Data recovery adventures

An article, posted 5 months ago filed in harddrive, recovery, hdd, files, data & backup.

I'm not a data recovery specialist, but I tend to help people out every now and then with computer problems, and sometimes you have to deal with a disk that doesn't seem to work anymore. This is a collection of notes I made after I got a new challenge. I had to resort to using testdisk and ddrescue. I've been testing a few tools, and read about more, but these were the tools I landed on.

IMPORTANT: I'm not an expert on this topic. Every additional moving of the needle can cause a harddrive to fail even harder. If your data is absolutely critical, use a certified data recovery service.

1. Is it replaceable hardware?

When I get a harddrive in a laptop or external enclosure, my first attempt is to see if there is something between computer and the disk. I try to remove the disk from the computer or enclosure and connect it to a USB3 to 4-types of P/SATA adapter I have bought years ago and has saved me multiple times. If it mounts, copy everything to another drive, to b…

Continue reading...

Digital rot

An article, posted about 10 years ago filed in digital, analog, film, instagram, polaroid, history, culture, software, data & harddrive.

A few years ago I created, together with some other green-party members, a website: bodemlozeputten.nl. It was a small local website aimed to make voters aware of all the money that was thrown after bad in that region. Like reopening an airport that has never been able to run profitably even in times when the state was still subsidising it with its military presence. Or the amount of money spent by the local municipalities on land, which had by then already created huge debts for several municipalities and still hasn't turned out to be a profitable for neither the citizens, the local economy, nor the municipalities themselves. It was a small website, hosted at the free hosting option that Heroku offered. And a few days ago I received an email that I should've spent more attention to an issue with this website that I kind of neglected. And now the website is showing an error message: "Application error". And while [it is not rea…

Continue reading...

murb blog