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Data Storage It's funny. Laugh. IT

Creative Data Loss 350

Posted by timothy from the do-it-just-like-not-this dept.
lewiz writes "An interesting article from the BBC about the crazy things people do when they accidentally delete files. Amazingly one guy froze his hard disk in an effort to retrieve files. Real men don't make backups... but, hell, who needs to if you can resurrect them from the dead ;)"
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Creative Data Loss More

Creative Data Loss

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  • What's wrong with freezing a drive? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:49PM (#10814117)
    At least for a little bit? It's helped me recover data from other dead drives a number of times.

    • Re:What's wrong with freezing a drive? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gantrep ( 627089 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:55PM (#10814149)
      it'll help a dead drive work, if there's some problem with the controller board where maybe contraction from cold will cause some broken microscopic trace to conduct again, but it won't help you recover data you *deleted* as the guy in the blurb did.

      • Re:What's wrong with freezing a drive? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The blurb is misleading (retrieve could mean undelete or recover from a dead hard drive). The actual story says "One user put his hard drive in a freezer, after reading on the internet that this can fix malfunctioning hardware." Of course, the source is Ontrack who would love to sell you their data recovery.

      • In my experience, cold temperatures can cause solder joints to break. Also, I have never seen cold actually fix a problem other than proving that there is a heat-related timing problem in a deisgn.

    • From the article: One user put his hard drive in a freezer, after reading on the internet that this can fix malfunctioning hardware

      Yes, you can fix some hardware problems by cooling the electronics. Now, this would be silly if the user accidently deleted the files and then froze the drive to undelete them. Otherwise, this can be a reasonable approach, even if it sounds silly to a BBC journalist.

      Going to a professional recovery service [drivesavers.com] immediately without mucking about is much better, but the expense of

    • Indeed, freezing the drive can be an effective way of recovering data for yourself, as many people have done.

      Now, consider that the 'research' is done by a company called 'Ontrack Data Recovery' - I wonder what possible motive they might have for trying to tell people not to do this....

      • They also encourage people to backup their data as often as possible ... from what I've heard that works even better than freezing a broken drive. Don't be so quick to judge someone or some company dishonest.

        • They also encourage people to backup their data as often as possible ... from what I've heard that works even better than freezing a broken drive.

          What's funny is when people back up their data, and they ask you to help them recover from their backups, and you find that they backed it up to another directory on the same disk.

          Or (and this really happened to one place I went) they stored their backups on floppies on top of a 10hp electric motor. Bzzt.

    • Re:What's wrong with freezing a drive? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      it helped me too. i had a deathstar in which the spindle froze up. i froze it for exactly 5 minutes, was able to make an image of the entire drive onto a new one (not a deathstar) and now the drive won't even spin up anymore. ;-) it does work, but only use it as a last LAST resort.
    • I have successfully done this multiple times too. By putting the drives in a fridge, out of around 5 completely dead drives, I was able to recover all data off all but one of them. Certainly a lot cheaper than sending the hard drive to a professional data recovery company.

  • Dang it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:52PM (#10814127)
    I had a witty well worded rsponse to this article but I forgot to hit 'submit'. Could the admins please recover it for me and place it in the first post position?

  • Freezing a hard disk (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:53PM (#10814135)
    Isn't total bollocks, as we say in Britain. The Fujitsu drives that were failing a couple of years ago could sometimes be revived long enough to back them up using this method. The fault was in the drive electronics, not the physical disk.
    • Works well for a few hours, then it's back to its old tricks. Freezer spray doesn't work, oddly enough.

    • Re:Freezing a hard disk (Score:2, Informative)

      by sffubs ( 561863 )
      Yup, I've put a HDD in the fridge before after it failed, and it did indeed come back up for long enough to recover the data.

      Of course, I can't tell if it would have been the same if I had just left it alone for the same amount of time, but it didn't hurt.
      • Yup, I've put a HDD in the fridge before after it failed, and it did indeed come back up for long enough to recover the data.

        Freezing uncooperative devices may work, but microwaving them is far more satisfying and serves a harsher lesson to the others. It does get expensive in microwaves though.

    • Freezing can help (Score:5, Informative)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:41PM (#10814435)
      for example the thermal shrinking can free heads sticking to the discs (the IBM problem). Or cold solder connections can work again.
      Its no repair, but a good trick to try to get the drive running for a hour or two to backup everything.

