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Data Storage Hardware

Data Recovery - Put to the Test 244

Posted by Hemos from the how-to-recover-nicely dept.
Kurtis Kronk @TheTechLounge writes "Today we get a close look at perhaps the leader of this industry, ACR Data Recovery. I worked closely with Doug Roberts of ACR to find the answers to questions you might ask. Not only did I ask Doug an array of questions, I also received a sample of their Media Tools Professional 2003 to see for myself if it really works, and moreover, how well. Check out this article for the full story."
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Data Recovery - Put to the Test More

Data Recovery - Put to the Test

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  • NO! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kedisar ( 705040 )
    Not the pr0n stash! *panics* Now if I can think of a way to lie to the Data Recoverers and say I dunno how 60gbs of pr0n got on my computer... Must have it back though!

    • Re:NO! (Score:3, Funny)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      you can use the network as a storage for that.. just upload any pron clip to usenet/whatever-p2p and it'll roam the networks forever!

  • Data Recovery... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kandel ( 624601 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:03AM (#7143826) Journal
    Whenever I think of Data Recovery, I always get this mental image of a hard drive in an operating table, and all these geeky guys with glasses and long white coats poking and prodding it with scalpels.
    • Funny, I always get an image of a bunch of 0s and 1s at an Alchoholics Anonymous meeting.

      0: "Hi, My name's 0 and I'm a recovering datum."
      Crowd: "Hi 0."

  • Interview? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:06AM (#7143850) Homepage
    Looks more like an advertisement to me.

    • Re:Interview? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by h00pla ( 532294 )
      Yup. I was going to say the same thing. The only moderately interesting thing, I must confess, was the guy who recovered his wife's infidelities from their PC - if only for base, prurient reasons. Guess I haven't had enough Swartzenegger news for today

    • True, but the trade magazines are full of articles like this. At least they are marginally better than advertisements due to there being at least a little bit of meat on the bones...

    • Re:Interview? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:25AM (#7144007)
      It's an infomercial, it's written on top of the article:

      --8
      ARTICLE: Data Recovery - Put to the Test
      Sponsor: ACR Data Recovery
      Date: 09/29/03
      Reviewed by: Kurtis
      --8--8--

      As always, Slashdot is carefully screening articles.

    • New slogan (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 )
      Looks more like an advertisement to me.

      Indeed. I suggest a new catch phrase: "Journalistic Integrity - put to the test".

      Er, wait, how about: "Journalistic Integrity - thrown out the window"

    • I wish we could get a light blue backround and the "Sponsered Link" thing like google has. I don't pay for slashdot, so I can't expect them to NOT put this type of advertising into place, but it would be "nice" to know it's advertisement. I put a great deal of trust into the story selection, and this makes me question that trust.

  • Advertisement, plain and simple. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mikedaisey ( 413058 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:08AM (#7143872) Homepage

    This is an advertisement. ACR is allowed to prattle on endlessly about all the things they've done w/o any analysis or even details...this is Slashdot, and for an article to work it needs to have the details. This is just cheerleadering at its worst--I won't waste time and ask, "why was this posted" but instead simply cut to the chase--this article isn't worth anyone's time.
  • This article reads like an 'ed-vertisement' from the home shopping network - frankly, this software sounds like Norton Utillities from 1986. What kind of acid test is multiple formats? The files are still there for any freeware software app to retrieve. I would be more impressed if it could read files that have been overwritten. And why isn't anyone making a linux 'live-CD' data recovery disc?

    BTW - if you have *real* data recovery issues try Ontrack [ontrack.com] They can recover data from dead hard drives.

    This wasn't an article, or review. I'm thinking it's 'looking for people to send me free stuff to review'-esque.

    • I had to deal with Ontrack once, and the service they provided was fabulous.. Expensive (it wasn't me that was paying), but well worth the money spent...
    • I have used the ACR DOS software to recover your subject line and came up with this: 'This is cr4p-tast1c'.

      Is this correct, or should I try another method?

      Signed,
      Doug Roberts

    • Besides Ontrack, there's also Drive Savers, which has an excellent reputation. We've used them here and had excellent service.

