Disk recovery?

[Cheryl Downing]

Hi David,

Other suggestions might be

- DriveSavers Data Recovery in Novato
  http://www.drivesavers.com/contact.html
  As I understand it, their focus is data recovery. They might be able to
recommend someone for drive recovery.

- CJS Systems (for Macs only?), 2750 Adeline St., Berkeley 94703,
510-849-3730

While I have not used these locations myself, I put these company names in
my database back in 1999 after they were recommended by someone on the S.F.
Women on the Web (http://www.sfwow.org) mailing list. The companies were
evidently originally recommended on the Berkeley Mac Users Grp. (BMUG)
mailing list.

Best of luck!

Cheryl Downing
Downing & Associates
408-257-1049
chdowning at earthlink.com
** Fast-Track PR for Creative New Economy Entrepreneurs **

-----Original Message-----
From: Heather Stern <star at starshine.org>
To: jhoney at flash.net <jhoney at flash.net>
Cc: David Alban <extasia at mindspring.com>; baylisa at baylisa.org
<baylisa at baylisa.org>; David Fetter <david at fetter.org>
Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 12:25 AM
Subject: Re: Disk recovery?

>On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 09:54:14PM -0600, jhoney at flash.net wrote:
>> David Alban wrote:
>>
>> >   Does anybody here know a decent drive recovery place where they can
do
>> >   a little discovery (first) and some recovery (possibly later) on
>> >   either or both of these drives?
>> >
>> >   Big TIA for any personal experiences :)
>
>> Fortunately I haven't had any experience with them but a few weeks ago I
>> sent a Seagate and a Western Digital drive back for warranty exchange.
>> One of the sites (I'm thinking Seagate) has a list of recommended
>> recovery services.  Drill into the path you'd take to return a drive or
>> RMA status.
>>
>> Good luck.
>
> My experience with Maxtor drives is that I *really* like their warranty
> policy.
>
> If the drive is still in manufacturer they will replace, no questions
> asked.  The only caveat is that you have to request an RMA code (duh)
> and you *must* pack it to them the way they say.  no bubble wrap, no
> staticky peanuts.
>
> If t's no longer in manufacture, but you can prove you bought it within
> the last 90 days... well, that'd be when you need the receipt, but
> other than that things are just the same.
>
> And the make it quite easy to look up if your drive model qualifies.
>
> . . .
>
> Ahh, but they were wondering about data recovery, itself.  I have no
> direct experience of dealing directly with cleanroom recovery shops.
>
> Indirect experience offers that both Symantec and McAfee offered up
> Ontrack Data Recovery as a recommendation if someone's drive was that
> far gone.  And nobody ever claimed it was cheap.
>
> Direct experience, then...
>
> There is a known form of dd that will brutally make a few seek tricks to
> try and beat its way past crudded out disk drive portions.  Look for it
> on some of the "security and forensics" type linux mini-distros.
>
> If a drive won't talk at all sometimes it's merely that the partition
> table is screwed up that bad;  the data *may* be okay.  If track 0
> isn't headcrashed, you can narrow down the correct sizes, one partition
> at a time.  Slow, but rewarding, if hardware itself isn't what did you
> in.
>
> Once upon forever ago (about 93, 94) Jim and I both have done data
> recovery ourselves;  trained by the best at Norton.  But that was
> all software-style, no cleanroom excitement.  And neither of us have
> rushed to learn about the gore under the hood of modern operating
> systems.  Although, of course, it's pretty easy to have a well
> behaved system at hand for comparison.   Still, verry ugggggly...
>
> I'd saying if you can find the beginnings of things, you pretty much
> win;  lost+found items, or CHKDSK.00N fragments, can be identified
> using 'file' from a well-equipped rescue disk.
>
>Good luck.
>
>  . | .   Heather Stern                  |         star at starshine.org
>--->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - consulting at starshine.org
>  ' | `   Sysadmin Support and Training  |        (800) 938-4078
>