      • Re:Freezing can help (Score:3, Insightful)

        by StikyPad ( 445176 )
        cold solder connections can work again

        Several people have quoted this, but I don't buy it. In order for that to be true, the volumetric coefficient of expansion (how much a material expands/contracts) would have to be greater or equal for the PCB than for the conductors, which I'm fairly certain is NOT the case. Metal has a fairly generous expansion coefficient, meaning it changes in volume more for a given change in temperature than most other materials. Most glass, for example, has a coefficient of a

    • Re:Freezing a hard disk (Score:3, Interesting)

      by epine ( 68316 )

      I had three failed drives back in the heyday of Fujitsu timebombs and IBM deathstars. One we had to send off to data recovery because it failed while it was being reconnected to my backup server. This is true. It was the first time the machine had been power cycled in six months, and when restarted in the location where I had it connected to my backup server, it never spun up. Most of the data from that drive was smeered around the network in various forms and locations, but it was simpler (though somew

  • Freezing hard disks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RonnyJ ( 651856 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:54PM (#10814141)
    Amazingly one guy froze his hard disk in an effort to retrieve files.

    I'm surprised to see this - a friend did this successfully to get his hard drive working for a while, and I've seen a fair amount of other people reporting success with it on the internet.

    Anyone else?

    • Yep, worked for me.

      I had a drive die on me at work. The files on it weren't that important, and I got everything from backups anyway, but I decided to try the freezer trick so I'd know in the future if it's worth trying.

      The OS was Windows; the drive was buggered enough that it'd just bluescreen when booting. I tried mounting it under a linux box, but it just gave lots of scary "can't read this sector" errors. So I wrapped it carefully in ziplock bags and put it in the freezer overnight.

      Sure enough,

  • Hard Drive in the Freezer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vlauria ( 14396 ) <vincent.lauria@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:54PM (#10814142) Homepage
    I actually did that on a WD scsii hard drive last year. It failed on me and had important data on it. I wasn't willing to shill out a few hundred to a few grand to get it fixed, so I found a few articles commenting about how the clicking noise I was hearing was problems related to the mechanics of the drive and there was a chance I could salvage my hard drive by placing in the freezer.

    I thought, "Well, the data is lost anyway, so why not?" I put it in a ziplock bag, so not to get the platters all frosty, and left it in overnight. I woke up the next morning and put it back into my computer, and wouldn't you know it, absolutly nothing except for the same clicking errors I heard the day before.

    Thanks Internet, you've once again provided me with more information that I really needed.

    • Re:Hard Drive in the Freezer (Score:5, Informative)

      by wirelessbuzzers ( 552513 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:12PM (#10814256)
      If the drive was stictioned, depending on the lubricant, a decent way to rescue it might be

      1) Heat the drive above room temperature. I'm not saying boil it; I put one of those chemical hand-warmers on mine and left it in a box for a while. This should heat it to around 40C.

      2) Connect it to your computer, but leave the drive itself out on a desk. May require some monkeying with your case to let it run while open.

      3) Turn the computer on. If the drive still clicks when it tries to spin up, tap it on the corner (in a way that would spin the drive if you hit it harder). The idea is to provide some torque to break the static friction of the lubricant and get it spun up.

      I rescued (part of) a hard drive this way last year. I didn't get all the data off it, but at least I managed to retrieve /, /var and /etc. The /usr partition got read errors, possibly due to my whacking the disk.
      • My first day on my very first tech job - back in the late 80s at a small local shop typical of the day - left me with one indelible impression. My hardware experience was limited at the time, so when they took me back to the repairs room, I made sure to ask what every single thing was, and what it was used for; I got a crash course that day. Anyhow, at some point we get to a place on the wall where there's a nice mini-sized novelty Dodgers baseball bat - solid wood - hanging there, looking well used. I thou
        • We used to solve this problem with a sharp wrist flick of the hard drive.
          Basically you hild the drive vertically in your hand, with the edge facing you.
          then do a sharp wrist rotation in the same plane as the drive platter would normally rotate. Better than subjecting all the drive to such a hard shock like youd get clubbing it.
    • i did the same thing (ziploc and all) with a WD external 250gb that was killed by shipment across the atlantic to me. clunk clunk clunk, etc. it took a couple of tries at freezing, but it really did work. i lost exactly one divx movie but as able to retrieve and back up everything else (~200gb). it clicked a lot at first, but the drive is actually working better now than it did after freezing, 3 months later. it doesn't even click at all anymore.

      strangely, 2 other drives that died during the same shipment
    • So why are you complaining? You yourself said "Well, the data is lost anyway, so why not?". It was worth a try, but it's not always going to work. If it did, WD would print on the side of their drives "If malfunctioning, stick in freezer.".

