[ale] Hard Drive data recovery services?

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

>On 05/30/2013 10:14 AM, Pete Hardie wrote:
>> Just a follow-up on my HDD recovery saga
>> 
>> I was able to use ddrescue and a borrowed USB-SATA cable to access
>the drive,
>> and recovered all but 17M of 500G, if I understand the output of
>ddrescue.  I'm
>> in the process of dropping the recovered photos, etc to DVD so that
>we have real
>> backup copies, and my wife can restore those that she wants on her
>machine at
>> her leisure.
>> 
>> Thanks again for all the pointers and advice - it looks like I'm able
>to get
>> most if not all of what we thought was lost.
>
>DVDs and other optical storage devices fail all the time too.
>
>When storing data to CD/DVD I always add 10% parity files using par2. 
>This has
>aided recovery of about 1% of the files at a later time. Some of this
>media is
>over 10 yrs old and still viable for reading. when a single issue
>happens, I
>pull all the data off and reburn it, with new parity files, to new
>media.  In
>thousands of recovery attempts, only 1 file has been lost forever after
>both the
>file AND the parity files were too corrupt.
>
>Sort of a funny story, but had a non-technical friend that believed she
>was
>being very savvy by backing up everything critical to an external USB
>spinning
>disk.  So far, so good.
>
>Then she'd delete the original files from her computer, since they were
>"backed
>up" and safe now.  Arrrrrg!!!!!
>

Hi all,

I realize this thread is a bit old, but I was going through my accumulated emails and thought I'd reply.

One popular backup recommendation is to use the 3-2-1 system.  3 copies of the data (including original), on 2 different technologies (ie hdd and optical disc), and at least 1 off site / online.

I'm sort of doing a 3-1-1 since I backup on hdd's and presumably so does my online backup provider (Amazon S3 via Jungledisk).

I also heard a quote on one of the podcast regarding copies of data.

"One is none, two is one."  There are variations of this, but you get the idea.

Side note on that.  I think, when I build computers in the future, I'm going to include at least 2 main hdd's.  This way, you can do an automated and periodic backup (maybe) to the 2nd internal hdd as well as to an online offsite system.  The problem with that is it's still subject to malware or electrical failures.  The other problem is that you may have to reboot into the backup software to take care of in use files.  I still like to backup periodically to an external usb / esata drive and then DETACH the drive.

If I was using optical disks for archiving and I really cared about extreme longevity, based on my research, I would use MAMA disks.  Their PREDICTED longevity for their Gold DVD-R is over 100 years, their Gold-Silver DVD-R is 83 years, and their Gold CD-R is 300 years.  I have not tested this claim!

http://www.mam-a.com/about
http://www.mam-a.com/products
http://www.mam-a.com/24kt_gold
http://www.mam-a.com/silverplus
http://www.mam-a.com/product_flyers

Taiyo Uden has an excellent reputation based on reviews I've read.  They're now in a joint venture with JVC called Victor Advanced Media.  They have an archival product, but I cannot make heads or tails of the specs.  I would use them to get very high quality conventional media.  Based on my reading, media for 8x writing speed is the most reliable as opposed to the 16x.  You also have to make sure your software doesn't try to exceed the 8x speed.  I recently bought some of their 8x (non archival) DVD-R's and have made some data discs with no problems.  Eventually, I plan to put videos of tv shows and movies on them.  If they're toast 20 years from now, it won't kill me.  I haven't done any longevity testing on those.  JVC also has some nice media writers and error checkers.  Note, you will not find this stuff on JVC's or Taiyo Yuden's main web site.

http://jvc-media.com/about/
http://jvc-media.com/archives/index.html
http://jvc-media.com/pro/index.html
http://jvc-media.com/archives/errorchecker.html

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Ron



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Ron Frazier
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