RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
- Messages
- 13,157
- Location
- Upstate New York
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Geek on the Hill
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, my friend and data recovery specialist Stefan Sowiak passed away on or about February 14th. (That's when his body was found, in any case.)
I was asked to look through Stefan's work and try to figure out which jobs were in progress when he died. I took his computer and a bunch of drives to my office, but as best as I can determine, only two of the jobs were pending. One drive was already in the removable drive tray, and the other belonged to a friend's son and was labeled as such.
I recovered the data on the drive in the tray, but I don't know who owns it. I couldn't find any information about the job in Stefan's records. Judging by the names of the documents, though, the owner is an attorney. I'll look through the registry, temp files, and other locations to try to find a clue to the owner's name. Failing that, I guess I'll have to open a few of the documents to find out.
The second pending job was for his friend's son. I noticed that Stefan had disassembled the drive enclosure (it had been being used an an external drive) well beyond the point necessary to remove the drive, which led me to believe that he suspected the problem was with the enclosure, not the drive itself.
I talked to the young man's mother, and she told me it was critical that the data be recovered. The young man is a freelance photographer and all of his work was on the drive. They provided me with a great deal of information about the drive and its contents -- except for the fact that it was from a Mac.
Luckily, when I spun up the drive, it showed no partition; so I ran it through testdisk, which quickly revealed the lost HFS partition. From there it actually was a very easy recovery, which strengthens my belief that it was the enclosure, not the drive itself, that was the cause of the problem.
I suppose I'll keep Stefan's data recovery computer here, and use it to do straightforward data recovery jobs like accidental deletions, formats, and so forth in-house. (It's amazing how many people accidentally format their hard drives while attempting repair installs.) But anything beyond simple software-based recovery on basically intact drives will be sent out. I'm not as smart as Stefan was, and I don't want to break anything in the process of trying to fix it. So I'm adopting a policy similar to that of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, use no potentially destructive data recovery methods."
Still, it's satisfying that I was able to complete Stefan's last two pending jobs. It provides some closure.
Rich
I was asked to look through Stefan's work and try to figure out which jobs were in progress when he died. I took his computer and a bunch of drives to my office, but as best as I can determine, only two of the jobs were pending. One drive was already in the removable drive tray, and the other belonged to a friend's son and was labeled as such.
I recovered the data on the drive in the tray, but I don't know who owns it. I couldn't find any information about the job in Stefan's records. Judging by the names of the documents, though, the owner is an attorney. I'll look through the registry, temp files, and other locations to try to find a clue to the owner's name. Failing that, I guess I'll have to open a few of the documents to find out.
The second pending job was for his friend's son. I noticed that Stefan had disassembled the drive enclosure (it had been being used an an external drive) well beyond the point necessary to remove the drive, which led me to believe that he suspected the problem was with the enclosure, not the drive itself.
I talked to the young man's mother, and she told me it was critical that the data be recovered. The young man is a freelance photographer and all of his work was on the drive. They provided me with a great deal of information about the drive and its contents -- except for the fact that it was from a Mac.
Luckily, when I spun up the drive, it showed no partition; so I ran it through testdisk, which quickly revealed the lost HFS partition. From there it actually was a very easy recovery, which strengthens my belief that it was the enclosure, not the drive itself, that was the cause of the problem.
I suppose I'll keep Stefan's data recovery computer here, and use it to do straightforward data recovery jobs like accidental deletions, formats, and so forth in-house. (It's amazing how many people accidentally format their hard drives while attempting repair installs.) But anything beyond simple software-based recovery on basically intact drives will be sent out. I'm not as smart as Stefan was, and I don't want to break anything in the process of trying to fix it. So I'm adopting a policy similar to that of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, use no potentially destructive data recovery methods."
Still, it's satisfying that I was able to complete Stefan's last two pending jobs. It provides some closure.
Rich
