of (freezer, open the drive, tap with a hammer) to recover the data before passing the job over to the data recovery lab. As a result, the data recovery labs tend to charge more because of the added problems caused by the previous attempts. My company does not charge more because of what was done, but we have had to give clients bad news because the data is unrecoverable because of what was done.
In short, if the data is valuable, don't use the freezer or programs like SpinRite; rather, get a free quote by a data recovery professional. If the price is too high, get a second opinion. If the second opinion is too high, then you have nothing to lose.
I've downloaded the game, but haven't tried it yet. I think it will be fun and only intend to play it in-house with people I know. We are more interested in playing the game than cheating. If I have to cheat to win, it just doesn't seem worth playing.
But, to the better part of this release. The fact that a single directory download can be run from within Windows, Linux and MacOS. I think that development like this can revolutionize software development in the future. If all software vendors would design their software in the same way, then the OS war could really begin. Right now, most places are restricted to MS Windows because of their accounting package they use or the games they play.
Imagine purchasing a single application and not having to match it with an OS. This would basically make choosing an OS no different than choosing between KDE and Gnome for a desktop.
The big question that comes to mind, will application developers ever adopt this model?
Contact your local or favorite data recovery lab and see what they'll give you for them. I know that when we really need a drive, we've been known to pay $200 for a drive that is really not worth any more than $20.
I agree that amount of money is not that appealing to most of the larger data recovery labs. To assign a technician away from making $10,000+ a day, where is the incentive?
I'm not sure that there would be enough publicity from succeeding on this challenge to make up for the lost time. Would any Slashdotters go to a much more expensive data recovery lab if they could do the impossible?
As a data recovery technician, we wipe drives every day...always with a single pass.
During the recovery process, we mirror the damaged drives to an in-house drive, from which we do the file recovery process. After each project is completed and closed, we wipe the drive and reuse it for another project. If a single pass was not enough, we'd be getting shadows of other people's data in our recoveries. Of course, our mirror process is pretty much the same as a wipe, as it literally overwrites each sector of the destination drive with data from the source drive.
I'd hate to run a three pass wipe on our 1TB drives every day. It already takes 3-4 hours to wipe them with a single pass with our high speed tools writing at around 95MB/second.
So, to sum it up, I support the single pass theory.
Personally, I think it is somewhat silly to say that Apple cannot survive without Mr. Jobs. That being said, I couldn't think of a better time for Microsoft to start buying up Apple stocks.
I, for one, have never sat through an entire Super Bowl, with the exception of watching at a church event. I would imagine that it would be in the better interest of the sponsors to have more viewers. Though, I suspect that most churches tune out on the commercials and do their own thing during that time. However, I don't see that as being any different than my flipping the channel or leaving the room during commercials.
Anyway, the point of it is that the only thing that the NFL is going to get out of this is bad publicity.
Luke
Being one who is an owner of a data recovery company, I have been contemplating the idea of writing an article about the implications of SSHD and data recovery. I guess this discussion has beaten me to it.
I have a few thoughts on this matter and will post them in point form:
1. The elimination of the clean room?
- For obvious reasons, the necessity of a clean room for solid state devices will be drastically reduced. However, due to the price and size constraints, I don't foresee the elimination of the traditional hard drive for some time to come. Of course, that could be 5 years or 15 years, depending on industry trends.
2. The stability of solid state hard drives?
- I'd say that SSHD are more stable from the perspective of being bumped around. However, a simple power surge could render the data lost forever. This is where the traditional drive has a hope. The electronics can be toast, but the data is still on the platters.
- To the most part, traditional hard drives show signs of dying before they completely crash where a SSHD is going to work or not work, with the exception of failing bits.
3. Will SSHDs be the data recovery lab killer?
- I doubt it. It is true that hardware failure is the number one reason for data loss. But, a close second is human failure and I believe that will never change. So, the SSHD may become a more stable drive, but it won't be the end of data loss. If anything at all, the SSHD technology will create more false security, making for more critical data loss.
4. Will SSHDs affect the cost of data recovery?
- I suspect that we will see three different quotes for these devices: 1. around $500, 2. around $2000 and 3. unrecoverable.
All in all, I am excited about the technology and look forward to putting my first 250GB SSHD into my MacBook Pro. But, until we see the prices drop and the capacities increase, we won't be seeing these drives in anything other than a few overpaid executive's laptops.
Grandfathered is used as a verb to describe the process of including someone into the new system because of their past experience and not on the new requirements. An example might be someone who has been teaching for 30 years and only has a teacher's college diploma has been grandfathered to teach even though the new requirements requires a university degree.
I think the idea of regulation is not a bad one. The key concern is that digital forensics should be treated as a field of its own. I suggest that a title of Digital Forensic Investigator be created.
