[RNLD] data recovery options

Mon Sep 17 00:33:40 UTC 2012

Thankyou to those that responded to my questions about recovering lost data
- your sympathies and helpful suggestions were very reassuring after the
rather traumatic experience of losing so much work! It seems that everyone
has unfortunately been down this road before, indeed for some it’s a dead
certainty it will happen sooner or later!

Everyone has different preferences for data back up depending on their
situation (moving about a lot or staying mostly in the one spot being the
most obvious consideration for data storage devices), and as Lauren and
James commented, one should consider a back up strategy not just for
digital recordings but notebooks and any other important material data.

For future reference and for anyone who is interested, I have attempted to
summarise some of the recommendations for data recovery and back up under
four main headings here:

*1. Recommended ‘Do It Yourself’ data recovery options* (I didn’t try this
in the end because I wasn’t confident enough that I knew enough about what
I was doing not to accidently write something to the drive and thereby make
it harder to retrieve the hidden data):

Recuva: ‘I have used Recuva to recover lost data in the past with great
success. It is shareware (I think) so you should be able to just download
it and install it. As long as the data clusters stored in the hard drive
are not overwritten with new data they should be recoverable.’

SystemRescueCd: ‘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.’

*2. Recommended Data Recovery specialists* *in Australia* (usually involves
posting your drive or bringing it in for specialists to work on it in their
labs):

Sydney:

http://www.xyber.com.au/ (two people recommended this company, so I ended
up sending it there via registered post).

‘They have an Oz-wide phone number charged at a local call rate.’

‘I went to the [xyber] with my bung hard drive. They charged me $64 for a
diagnosis - no chance to recover. My hard drive turned into bare plates and
dust at the bottom. No more charge. If they were to go ahead, I think it
would have cost $700 or so, which is not that bad. I can definitely suggest
these people.’

Brisbane:

http://www.cbldatarecovery.com.au/contactus.html**

http://www.payam.com.au (also came with two recommendations)

*3. External hard drives:*

(These were some of the drives that came recommended, however it seems
there can never be a guarantee that, like my hard drive, they won’t fail at
any moment, so backing up regularly is the key):

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/portable-hard-drives/ministation/ministation-extreme

‘When it comes to hardware the external drive that I use now is from
Buffalo. 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.’

Rugged equipment: http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10591

‘I would go for LaCie equipment, 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 equipment

http://pelican.com/

*4. Formatting and connecting external hard drives:*

‘I've used GoFlex drives for the past couple years without incident, even
with traveling back and forth to India and trips home to the US, but I keep
them formatted as HFS+ (Mac OS Extended - Journaled) to minimize any
issues. I've experienced occasional issues with FAT32 and EXFAT formatted
drives and Mac OS (especially if I unplug before the drive has dismounted),
and most older computers don't support EXFAT, so I avoid that route. I also
invested in NTFS disk mounter software so I can read/write to NTFS drives
without a problem (I use Tuxera NTFS).’

‘One other difference may be that I have a FireWire 800 adapter that I use
with the drives, which speeds up information transfer and I think also
helps keep them running more stably. If you have access to a firewire
adaptor, and a computer to connect it to, it's a $20 investment that might
allow the computer to read the drive, and save you the hassle of data
recovery.’

-- 
Reuben Brown

PhD Candidate
The University of Sydney
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