  • Hey if it works. (Score:3, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:55PM (#10814148) Journal
    I've been able to get dead hard drives working again by throwing them on the concrete.

    • Don't know why this is modded funny. Maybe the BBC article author has mod points.

      Like the freezer trick, this can actually help with certain brands of problems, e.g. stuck spindle. And if the drive is dead and gone anyway, what have you to lose?

    • I've recovered a few drives by slamming them down on a table. You slam the side opposite the connectors. The drive is going to fail soon after most of the time, so backup right away.

  • The freezer trick does work though (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:55PM (#10814150)
    I personally HAVE recovered files using the freezer trick... I managed to salvage the data from a dead IBM Deathstar, a "click of death" WD 20 gigger, a 60gb maxtor which refused to spin up, and a 3.5gb maxtor which wouldnt come up in bios... I find it somewhat dumb that they are dissing the freezer trick, as for dying hdd's it actually works.

  • Crushed Laptop (Score:5, Funny)

    by Robmonster ( 158873 ) <slashdot.journal2.store@neverbox.com> on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:56PM (#10814164) Journal
    I particularly like the story regarding a steel girder that fell upon a laptop during the construction of a building.

    The laptop contained the blueprints for the building......

    • Re:Crushed Laptop (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chiphart ( 791140 )
      ...when answering the phone in support years ago, I took a call from a user who wanted help replacing her hard drive. After 5-10 minutes of roundabout conversation, she finally admitted that the guys doing work in her building had dropped a cinder block through the ceiling and smashed her server.

      No joke.

  • Backing up (Score:3, Funny)

    by Antony-Kyre ( 807195 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:58PM (#10814175)
    I'm lucky enough to be able to back up most of my stuff by just plainly copying it from my drive to my USB drive. Then I put my USB drive away. I do this every few months. I guess the smartest thing I can do is invest in a fireproof waterproof lock box, and stick it in an attic.
    • Fire safe would be useless, they are designed to keep the internal temperature below the flashpoint of paper, electronics or CD's inside would in fact be destroyed if they are inside a fire safe. a better way to protect that data is throw it on a CD-R and put a copy in your shed, another copy in your car, and keep a copy at work if you can.
  • Every computer repair shop knows about this trick. Generally it's not done in a freezer, however, it's done with circuit cooler [mgchemicals.com]. This only works (obviously) if it's a problem with the circuit board and that the heads haven't in fact crashed or have some other mechanical problem. This works because it causes connections to expand and work for the temporary period that they're cold. You can also remove the circuit board from a working hard drive and swap it with the non-working hard drive for a permanent

  • Project E.U.N.U.C.H. (Score:5, Funny)

    by darth_silliarse ( 681945 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @02:59PM (#10814184) Homepage
    The funniest computer freezing experiment I have seen is this [totl.net] one. Still makes me giggle looking at the site....
  • what is computer rage? never heard about that....

    next time I see 'rpm conflict' I'LL KILL this computer!!!

    oh, wait...

  • Lost my financials (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xant ( 99438 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:01PM (#10814198) Homepage
    I once lost a year's worth of gnucash xml data, including all the backups (and gnucash makes plenty--a new one every time you use it!). I promptly used dd /dev/hda1|grep to search for markers that I knew would be in a gnucash file, and with a little shell scripting found the original and every single backup file in deleted space. After determining with a little more fancier grepping which blocks represented my most recently updated file, I recovered that, trimmed off a bit of the filesystem cruft around the edges, and had my file back.

    Then I promptly set up a system to encrypt and email myself the most recent file, every day. :-)

    (Yes, I'm aware that there are programs that will do the same thing for me.)

  • BBC Formula Articles (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djdavetrouble ( 442175 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:02PM (#10814203) Homepage
    They run a variation of this once a year or so, It is kind of like how magazines have the same crap over and over again on an annual basis - fitness magazines: GREAT ABS, Weekly World News: Loch Ness Monster spotted disembarking a UFO, Martha Stewart: Perfect Thanksgiving Doilies, PC World: VIDEO CARD SHOWDOWN, etc......