      Of course it's pricey. Much better to have a very, very solid backup system.

      -Geoff

    • if you have *real* data recovery issues try Ontrack They can recover data from dead hard drives.

      I can personally testify that their EZ-Recovery software is excellent, also, and beats Lost&Found and other competing types hands down, or at least it did when a very fragmented hard drive of mine was accidentally reformatted. You may think it's expensive, but when you really need that data, and it's not a physical drive defect that's to blame, it's a small price to pay. And that's from my experience with

  • Excellent :) (Score:5, Informative)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:11AM (#7143901) Homepage
    First, he says:
    If you look throughout the Internet, most data recovery companies are claiming 20, 30 and even 40 years of data recovery experience. That's bull. These companies are 'chop shops' with a decent website that are luring suckers into data recovery disasters.

    Then:
    Know with ACR Data Recovery, your media will be recovered by data recovery technicians with almost 20 years of experience...

    He's admitting that his own company is a chop-shop! Thanks for the heads-up... :)
    • Nonono. They're _ALMOST_ a chop shop.

      Crappy infomercial too.

      Oh well. My test for any data recovery shop would be to zero the disk. Just plain zeroes. Recovering data from that should differentiate the HDD "script kiddies" from the real HDD hackers.
      • Seperate the men from the boys. Use random data. It's theoretically easy to recover the data when you just zero the drive.

        When a drive writes data, areas next to the actual track also get set with a slight magnetic field. When you just zero the drive, those areas retain that slight field. Going back over that area, you just have to detect when you sense that slight field.

        If you are on a given track that has been zero and you don't detect that field, it was a 0. If you do detect something, it was a 1.
        • If you are on a given track that has been zero and you don't detect that field, it was a 0. If you do detect something, it was a 1. This is simplifing it, but you get the idea.


          Why not just "one" the data, instead of "zeroing" it? Is there enough differentiation between a "new" sidefield and one that came from the original data? And even if so, how can you tell if the new side field has overwritten an old, existing side field?

      • TBH these people don't sound that good... they go on about this DOS app that can recover disks but for that to happen (a) the drive has to be viable (no good if someone's trashed the electronics) and (b) it would have to have a working DOS partition on it! (Note the mention in the article of C: drives) - this isn't a low level recovery app they're describing... it's an undelete program. Wooopie doo - and I bet they charge a 5 figure sum for using it too.
    • It's actually 20 technicians that have been with the company for 1 year a piece...
    • I first ran Norton Undelete about 15 years ago so that makes me a data recovery expert with 15 years experience (and my tools are DOS based as well). I just need a slick website and I'm in business.

  • Doug Roberts' quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by merlin_jim ( 302773 ) <James DOT McCrac ... ratapult DOT com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:14AM (#7143924)
    From the article (attributed to Mr. Roberts):

    Another warning sign is when a company gives a success rate. Companies do this to play off your insecurities. They know you want your data back and are telling you what you want to hear. In other words, any company that gives a success rate is lying.

    Ummm... or maybe they understand that my number one criteria is success rate and they are honest, scrupulous, hard working individuals, trying to portray their market standing.

    Of course I'd prefer if someone could do an independent review...

    Damn I wish I had a couple grand of hard drives to destroy :D

  • Do editors RTFA? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JohnGrahamCumming ( 684871 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMjgc.org> on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:15AM (#7143929) Homepage Journal
    This "story" seems to be nothing more than a thinly disguised ad for the products and services of a specific company. There's nothing of any technical interest or value here.

    Now when are readers of /. going to get story modding rights so we can remove this stuff from the front page?

    John.
    • >>>Now when are readers of /. going to get story modding rights so we can remove this stuff from the front page?

      When you pay for it, of course.

      After all, many users pay to error-check soon-to-be stories.

      • >>>Now when are readers of /. going to get story modding rights so we can remove this stuff from the front page?

        When you pay for it, of course

        (offtopic)I've offered many corrections, but so far none have been taken. It seems we pay to do what other folks do at /., blow hot air. Oh, and avoid some ads, see the articles early and get the special hidden features. I'm not saying that the subscription isn't worth it, just that error checking the "mysterious future" never seems to pan out.

