From: Mike Perry (mike@alcor.org)
Date: Wed Jul 17 2002 - 00:41:01 MDT
Perhaps some computer-oriented extropian(s) can help with advice. I have a
knotty data recovery problem I've encountered due to a recent hard disk
crash. The data in question included some notes I made on various subjects
over more than a year as well as in-progress writing for Alcor's
newsletter. If nothing else I'd like to get back the notes, even if it took
years to do so. I've taken the disk to a data recovery place nearby and
*they could do nothing* (except for "one last chance" which I am now
awaiting results for, but the odds don't look good). The problem seems to
be physical damage to the platters in the drive. But apparently all the
platters must be in working order for any data to be read from any of them,
due to the way data is written on the drive, one bit on one platter, the
next bit on the next platter in the stack and so on. Apparently technology
does not exist to read the entire bit image of one platter by itself (or
whatever part is readable), which could then be compared to the bit images
of other platters to try to achieve the necessary synchronization and
reconstruct the data. (This greatly surprises me, but that's what the data
recovery "expert" told me, if I understood correctly.) Any advice would be
greatly appreciated, privately if you wish.
Mike Perry
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:15:30 MST