To suggest that one who simply registers as a PI is now qualified to do digital forensics is absurd. Just as absurd to think that a digital forensics expert knows or needs to know all the ins and outs of PI work. They are two distinct fields with some overlap.
I wish it was that easy here in Ontario...but, it doesn't seem to be the case. I only have minimal involvement on the forensic side our company and know that we've been trying to get an explanation on how to become licensed. Even our MPP is having troubles getting answers.
Being one who has a data recovery company that provides digital forensic services, it is quite frustrating to say the least. To expect a digital forensics expert to have a PI license is as absurd as expecting a PI to have a computer science degree.
We have been trying to figure out how we can become Private Investigators, but we cannot get answers. Instead, we keep getting passed around the government's phone systems. Some say we have to write an exam that doesn't exist, others say that we should be grandfathered in and others simply shrug their shoulders.
From what I can tell, this is just another case of where someone has decided that they want all the market to themselves and think they have found a way to make it happen.
Interesting thought. However, the form is for an online job submission. There are times when a service company may complete several forms within a matter of a few minutes for several different jobs. I've tried blocking the IPs that were the source for the false forms; however, the bots always seem to come back using a different IP. (no surprise here)
I thought I could avoid using Captcha's by simply request the user type in their IP address that I showed in at the bottom of the screen. I know that bot can easily get the IP address too...I was thinking that my request was vague enough that the bot wouldn't understand the question. My guess is that the bot didn't understand the question and reported the error to its writer. The writer must have explored my website, found the source of the error and then added a subroutine to deal with my question.
This is really annoying...not damaging, just a big pain in the butt. I could start blocking the IP addresses being used, but that would be in vain, knowing how many zombies are out there.
I had Vonage for less than a year. The experience was less than thrilling, though I was quite excited by the potential. Before I transferred to Vonage, I had a bare bones line from Bell ($27/month) and a 3Meg DSL Connection from Execulink ($29/month). When I switched to vonage, I dropped my Bell line and the execulink account and got a Rogers Lite (128k) account ($20/month) and the vonage unlimited account ($40/month). The Rogers Lite service was a problem when I used my phone and surfed at the same time, so I upgraded to their 3Meg service and was now paying $44/month.
So, to save money on my phone bill, I went from a monthly base cost of $56 plus long distance charges to $84.
To add insult to injury, the adapter that they sent me died in the first few weeks and needed a replacement. It took 5 days to get a replacement, which resulted in my not having any land line services at home. This was disturbing, as I had a pregnant wife with my 6 month old baby at home. After the adapter was replaced, I constantly had to reset the new adapter, as I kept losing my service (sometimes during a phone conversation).
To pile it on, my baby was sick and I tried to call Telehealth Ontario and found out that I could not reach that toll free number from my calling area. Now I'm quite upset.
In the process of moving, I decided to go back to Bell for my basic phone service and Execulink for my internet & long distance service. When I called to cancel from Vonage, I was told that I had to pay a disconnect fee, as I didn't keep the service for a year...and they say, "no contract."
It took me a couple of months to cancel and I was getting more upset by the minute. Hours on the phone and nobody with answers. I finally broke down and e-mailed one of the VPs here in Canada. A week later, he called me and listened to my concerns. He seemed to be interested and said that he'd send me something in the mail. That was way back in January...still nothing.
So, now that I'm back with Bell & Execulink, I now pay $30 for phone , $34 for 3meg DSL and 4.9 cents a minute any time any where in North America long distance with no base costs.
That is my 2 cents worth.
Cheers!
Luke
Slashdot Mirror
Coming from the perspective of one who does data recovery for a living, I see a huge problem with SSD. Most people have been led to believe that their data is safe on solid state and don't backup. However, they are leaving themselves open to huge disappoint and very high data recovery costs. So, I strongly urge those who migrate over to SSD to be sure to have their data properly backed up. As for the suggestions above with RAID 1, it should be noted that no RAID setup is an alternative to backup. RAID is meant to avoid downtime, but it by no means, an alternative to having your data stored in multiple places at one point in time.
I'm not saying that SpinRite is the cause of the final head crash. However, blindly running a program before dealing with physical issues will only lead to disaster.
"Before using SpinRite on any system for the first time, BACK UPTHE HARD DISK'S DATA!" Page 7 of the SpinRite User Manual
SpinRite remaps damaged sectors. If there are failing sectors on the drive, it may work, providing that the failing sectors aren't due to failing media or heads. A true data recovery program does not alter the original hard drive and does everything in its power to prevent the remapping of a sector. Once a sector is remapped, you cannot go back.
I strongly discourage SpinRite. I recently discussed this with an IT professional who didn't believe me. However, after running SpinRite on a drive that did detect before being run, the program did not complete and the drive no longer detected.