      • > When you pay for it, of course.

        Hmm. Notice that little * next to my name? That indicates that I'm a subscriber. The subscription thing is nice and I've even sent mail to the "on duty editor" when there have been errors, but what's needed is a system by which subscribers can mod down a story.

        John.

        • what's needed is a system by which subscribers can mod down a story.

          Subscribers should also get access to the junkpile of story submissions, and be able to vote them in. So many people have complained about their rejected stories later being accepted by someone else that it's obvious that the existing editors are inconsistent when selecting stories. This would alleviate the problem slightly, many stories popular enough to get several submissions will probably be popular enough on first submission for th

    • Do editors RTFA?
      by JohnGrahamCumming (684871)
      As if that subject and his high UID aren't redundant ...

  • Nice Advert, Where's the News? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kmactane ( 18359 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:15AM (#7143931) Homepage

    This was billed as an "article", which strongly implies news, or analysis of some sort. Instead, all I saw was a page full of someone asking softball questions designed to give the company rep a chance to talk about how cool his product is and how you shouldn't trust their competitors, and then a page about how to use the product itself.

    No analysis, no questioning (or support) of the claims made, nothing like that. Even the very real problems the reviewer briefly mentions (can only write data to a FAT32 partition, for example) are quickly handwaved away and ignored. Indeed, if it will only write to a FAT32 partition, then how do I know it will read my ext2, ext3 or ReiserFS partition? This "review" or "news piece" sure doesn't tell me.

    This is not news, and not helpful. In fact, this story doesn't seem to matter, either.

  • Bad interview (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:17AM (#7143944)
    Seems to me like this interview is more of an advertisement. No technical details, no ethical questions, just "why are you the best?" and other such nonsense.

    Nothing to see here, move along

  • Do I want to listen to Kurtis Kronk ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:17AM (#7143948)
    Is that the same Kurtis Kronk that posted inane comments on this forum [nullblue.com]?

    Surely there can't be that many people in the world bearing the same name.

  • Hey! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lord Grey ( 463613 ) * on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:19AM (#7143977)
    Maybe SCO can use these guys to find their code in the Linux kernel! Then they wouldn't have to resort to displaying random functions in slide presentations and waving their hands a lot (presumably to dissipate the ensuing stink).

  • Time Recovery? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ageless ( 10680 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:24AM (#7144000) Homepage
    Do they sell any software I can use to recover the time I wasted reading that "article"?

    Next time just send it out as spam so my filter will eat it.

  • No comparisons?!? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by velouria ( 34439 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:25AM (#7144003) Homepage
    How can the reviewer dump all over non-dos data recovery software without at least doing a comparison of what the alternatives were able to recover?

    I've used R-Studio to recover 3 dead hard drives now, and it got absolutely everything every time.
    Last time there was a physically damaged SCSI hard drive which I got _everything_ off. (It showed up as an unpartitioned drive and had tens of thousands of bad sectors).

    R-Studio is idiot proof windows software which does things like let you save off an image of the entire drive to another location before you start playing.

    This guy gives a glowing review to software which has a user interface from the mid-eighties and limited him to recovering 32GB.
    Even then he didn't get all of his files back! How can he tell whether this is because they're gone or the software is lousy????

    • Re:No comparisons?!? (Score:3, Informative)

      by AEton ( 654737 )

      Oh, there's a comparison all right. He compares Windows data recovery ("Windows writes to the hard drive when it boots up! It's evil!" -- ignoring the ability to boot from another drive and have the drive-to-be-recovered-from as, say, the secondary IDE slave) and DOS data recovery ("requires l33t low level programming sk1llz which only our employees have!"). And he ignores Linux data recovery software entirely - I actually haven't seen much in this regard, but it seems like all you'd really need is 'dd' and

    • The 32GB 'limit' is a product of Windows XP. For some reason (insert evil plot here) XP can only format a FAT 32 Partition up to 32GB. Windows 2k and 98 can format up to the drive limit I believe (or at least to 127GB). This 'feature' ensures that you format your XP Drives with NTFS.

