Hard Drive Recovery Primer

May 12, 2008

Slashdot posted “A Walk Through the Hard Drive Recovery Process” today.  It was essentially an advertisement for the data recovery service used in the article with little to no real information.  This is typically known as a slashvertisement to those familiar with Slashdot.

Hidden in the comments, however, was a gem — a link to Defcon 14’s Hard Drive Recovery presentation which is excellent.  Diagrams, graphs, and raw how-to knowledge are presented in a 5 part YouTube series that is seriously worth watching.

The presenter talks about each part of the drive and what to do when presented with failures in any one or combination of parts.  He even addresses the often repeated technique of freezing your drive (hint — not the best first course of action, according to this speaker).

Real techniques from a real tech:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

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