Archive for the ‘How-To’ Category:
PC ER: Recovering a Corrupted Partition with GetDataBack (Review)
Imagine you’re trying to merge two partitions together using a utility like GParted from a live CD and everything is humming along nicely until the power gets cut. Once the power permanently interrupted the merge, Windows would no longer boot, and all of the important data on the drive was inaccessible. At the time I was performing this recovery, I was short on time and had to relocate. I had a quick flash of what had to occur in order to be able to recover every last bit of data from the laptop. I would need an SATA/IDE to USB adapter; a screwdriver; a few bootable CDs (such as Acronis Disk Director bootable disc); and a large external HDD to store the data that would be recovered.
This time around, I decided I’d go with Runtime Software’s GetDataBack (NTFS) because I have had such dismal results with other recovery suites such as Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery and a few others that I probably shouldn’t mention. After futzing around with trying to set up a remote connection using GetDataBack’s HDHost, I realized it wouldn’t work since I couldn’t even boot into even the most basic of Windows, nor would I want to, since it could conceivably corrupt the data on the disc even further. So I did it the old fashioned way, as I mentioned in my post entitled, How to Recover Data From Old Laptops, I took the drive out using my toolkit and plugged it directly into my spare laptop.
Why is my Computer so Slow?
From time to time, a lot of people wonder why their computer is running “so slowly.” The usual reasons for this are as follows: (1) using virtual memory resulting from a lack of physical RAM (Random Access Memory); (2) too many programs utilizing a lot of CPU threads; and/or (3) bottlenecks that can be in the form of a CPU bottleneck, a slow spinning hard drive (5,200 RPM and less, for example), or even a full hard drive. For instance, a 500GB hard drive with a fresh installation of Windows Vista will be more responsive than a similar fresh install on a 50GB hard drive of the same speed. The reason for this is because larger hard drives generally have: (1) more platters; (2) smaller magnetic flux reversals; and (3) greater aerial density. The smaller flux reversals are what allows the head of the hard drive actuator/arm to move shorter distances, and thus providing a noticeable speed difference.
My hard disk activity LED is going crazy, the actuator arm is thrashing back and forth crunching away for hours at a time. What is my computer doing? How can I find out what exact data is being retrieved and what program(s) are responsible? We need to identify just what, exactly, is running. For this purpose, look no further than Microsoft Sysinternals’ Process Monitor (procmon).
PC ER: How-To Recover Data from a Damaged SD Card
Situation:
2GB SD card no longer registers as ‘visible’ to the digital camera and is barely readable within the Vista OS.
Potential Loss:
~1.5GB worth of photos and videos of Hong Kong.
DOS: Bypassing the Cyclic Redundancy Check (and other) Errors
I was terribly busy working on a case this week. Many of the documents in the case were scanned in .TIF (also known as TIFF, Tagged Image File Format) format. So, browsing through the documents in this manner proved terribly inefficient and I didn’t have enough time to look into third party programs that might help me look through .TIF files faster. So, my solution was simple: I would take the CD full of sequentially numbered .TIF files and create a PDF out of them.
As I begun adding blocks of .TIF files to Adobe Acrobat, near the end of the disc, in the 6000′s, Acrobat would freeze up and hang and eventually result in a crash unless I ejected the disc. My assumption, was that certain files on the disc were corrupted either due to scratches or aluminum erosion/decay (they are very old discs).
How-To Transfer Data From Old Laptops
To be clear, this is really just a brief overview of how to take out a typical laptop HDD (hard disk drive) and then plug it into a desktop system in order to retrieve the contents. This happens frequently. Old laptops give out in one way or another, sometimes it’s the display, the PSU (power supply unit) or the motherboard. Whatever it is, after a certain number of years it typically costs less than the cost of a new computer altogether. Unfortunate and wasteful, yes, but that’s the reality.
When the laptop “dies” or doesn’t boot up, if you’re lucky, the HDD has suffered no mechanical failure and is just fine, even if somehow Windows won’t load (like an NTLDR missing error, for example). Chances are, your data will be just fine and the fastest possible way to get the data off is to simply take the drive out and deal with it at the source.
Why I Still Use DOS
For some of you, the thought of DOS probably brings back horrifying memories of things like IRQ conflicts, MSCDEX, the config.sys, himem.sys, etc. Those days are over, but the best aspects of DOS remain a part of Windows, fortunately.
Knowledge of DOS has been critical to my geeky endeavors over the last dozen or so years. Back in the nineties, as the GUI became pervasive and people seemed to have completely forgotten the command-line altogether, I continued to use it for a wide range of tasks. Yes, part of the reason I haven’t “let go” of DOS is in part nostalgic. The other part is that it has in fact been and remains very useful. Especially in troubleshooting and fixing low level problems that can’t be solved any other way.
So, you’re wondering what I could possibly have used DOS to accomplish? These days, for most things DOS can do, there is usually a free or paid application for Windows that does the same thing a little easier. Thing is, knowing how to do various tasks in DOS can help you repair Windows and perform a whole host of other tasks a lot quicker and often more efficiently than installing a bunch of different programs.