      SD
      • For some reason (insert evil plot here) XP can only format a FAT 32 Partition up to 32GB.


        Yes, but you can also format FAT32X in XP by using Partition Magic. Then the limit is whatever PM currently maxes at (they are always a generation or two behind the highest-sized drives, unfortunately). Other partition managers probably also let you do this. as well.

  • write your own data recovery tool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by iceco2 ( 703132 ) <meirmaor.gmail@com> on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:25AM (#7144004)
    When I destroyed a fat16 hard drive lately, A friend of mine and myself didn't like the tools we found, so we wrote our own. http://www.mit.edu/~raindel/ This tool: puts together 2 fat tables to make one. searches for fat chains. locates directories and builds whatever directory structure is available. sooner or later I will get around to make a general purpose free software tool out of this, but I have other stuff to do first. Me. P.s Backup is simply not enough.
    • A friend of mine told me about using "dd" and "strings" to recovers students' papers from dead floppies. It means all the formatting data is lost but it beats nothing. Makes cute girls really happy when you save their paper. I used the same approach to recover a web page my fiance was working on.

      Since filesystems like storing data in continuos blocks and a large portion of peoples' valuable data is text, you recover a fair amount this way regardless of file system type.

  • Clearly the subject story is an infomercial for this vendor.

    Due to a partition-magic mishap I whacked my wife's hard drive...which she had fallen out of the habit of backing up. I need to do some recovery. It's a win98 system with a fat32 filesystem.

    I had a copy of norton utilities, which did not help much.

    I downloaded a demo of ontrack's tool, which seems to get reasonable results but crashed a lot when previewing (presumably bad) jpeg files. It took forever to run ant the $100 version could only re

  • Advertisement oppurtunities (Score:4, Funny)

    by borgdows ( 599861 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:28AM (#7144032)
    From: cberfield@microsoft.com
    To: Slashdot editors

    I am the Marketing Director at a big IT company, can you please email me the prices for infomercial articles on Slashdot.

    Thank You!

    Chris Berfield
    Marketing Director : Internet Division
    Microsoft Corporation
  • "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on FTP and let the rest of the world mirror it"
    - Said a wise man

  • Hey, Hemos (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:33AM (#7144065) Homepage

    I hope you got a decent cut from this "sponsored by" infomercial, because you're now on my shit list along with those duping buffoons michael and Taco. Or is your share just from the ads that get served on Slashdot to everyone that's currently pointing out what a lazy, slipshod muppet you are? Hey, subscribers; did you enjoy paying to read this infomercial before anyone else did? Did that give you a warm fuzzy?

    On the bright side, at least Hemos got to post this first. When michael or Taco dupes it later, Slashdot will have hit its nadir.

  • Funny... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:38AM (#7144097)
    When I think of the leader of the Data Recovery Industry, I think of Ontrack.... I don't know who these other guys are.
  • If you can "recover" a hard drive, does that mean I can go to Computer Success and buy a bunch of old machines, and "recover" the data, and use it, or do I have to have the original license? I feel like if one person "trashed" it, and I recover it, that's just the same as me going to the dump and buying trash from them that I can somehow convert back into useable goods.
    • If you find a Win2k CD in the trash, having been used by someone who purchased WinXP, you're fine to use it. You didn't copy it in an unauthorized way and as such, it's pretty much the safe as if you bought it. Despite what people say, purchasing software from a store doesn't involve any license at all. Just you and copyright law. Upgrades may be a special area, but even if they are, it's the purchaser who didn't live up to their obligations and their copy of WinXP shouldn't be used, your copy from the tras

  • What I'd like to see (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @10:46AM (#7144155) Journal
    is a desription of the process when you have a "mechanical failure".

    If you pull apart a fried drive, you'll see that the platters are tied down pretty tight, but that if you pull the platters off then it is basically impossible to re-synch them. I would love to know about the tools they use there.

