[RNLD] data recovery options

[Meikal Mumin]

Hi Reuben,

You can try a boot cd such as SystemRescueCd
http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

which includes DDREscue
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html

which tries reading from broken media. It really depends on what got broken
in the drive, but I have not used it myself in a long time. It's worth a
shot, but obviously a data recovery center will do better, at a much higher
price.

For the future, I recommend also rugged equipement. I would go for LaCie
equipement, since you can pay extra to get the platinum care warranty
extension
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10591
which includes *FREE* data recovery in case of disastrous hardware failure,
for a reasonable price.

I currently use 2 LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 1 TB drive, for reasons of speed,
weight, and convenience, which are constantly in sync (if one fails, the
other holds the same data). I keep them in LaCie Tank covers
http://www.lacie.com/uk/company/news/news.htm?id=10578

which I prefer over a drive which is rugged by itself. But LaCie also
offers the LaCie Rugged series
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10564
with the mini having a reduced MIL specification.

If you are concerned more about dust & water than shock, you could go for
any Pelican case fitting your equipement
http://pelican.com/

either additionally or instead.

Best,

Meikal
--
Meikal Mumin (meikal.de/profile)

Institut für Afrikanistik
Universität zu Köln

mailto: meikal at mumin.de

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 7:16 AM, Daryn McKenny <daryn at acra.org.au> wrote:

> Hi Reuben,
>
> This is who I would recommend as a data recovery centre:
> http://www.payam.com.au
>
> When it comes to hardware the external drive that I use now is from
> Buffalo
> http://www.buffalotech.com/products/portable-hard-drives/ministation/ministation-extreme It
> is a US Military spec. shock resistant unit amongst other things, of course
> not to say that it is bullet proof (I am not expecting you to have to deal
> with bullets anyway), but never less is far better than the home designed
> go-flex WD and similar seagate products which are not that crash hot
> bumping them around.
>
> I have only ever used data recovery software in a windows environment and
> that was a while ago so can't really comment on that part.
>
> Good Luck.
> *
> *
> *Regards
> *
> *Daryn
> **
> Arwarbukarl Cultural Resource Association Inc. Trading as:
> Miromaa Aboriginal Language and Technology Centre
>
> P | 02 4927 8222    F | 02 4925 2185    E |daryn at acra.org.au  W |
> www.miromaa.org.au
> SKYPE | darynmck
>
> *P* *Please consider the environment before printing this email
>
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> From: Reuben Brown <reubenbrown85 at gmail.com>
> To: "r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au" <r-n-l-d at lists.unimelb.edu.au>
> Subject: [RNLD] data recovery options
>
> Dear RNLD subscribers,
>
> You've probably heard this story before, but here comes another cautionary
> tale about the virtues of constant data back up while in the field, and the
> pitfalls of external drives which can fail at any moment it seems, no
> matter how big or expensive or new they are.
>
> I have potentially lost about 2 months of PhD fieldwork recordings that I
> had not got around to backing up, stored on an external USB hard drive
> which has failed or become corrupted (Seagate GoFlex Free Agent, less than
> 6 months old). I took the drive to the local computer shop in Darwin and
> they tried to recover the data using some of their software programs but
> were unsuccessful. Now I am looking at sending the drive to data recovery
> specialists in Sydney or Melbourne and I wondered if anyone has any
> recommendations as to whom I might sent it to?
>
> Also, has anyone tried recovering data on their own before using programs
> like TestDisk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk> or PhotoRec<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoRec>?
> An earlier thread <http://www.rnld.org/recovering_files> suggested a
> program called 'Back2Life' but it doesn't appear to support EXFAT formatted
> drives. I am looking at recovering MTS, wav, mp3, mp4, and mov files which
> were all stored on the drive. I am using a Mac OSX 10.6.8, which I
> originally used to format the drive to EXFAT so that it could be used for
> both Mac and PC. One day it was working and the next day I plugged it in on
> the same machine to find that 'the disk you inserted was not readable by
> this computer'. I have tried different USB cables and different machines,
> but no luck reading the partition.
>
> Any considerations or suggestions much appreciated.
>
> Regards,
>
> Reuben.
> --
> Reuben Brown
>
> PhD Candidate
> The University of Sydney
>
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