Data Recovery News

‘Critical’ flaw with China-made HDDs?
By Tony Smith → More by this author
Published Tuesday 30th October 2007 11:52 GMT

Updated Data recovery company Retrodata has challenged Apple to come clean about what it claims is a “critical manufacturing flaw” affecting some hard drives used in MacBook laptops and desktops like the Mac Mini - an issue that could result in data loss.

According to Retrodata, its customers have sent in a much higher number of failed Seagate 2.5in SATA drives made in China and loaded with firmware version 7.01 than of any other current hard drive model.

Learn more at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/30/apple_seagate_drive_warning/

By Tom Jowitt, Techworld

A UK data recovery organisation has warned Apple Macbook users that they risk potential data loss due to a design flaw on certain hard drives.

The problem is found on the Seagate 2.5-inch SATA drives that are made in China and are loaded with firmware version 7.01. Model numbers affected include ST96812AS and ST98823AS.

Find out more at techworld

betanews.com - Last November, we reported on Fujitsu’s efforts to overcome a curious problem with the physics of hard disk drives: storing magnetic data at densities that are smaller than the grains of the underlying ferromagnetic medium should physically allow. The company’s solution involved a combination of lasers to locate precise locations on the drive, and also to pre-heat data spots to make them more conducive to holding data at precise locations.

Find out more at Fujitsu working on new hard drive technology

19 July 2007

By Chris Mellor, Techworld

Scientists have discovered that “avalanche” effects in spinning magnetic fields can cause data loss in disk drives - and are working on changes to recording layer chemistry that should give us more reliable storage.

Read more at Disk data loss caused by magnetic avalanches

When it comes to data recovery there are a lot of myths out there. People are recommending Scandisk or some 10 year old DOS utility as the most sophisticated data recovery tools.

When turning to a discussion group for help after a system crash, you often get to hear: “Just recover from your back-up - you have one, don’t you?” Now - that’s helpful!

Be assured, most of what you hear about data recovery is not true. Read on… at About data recovery

Can’t boot up? Sometimes, it may be due to a boot sector virus.
This site contains some fairly easy reading about boot sector viruses.

Learn about them at Boot Sector Viruses

Despite mocking note, BotVoice.A’s “brainless vandalism” can be spread only through p-to-p networks or storage devices

By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
July 05, 2007

A newly identified malicious program not only messes up its victims’ computers, it taunts them too. The program, called the BotVoice.A Trojan was first spotted by security vendor Panda Software last week. It is a Trojan horse program, which the victim must download first. But once installed, it gets nasty.

Read more at Talking Trojan says ‘bye bye’ to victims’ data

Eric Lai
Computerworld

Updated: 09 Jul 2007

The official launch of 11g is set for next Wednesday, July 11, in a New York City ceremony overseen by Oracle president Charles Philips.

Publicly, Oracle has for the most part avoided specifics, saying that 11g will offer improvements in high availability, performance, scalability, and manageability.

Tidbits it has revealed include free migration and management tools that will let administrators oversee non-Oracle databases at the same time they manage their Oracle ones. Oracle has also said that 11g will have new compression technology that could potentially reduce customers’ storage demands by two-thirds, the ability to store unstructured data faster than traditional file systems, and better partitioning.

Read more at: Will Oracle Database 11g rope in customers?

Robin Harris
July 5th, 2007

What is the primary determinant of drive life? I’ve read the latest research and talked to insiders. There are so many variables that the best answer is just . . . luck. Why is that? Is there anything you can do?

Read this article at Disk drive life depends on… luck

Nothing can be more frustrating than turning on your Mac only to find that it won’t start up. Instead of seeing the Finder, you see a blue or gray screen, an icon of a broken folder, a kernel panic, a flashing question mark, or a computer that just sits there. What can you do? Don’t worry. It could be a simple issue that you can fix yourself.

Further information at Your Mac won’t start up