    There are some nice software recovery tools out there, and some decent ones for about 100 bucks (check out www.z-a-recovery.com [z-a-recovery.com])

    but the equipment for when you can't talk to the drive ... that's something else

  • This was a terrible, terrible article. I waded through a bit of the "interview" (maybe it should be called, "Please repeat your "mission statement" and "marketing catchphrases" for us, several times) because I thought the article would eventually be testing the limits of data recovery: throwing disks on the floor, burning them, overwriting the data, etc. You know, something interesting.

    But it wasn't. And the article was filled with so many technical inaccuracies and miswordings ("There are very few "low-le
  • While the article itself is something of an advertisement, I _do_ have the Media Tools package and it _does_ work pretty well...horible documentation, though.

    Now...staying relatively on-topic...lemme tell you just how bad OnTrack stinks. I needed a notebook PC's data recovered after a system crash. Instead of dinking around with it myself and possibly losing the data forever, I forked over some dinero to have OnTrack perform a recovery.

    After two days of phone calls and emails, I finally get the info for s
  • the interview is full of shit. first he gloats about his "secure" areas for qualified personnel, while if theft there is, most likely it will be done by inhouse techs.

    second, anyone that thinks DOS is "low level" needs to get a better grasp on reality. DOS is anything but low level, while it DOES give access to some low level interfaces (ie, IRQ), it is no way a DOS property.

    and third, he contradicts himself when talking about "chop shops".

    nothing more than a self-glorifying AD for clueless marketdroids,
  • A couple of weeks ago the power supply in my server died. When I tossed in a new power supply I discovered the system would no longer recognize the drives. I yanked the drives and put them in another system thinking the motherboard had been damaged, but the second system wouldn't recognize the drives, either. I called a data recovery service only to discover they charge outrageous amounts for data recover (thousands of dollars per drive).

    Before you you chastise me for not backing up, I should mention I

  • Pathetic. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by c64k ( 16259 )
    "Use our software, it was made in DOS, and works Real Good (tm)"

    I want to hear about how you get data of a drive that's been shattered, or shot, or burned in a fire, not how amazing your marketing department is.

    Weak.

  • I for one welcome our new data-recovering article-buying overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted Slashdot poster I can round up other readers to work in their underground infomercial mines.

    Or something to that effect...
  • Too bad the article did not talk about any difficult recovery scenario, like when part of the physical platters are destroyed. All that article talks about is how to recover deleted files or slack space.
  • "These sorts of software are mainly designed in Windows, which has created another data recovery problem. ANY Windows based product will try to write to the drive during the booting process. This means, Windows data recovery software can and will overwrite your data in certain circumstances."

    At the very least it sounds overblown. During "the booting process" Windows isn't even running yet. And in any case, if you're running Windows at all, unless you disconnected that drive immediately after the data loss
  • Test your backups by restoring them to a VMware virutal server. That way you not only have assurance your backups work, but you can apply patches to a near production environemtn for testing.

    Well, _I_ thought it was a nifty idea.

  • Need a "Special "Program" (Score:2, Informative)

    by R2.0 ( 532027 )
    From the article:

    "To recover the data from the zip file, do not use WinZip or WinRAR. You will need a special DOS based ZIP program called PKZIP, which you can get here.(link)"

    I guess "special" means "original." I STILL keep my PKZip 2.04G disk handy - just in case.
  • And now for the obligatory Simpson's quote: "Mr. Burns: your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?"
  • The "interviewee" seems to have a different definitions for some common english words and phrases that we use every day. Please use this comment as a guide when you read the article.

    any company that gives a success rate is lying.

    Lying: making statments that make ACR look bad.

    There are very few "low-level" programmers left worldwide. And from those who program in low-level code like DOS, only a handful can do it at a professional level.

    Handful: Tens (perhaps even hundreds) of thousands

    Something to
  • Another one: A disgruntled man recently approached us stating his wife had been having, let's say, extra marital activities. Worse yet, he found out because she accidentally left a file open on their computer showing her, let's say, doing those extra marital activities. His lawyer asked us to search for specific key words on the media that might unveil any more pictures. Sure enough, Media Tools Professional 2003 found thousands more.

