data recovery Archives - The Silicon Underground

An SSD data loss issue–and how to prevent it

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:00:30 +0000

Longtime reader Dan Bowman–probably my very first reader, come to think of it–sent in this article from Infoworld regarding SSDs and data loss in power failure. It’s not theoretical. I’ve seen it. I also know how to prevent it. I

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Handling data recovery

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:41:42 +0000

I took a strange phone call from the field today, asking for advice about creating policies and procedures on data recovery. There’s no easy answer. I don’t like trying to create those types of policies and procedures, because there are

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My first experience with data recovery

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:47:36 +0000

It was 1997. I was working my first full-time job, and my phone rang with my first crisis. “What happened to the K drive?” the caller asked. I glanced over at my network drive cheat sheet, which listed all of

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I need a hair dryer, some nail polish, and two clothespins

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:16:39 +0000

At least it looked like a clean break. I commonly run errands mid-evening because strapping my two kids into seat belts is a good way to keep them from tripping over their own shadows and hurting themselves. So we did

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Stress test computer hardware with Prime95

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:10:58 +0000

Let’s say you’ve just bought a used PC with a short (typically less than 2 weeks) warranty. Or a new PC that’s not the brand you know and trust. Maybe you’ve built a new PC and you want to make sure

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Spinrite 6: An overdue review

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:39:57 +0000

Spinrite 5 is an old friend. It got me out of some jams in the late ’90s, but as new versions of Windows that defaulted to NTFS came into my life, Spinrite 5 ceased being an option, since it only

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Defrag scareware

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:55:44 +0000

This isn’t exactly news, as word has been going around for a couple of weeks, but if you haven’t heard about it elsewhere, there are some fake defragmenters going around. I heard mention of it today, and it reminded me

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Operating System Not Found, Missing Operating System, and friends

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:59:49 +0000

So the PC that stored my resume got kicked (as in the foot of a passer-by hitting it) and died, and the backup that I thought I had... Well, it wasn't where I thought it was.

Time for some amateur home data recovery. Here's how I brought it back.

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Creative ways to destroy computer data

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:48:32 +0000

THe BBC has a feature story on data destruction. Of course I can't let it go by without comment.

The sidebar provides the tastiest tidbits.

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Floppies, meet your replacement

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:58:45 +0000

I must be the next-to-last person in the world to spend significant lengths of time experimenting with these, but for the benefit of the last person in the world, I'd like to talk about USB flash drives, also known as thumb drives (for a brand name), pen drives, or keychain drives, because they're small enough to fit on a keychain.

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