Hardware Recovery Company

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 21 May 2011 21:14:39 +0200, "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs at berklix.com> wrote:
> Alejandro Imass wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > I recently sent a hard drive to be recovered and I think they just
> > ripped me off. I have the back-up drive and believe it or not it has
> > the same exact symptoms and won't mount. So I want to send both drives
> > to a REAL AND TRUSTED LAB for 2 things:
> > 
> > 1) Forensics on the supposed head-replecement mumbo-jumbo/scam crap of
> > the other lab
> > 2) Recovery of the data of the back-up drive
> > 
> > I guess this only happens once in a lifetime when both drives die, but
> > I can't risk the second drive to a non-certified lab.
> > 
> > I really trust the people on this list so hopefully you can point me
> > to a real and non-bullshit lab that can really recover data.
> > 
> > It would be nice to know if the lab can actually do #1 and certify my
> > concerns and willing to testify in court because I want to press legal
> > charges against the other lab if they in fact ripped me off and
> > jeopardized my data. But if they can't I still need to recover the
> > data! HELP!
> > 
> > Thanks beforehand !
> 
> You could look at man fsdb

FreeBSD offers a lot of versatile diagnostic and rescue
tools, and surely fsdb is one of them. Others, provided
by the base system, are "fetch -rR <device>" and also
recoverdisk.

In the ports collection you'll find tools like ddrescue,
dd_rescue, ffs2recov, magicrescue, testdisk, scan_ffs,
recoverjpeg, foremost and photorec. And finally there is
The Sleuth Kit (with its tools fls, dls, ils and autopsy).

Those tools keep you from spending money to companies
who also use software (this one or something else). You
could also waste money on recovery programs that won't
work, so trying to use the tools mentioned would be the
first step.

I may give two additional advices in this context:

1. Do not work with the original disk. Make a dd copy
   and work with the image.

2. Read about what you're dealing with. This may consume
   some tome, but it really helps understanding what the
   problem is, and therefore helps finding a solution.

This is the part of the story that I know from my own
desaster. :-)

But as soon as you encounter hardware problems with the
disk, you should try to find a recovery lab you can
trust. It can be a very complicated search, and the
result will traditionally also be expensive. This is
the case when they can do something you can't do on
yourself (e. g. disasselmbling a disk, exchanging
heads in a clean-room environment) - it's mostly a
matter of dealing with hardware.


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...