  • obligatory linus quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by Melex ( 534124 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:03PM (#10814207)
    "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it."

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:04PM (#10814210)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Just sounds wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by div_B ( 781086 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:15PM (#10814277)
      This "statistic" just sounds plain wrong based on my personal experience, as I've only one lost data by malfunction, but on many occasions I have accidentally deleted something. Can anyone confirm or deny that malfunction is the most common cause?

      No, but I can state the obvious:

      People are a lot more likely to go around telling about their hardware failing, than to tell about their own screw ups.

  • Resurrection? What about reincarnation? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:08PM (#10814238) Homepage
    If data can be resurrected from the dead, do I have to worry about it later reincarnating on someone else's new drive? That could be quite a security risk! How do I metaphysically protect my data?
  • At the other extreme I have noticed that microwave ovens do little for the data integrity of CD-ROMs and other forms of optical storage.

    This and other Public Service Announcements regarding microwave ovens can be found HERE [utwente.nl]

  • the complete top ten: (Score:3, Funny)

    by canavan ( 14778 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:10PM (#10814246)
    The Kroll Ontrack top ten global league table [ontrack.co.uk]

    1. An American user became so frustrated with his laptop, he shot it with a gun, before realising there was important data saved on the computer.
    2. A man threw his computer out of the window in an attempt to destroy evidence when he found out the police were coming to seize his PC and arrest him.
    3. One man's laptop dropped out of his bag while he was riding his moped. The computer was then run over by a lorry before he even noticed he had lost it and needed access to the data.
    4. A financial director dropped his laptop in the bath while finishing the company accounts.
    5. Burglars disposed of expensive stolen computer equipment by throwing it in a river after police offered a reward for its return. Three weeks later, it was recovered and the data was retrieved from the water-logged hard drives.
    6. A business woman spilt red wine over her laptop when she was showing a business partner some information after dinner.
    7. One company's server had been running 24 hours a day, seven days a week for years. The company had never bothered to carry out any maintenance on it, so the server had gathered so much dust and dirt over the years it malfunctioned.
    8. In an episode of computer rage, a user threw his computer against the wall.
    9. A jet-setting business woman spilt café latte all over her laptop while working in an airport lounge.
    10. A new car owner left her laptop on top of her car, then drove off.
    • A financial director dropped his laptop in the bath while finishing the company accounts.

      Isn't the backlight powered by high voltage (100 volts or so)? Doesn't sound pleasant, although it is probably the best way for a geek to die... BZZZT!

      • Isn't the backlight powered by high voltage (100 volts or so)? Doesn't sound pleasant, although it is probably the best way for a geek to die... BZZZT!

        You need to complete a circuit (battery, I hope) which will occur *in* the laptop. Sorry, no dead geeks.

        Also, the battery can only deliver so much juice.

    • # A business woman spilt red wine over her laptop when she was showing a business partner some information after dinner.

      Suuuuuuure that's what happened.

  • Not quite creative... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:16PM (#10814279)
    I had two IBM death-stars and a Maxtor fail on me last year. The IBM's made that horrible clicky sound they are famous for, and the Maxtor just stopped spinning. I discovered by accident with the first IBM that if I turned it upside down and powered up the machine, I was able to access my data! It worked for the replacement IBM drive a few months later after it failed (bleh), and a Maxtor that had stopped spinning completly.

    Doesn't work all the time, but worth a try. Anyone have any idea why it works at all?
    • hmmm havent had luck with upside down drives, but i have had luck with sideways ones... before i try the freezer trick i find that once in a while turning a drive on it's side seems to work... ive recovered data from a 425mb wd and a 1gb maxtor that way....the only thing I can think of that would cause it to work in a wacky position would be wear on the bearings of either the head mechanism or the spindle. Back in the day i remember heated arguments on exactly how a hdd should be mounted, some said horiz
    • Doesn't work all the time, but worth a try. Anyone have any idea why it works at all?

      The bearing gets worn on one side, flipping it over puts the wear on the other side. This was also worked for me several times.

  • "Oh God! I've killed alllll my poor porn! It's all gone. Every last one. Oh the mercy! Oooooooo...."

