Data restoration project
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I'm somewhat of a digital pack-rat. For some reason, I have issues with getting rid of computer hardware, even when it's non-functioning. Sometimes, I run across practical uses for it (such as an emergency capacitor replacement on a motherboard, when I coworker needed their machine up and running ASAP), but most of the time it just sits there, gathering dust. And I *really* have a hard time deleting stuff. Normally, I'll just go get a bigger drive, pull the old one and do a fresh install on the new one, and transfer just the data I need. That way I still have the rest of the data "just in case."
Given the above, it should come as no surprise that I have a milk-crate full of old hard drives gathering dust in my closet, just waiting to have their data recovered and indexed. I've long since gotten rid of my first drive, a 40MB MFM drive, but I still have every IDE and SCSI drive I've ever owned, from 40MB on up.
I also have, among my collection, a ton of 360K floppies that I believe may include a complete backup of my original hard drive. There's also a couple of backup tapes (one includes my BBS, in the state it was on the day I took it down) and a ton of unlabeled 3.5" floppies and old CD-R's. Even the ones with labels have probably been overwritten, as I was never any good at keeping the labels current.
Starting within the next couple of weeks, I plan on plugging these old drives in and seeing what I can find. Some of these drives I'm sure are dead by now. Some may have been dead when I pulled them in the first place. Given the availability of forensics and recovery tools these days, I'm sure I'll be able to gather some interesting data from more than a few of the drives, as well as the other media in my collection.
I could make this a semi-regular column here, as I'm sure the results of my efforts will uncover some long-forgotten gems. I'll attempt to recover the data from the backup set of my first hard drive. I'll find a way to restore the backup tapes. I may even write a program to convert some of the old BBS posts to HTML. Old BBS email can be forwarded on to any of my old BBS users who happen to stumble across this blog who give me permission.
What's would be the point of such a massive data recovery and restoration project? Partly for nostalgia. Partly for the historical value. Partly for the practice of using modern data recovery and forensics tools. But, since all of this data combined would probably fit on a handful of DVD-R's (at most), mostly to clear out some space in my closet while still satisfying my digital pack-rat nature. After all, I never know when some of this old stuff might come in useful ;)
Technorati Tags: data recovery, bbs
Given the above, it should come as no surprise that I have a milk-crate full of old hard drives gathering dust in my closet, just waiting to have their data recovered and indexed. I've long since gotten rid of my first drive, a 40MB MFM drive, but I still have every IDE and SCSI drive I've ever owned, from 40MB on up.
I also have, among my collection, a ton of 360K floppies that I believe may include a complete backup of my original hard drive. There's also a couple of backup tapes (one includes my BBS, in the state it was on the day I took it down) and a ton of unlabeled 3.5" floppies and old CD-R's. Even the ones with labels have probably been overwritten, as I was never any good at keeping the labels current.
Starting within the next couple of weeks, I plan on plugging these old drives in and seeing what I can find. Some of these drives I'm sure are dead by now. Some may have been dead when I pulled them in the first place. Given the availability of forensics and recovery tools these days, I'm sure I'll be able to gather some interesting data from more than a few of the drives, as well as the other media in my collection.
I could make this a semi-regular column here, as I'm sure the results of my efforts will uncover some long-forgotten gems. I'll attempt to recover the data from the backup set of my first hard drive. I'll find a way to restore the backup tapes. I may even write a program to convert some of the old BBS posts to HTML. Old BBS email can be forwarded on to any of my old BBS users who happen to stumble across this blog who give me permission.
What's would be the point of such a massive data recovery and restoration project? Partly for nostalgia. Partly for the historical value. Partly for the practice of using modern data recovery and forensics tools. But, since all of this data combined would probably fit on a handful of DVD-R's (at most), mostly to clear out some space in my closet while still satisfying my digital pack-rat nature. After all, I never know when some of this old stuff might come in useful ;)
Technorati Tags: data recovery, bbs