    What an uplifting aspect of the business, lyrically portrayed with lovi

  • I used to do Data Recovery (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JRHelgeson ( 576325 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @11:58AM (#7144814) Homepage Journal
    Back when media sizes where much smaller (and the information written on the disk was much larger), I spent a lot of time doing data recovery.

    It started off as a hobby, sort of. I used to work for the old WordPerfect corporation where we had customers that sent in floppies that had "REALLY IMPORTANT" documents on them that had become corrupted or partially deleted, one way or another.

    Data recovery tools weren't as advanced as they are nowadays so it was a much more arduous task. I had to scour the floppies and pull off as much data as possible, mostly using the old debug command under DOS. I was mostly doing it for fun as the WordPerfect corporation didn't want to become file recovery experts. I was just into it for the challenge and to offer a nice service to our customers.

    I recovered data off a floppy that had a pencil stuck through it, floppies that had been formatted (easy) partially erased by magnets (tough), and various methods of corruption and deletion - including accidentally saving a blank document over the top of an existing document... OOPS!

    I was once asked "How do you recover the data?" and I had a tough time answering, as each case was different from the other. I just told them that "Performing data recovery is like running a sausage mill backwards to manufacture pigs." What comes out of the process doesn't look pretty, but its better than starting from scratch.

    I then went on to recovering data from hard drives. After WordPerfect I became a 'consultant'. One Monday morning, one of my customers had their WIN NT 3.51 server hard drive crash. It was a head crash, you could hear the heads riding the platter. An awful noise that once you hear it, you know you're screwed.

    I spent 16 hours pulling data from that hard drive, and once I was done (I had pulled as much data as I could) we opened up the drive to discover that the head on the bottom platter had fallen down, and had been riding there over the weekend. It had etched away at the platter for so long that the platter had actually fallen down and was sitting in a pile of HDD shavings at the bottom of the drive. Sheesh!

    Over the years I collected numerous utilities for data recovery, but I started getting out of it once LBA mode drives came out and the actual hard drives were being managed internally, rather than by the OS. Not that it made it more dificult, but you saw fewer and fewer hard drive errors because MS was finally removed from their management position over the HDD data.

    Anyhow, back to work...

  • ACR Data Recovery Media Tools Professional 2003. Really! I got one of those terrible deskstar drives, and recently it started going whiirr-click. When I tried booting Win2k it decided it needed to check for integrity and after about a 1/2 hour of "fixing" rendered my hard drive unbootable and fdisk showing no partitions! I tried 4 or 5 of the "big" software solutions to no avail. Media Tools was the 1st one that actually worked. I was able to rewrite the partition and fat information and "gasp" mount my har
  • Despite how much this company sucks, many formidable alternates have been mentioned by slashdotters. I'm wondering about one thing: what is the best way to destroy data. Here, we have two forms.
    a) Data and drive to be destroyed: Almost anything goes, the drive is to be disposed.
    I'm thinking big magnet, hammer, and some strong acid should make the thing pretty much a goner? b) Data to be destroyed/removed, drive to be re-used: Not everyone wants to get rid of that 32GB SCSI or 200GB IDE drive when sensit

  • From the article...

    One minor annoyance was that to recover the data you not only need a destination drive (in addition to the drive you are recovering), but that drive needs to be formatted FAT32.

    But it gets worse:

    The only drives you will be able to recover to will be labeled starting with 'C' and only FAT32 partitions will be available to write to...

    So, what exactly would these recovery tools do that a Window98 Startup Disk with UNDELETE would not?

    They can't even write FAT16 drivers, and

  • "DOS does not attempt to overwrite data unless you instruct it to do so. DOS based programs are also more effective in extracting and recovering data than Windows based programs." - from the infomercial

    Any OS will attempt to write to blocks that it does not think are allocated (such as the result of corrupted file allocation tables). I guess he is referring to Windows writing the cache file onto disk - as opposed to Dos that does not page out memory since it is single-tasking and originally designed to r

  • Secure Delete (Score:3, Informative)

    by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Monday October 06, 2003 @01:12PM (#7145540)
    OSX 10.3 now has 'secure delete' build into the OS. You can remove files using secure delete and it deletes the data and then nulls out the actual data on the drive with like 3 passes.

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