...it only cost the tech $89 to destroy the client's drive. Nice.
When the drive was brought in for assessment, it was determined that the heads crashed and that the data was no longer recoverable. If we would have received the drive prior to SpinRite being run, we would have changed the heads and recovered the data. Instead, the end user lost everything.
XFS? Try UFS Explorer.
As an official Data Recovery Professional, most of the over the counter tools work well in various situations. But, most require a stable hard drive with minimal sector damage.
- The first step in data recovery is to stabilize the drive. (leave this to the pros...and we DON'T use freezers)
- The next step is to do a sector level mirror. We use very expensive hardware for this step. DD will work, but if the drive has a lot of media damage, it may be still worth getting a professional to do the job before the problem gets worse.
- The next step is to deal with the file system and recovery. This is where your software tools come in. Again, we use very expensive programs for this step, but we also play with some of the programs mentioned above.
When I talk to IT professionals about using our services, they have a preconceived idea that data recovery always costs thousands of dollars. This is usually because the IT professional does everything they can think of (freezer, open the drive, tap with a hammer) to recover the data before passing the job over to the data recovery lab. As a result, the data recovery labs tend to charge more because of the added problems caused by the previous attempts. My company does not charge more because of what was done, but we have had to give clients bad news because the data is unrecoverable because of what was done.
In short, if the data is valuable, don't use the freezer or programs like SpinRite; rather, get a free quote by a data recovery professional. If the price is too high, get a second opinion. If the second opinion is too high, then you have nothing to lose.
I've downloaded the game, but haven't tried it yet. I think it will be fun and only intend to play it in-house with people I know. We are more interested in playing the game than cheating. If I have to cheat to win, it just doesn't seem worth playing.
But, to the better part of this release. The fact that a single directory download can be run from within Windows, Linux and MacOS. I think that development like this can revolutionize software development in the future. If all software vendors would design their software in the same way, then the OS war could really begin. Right now, most places are restricted to MS Windows because of their accounting package they use or the games they play.
Imagine purchasing a single application and not having to match it with an OS. This would basically make choosing an OS no different than choosing between KDE and Gnome for a desktop.
The big question that comes to mind, will application developers ever adopt this model?
Contact your local or favorite data recovery lab and see what they'll give you for them. I know that when we really need a drive, we've been known to pay $200 for a drive that is really not worth any more than $20.
I agree that amount of money is not that appealing to most of the larger data recovery labs. To assign a technician away from making $10,000+ a day, where is the incentive?
I'm not sure that there would be enough publicity from succeeding on this challenge to make up for the lost time. Would any Slashdotters go to a much more expensive data recovery lab if they could do the impossible?
As a data recovery technician, we wipe drives every day...always with a single pass.
During the recovery process, we mirror the damaged drives to an in-house drive, from which we do the file recovery process. After each project is completed and closed, we wipe the drive and reuse it for another project. If a single pass was not enough, we'd be getting shadows of other people's data in our recoveries. Of course, our mirror process is pretty much the same as a wipe, as it literally overwrites each sector of the destination drive with data from the source drive.
I'd hate to run a three pass wipe on our 1TB drives every day. It already takes 3-4 hours to wipe them with a single pass with our high speed tools writing at around 95MB/second.
So, to sum it up, I support the single pass theory.
Personally, I think it is somewhat silly to say that Apple cannot survive without Mr. Jobs. That being said, I couldn't think of a better time for Microsoft to start buying up Apple stocks.
I, for one, have never sat through an entire Super Bowl, with the exception of watching at a church event. I would imagine that it would be in the better interest of the sponsors to have more viewers. Though, I suspect that most churches tune out on the commercials and do their own thing during that time. However, I don't see that as being any different than my flipping the channel or leaving the room during commercials. Anyway, the point of it is that the only thing that the NFL is going to get out of this is bad publicity. Luke
Being one who is an owner of a data recovery company, I have been contemplating the idea of writing an article about the implications of SSHD and data recovery. I guess this discussion has beaten me to it.
I have a few thoughts on this matter and will post them in point form:
1. The elimination of the clean room?
- For obvious reasons, the necessity of a clean room for solid state devices will be drastically reduced. However, due to the price and size constraints, I don't foresee the elimination of the traditional hard drive for some time to come. Of course, that could be 5 years or 15 years, depending on industry trends.
2. The stability of solid state hard drives?
- I'd say that SSHD are more stable from the perspective of being bumped around. However, a simple power surge could render the data lost forever. This is where the traditional drive has a hope. The electronics can be toast, but the data is still on the platters.
- To the most part, traditional hard drives show signs of dying before they completely crash where a SSHD is going to work or not work, with the exception of failing bits.
