Fareham — Apr 27th 2013
Dan explained how Data quest International were a Portsmouth based company that specialises in data recovery from disc drives. The company has recovered data from many thousands of drives that were in varying states of distress.
In the main they attempt to recover the data at the bit level to an empty drive and then attempt to extract meaningful data from the intermediate drive. Theoretically it is possible to do it yourself however you need a Linux or Windows machine to run the recovery program and plenty of time - it can take many hours to extract the data.
Dan explained the workings of the firmware and the role it plays in ensuring the data is accessed and the process of bad track/block allocation.
The pros and cons of SSDs (Solid State drives) and difficulties of recovering data from failed drives (yes they can fail) was discussed.
Finally Dan showed us some real “technology porn” with some pictures of damaged platters with significant rings of damage in the surface of the platters and even broken platters (platter are often now made of glass coated with a magnetic coating)
The finale was seeing a glass topped drive attached to a Macbook which was booted from the open top drive. We were able to see the arm swing across the platter reading and writing data to the drive.
There is a large amount of useful disc related information on the Dataquest International website which I strongly recommend you read.
After all you never know when you might need your data recovered from you drive.
All in all, a very informative talk which helped to us to inform us of a very sensitive subject.
Thank you Dan for visiting the group.
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