3. Will SSHDs be the data recovery lab killer?
- I doubt it. It is true that hardware failure is the number one reason for data loss. But, a close second is human failure and I believe that will never change. So, the SSHD may become a more stable drive, but it won't be the end of data loss. If anything at all, the SSHD technology will create more false security, making for more critical data loss.
4. Will SSHDs affect the cost of data recovery?
- I suspect that we will see three different quotes for these devices: 1. around $500, 2. around $2000 and 3. unrecoverable.
All in all, I am excited about the technology and look forward to putting my first 250GB SSHD into my MacBook Pro. But, until we see the prices drop and the capacities increase, we won't be seeing these drives in anything other than a few overpaid executive's laptops.
That is funny. I was thinking more in the lines:
...and we all become doctors.
- Nurses need to be Doctors
- RNAs need to be Nurses
- First responders need to be RNAs
Grandfathered is used as a verb to describe the process of including someone into the new system because of their past experience and not on the new requirements. An example might be someone who has been teaching for 30 years and only has a teacher's college diploma has been grandfathered to teach even though the new requirements requires a university degree.
I think the idea of regulation is not a bad one. The key concern is that digital forensics should be treated as a field of its own. I suggest that a title of Digital Forensic Investigator be created.
To suggest that one who simply registers as a PI is now qualified to do digital forensics is absurd. Just as absurd to think that a digital forensics expert knows or needs to know all the ins and outs of PI work. They are two distinct fields with some overlap.
I wish it was that easy here in Ontario...but, it doesn't seem to be the case. I only have minimal involvement on the forensic side our company and know that we've been trying to get an explanation on how to become licensed. Even our MPP is having troubles getting answers.
Being one who has a data recovery company that provides digital forensic services, it is quite frustrating to say the least. To expect a digital forensics expert to have a PI license is as absurd as expecting a PI to have a computer science degree.
We have been trying to figure out how we can become Private Investigators, but we cannot get answers. Instead, we keep getting passed around the government's phone systems. Some say we have to write an exam that doesn't exist, others say that we should be grandfathered in and others simply shrug their shoulders.
From what I can tell, this is just another case of where someone has decided that they want all the market to themselves and think they have found a way to make it happen.
Interesting thought. However, the form is for an online job submission. There are times when a service company may complete several forms within a matter of a few minutes for several different jobs. I've tried blocking the IPs that were the source for the false forms; however, the bots always seem to come back using a different IP. (no surprise here)
I thought I could avoid using Captcha's by simply request the user type in their IP address that I showed in at the bottom of the screen. I know that bot can easily get the IP address too...I was thinking that my request was vague enough that the bot wouldn't understand the question. My guess is that the bot didn't understand the question and reported the error to its writer. The writer must have explored my website, found the source of the error and then added a subroutine to deal with my question.
This is really annoying...not damaging, just a big pain in the butt. I could start blocking the IP addresses being used, but that would be in vain, knowing how many zombies are out there.
I had Vonage for less than a year. The experience was less than thrilling, though I was quite excited by the potential. Before I transferred to Vonage, I had a bare bones line from Bell ($27/month) and a 3Meg DSL Connection from Execulink ($29/month). When I switched to vonage, I dropped my Bell line and the execulink account and got a Rogers Lite (128k) account ($20/month) and the vonage unlimited account ($40/month). The Rogers Lite service was a problem when I used my phone and surfed at the same time, so I upgraded to their 3Meg service and was now paying $44/month. So, to save money on my phone bill, I went from a monthly base cost of $56 plus long distance charges to $84. To add insult to injury, the adapter that they sent me died in the first few weeks and needed a replacement. It took 5 days to get a replacement, which resulted in my not having any land line services at home. This was disturbing, as I had a pregnant wife with my 6 month old baby at home. After the adapter was replaced, I constantly had to reset the new adapter, as I kept losing my service (sometimes during a phone conversation). To pile it on, my baby was sick and I tried to call Telehealth Ontario and found out that I could not reach that toll free number from my calling area. Now I'm quite upset. In the process of moving, I decided to go back to Bell for my basic phone service and Execulink for my internet & long distance service. When I called to cancel from Vonage, I was told that I had to pay a disconnect fee, as I didn't keep the service for a year...and they say, "no contract." It took me a couple of months to cancel and I was getting more upset by the minute. Hours on the phone and nobody with answers. I finally broke down and e-mailed one of the VPs here in Canada. A week later, he called me and listened to my concerns. He seemed to be interested and said that he'd send me something in the mail. That was way back in January...still nothing. So, now that I'm back with Bell & Execulink, I now pay $30 for phone , $34 for 3meg DSL and 4.9 cents a minute any time any where in North America long distance with no base costs. That is my 2 cents worth. Cheers! Luke