  • Slightly dissapointing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sivar ( 316343 ) <charlesnburns[ AT ]gmail DOT com> on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:18PM (#10814291)
    When I first read the headline, I thought it was reporting a major data loss incident at Creative Labs.
    I thought, "Awww, that's too bad. Maybe they can use this as an opportunity to have competent software engineers rewrite their notoriously terrible drivers from scratch." Ah well, maybe next year.
    • Ain't that the truth: I just put back in my SB Live and am selling my brand new audigy 2 zs. The zs sounds nice enough, but it just won't wake up after standby. And that's pretty important seeing as I use my computer as an alarm clock.
      And you should check out the Creative forums for a brilliant example of how a company acts when they're product is buggy as hell.
  • You know, this summary brought up an interesting question. When it comes to preserving data (not just digital data), such as that of our memories etc. inside our heads, what are the effects of long term cryogenic storage?

    I've often fantasized about how cool it would be to deep freeze myself when I'm old, and wake up in the world of tomorrow (for better or worse). But I'd be worried about how my memories would survive the deep freeze.

    Sorry if this seems a bit offtopic, but when you think about it, it IS re

  • At least it worked for me.

    I has a 120G Maxtor harddrive that started making an awful clicking sound, then it would only work if it was placed on the side. Soon, it stopped working at all and the BIOS wouldn't recognize it properly.

    After some googling, we sealed it in a vacuum bag and plastic box and froze it overnight. Then we left it at room temperature for about 15 minutes and hooked it up.

    The damn worked! It worked for a whole day and lasted long enough for us to get everything off of the drive, Li
  • once my modem just started to smell .. and i really needed net (many years ago i barely had access to broadband) ...
    anyway it was a discovery 14.4k external ....
    I needed the connection fast .. so I was running back and forht the deepfreezer ... then reconnect until i had to go to chill again ....

    after many reconnects it just started to make a wierd electric short sound, and a thick smoke told me that freezing won't help anymore .... a transformer blew .....

    I also remember freeze/cooling a wifi card with

  • Why you stick a hard drive in the freezer.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:27PM (#10814355) Journal
    Sheesh I feel old, all you kids here on Slashdot don't even know about stiction [webopedia.com].

    This really isn't a problem on modern drives, but in the past it would happen. Something that would work to unstick the drive head was to stick the drive into the freezer. This would (presumably by a slight contraction of the platters) allow the drive to spin up. Once the drive was warmed up and spinning, you could then proceed to back up as much of the data as possible before the drive failed.

    Now, it's highly unlikely that the person mentioned in the FA had a drive that was suffering from stiction. Modern drives rarely have this problem.

    More info here [howtorecoverdata.com]. (Warning: PDF)

  • However, individuals and companies can avoid the hassle and stress this can cause by backing up data on a regular basis.

    Well damn, how come nobody ever told me this before? It could have saved me all KINDS of grief!

    I think most computer users are at least faintly aware that they need to backup their data. The problem is, they don't exactly where their "data" is, nor do they know how to "back it up". The only thing my Dad backs up on a regular basis is his Quicken file, and that's because Quicken makes
  • As a home based computer consultant, the freezer trick has been one of my favourite techniques for fixing up computers for years.

    Hard drives that are on their way out due to mechanical failure often start struggling due to failed bearings, seized bearings, seized bushings, etc. Symptoms may be complete crash (hard drive appears to be dead), clicking noises, grinding noises, etc. The parts in question are all metal. I put one of those "do not eat" packets from computer parts on the bottom of the drive (thes

  • Okay, user's fault? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:44PM (#10814450) Homepage Journal
    I've attached my Amiga harddrive to a PC at work. For a few days I've been succesfully using my home system by mounting the drive under linux as AFFS and then using the mounted directories as volumes under UAE, emulating Amiga just like the one I had at home. Then I got that idea of looking how does Windows see it.
    I booted NT, Disk Manager and it displayed a requester with something along this lines:
    "The drive contains invalid/corrupt signature and can't be read. Windows is about to write a correct signature. This is an absolutely safe operation and won't change the way of accessing the disk by other operating systems in any way. Do you wish to proceed?".
    So, I clicked yes.
    Result: 6 hours of recovering of erased Amiga partition table. Absolutely safe my ass, fucking Microsoft liars.

  • Dropping does work. (Score:3, Funny)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMspamgoeshere.calum.org> on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:46PM (#10814469) Homepage
    Whenever a drive is considered binable due to it dying, I always drop it from about 10 cms onto my desk. Occasionally, (if it's not down to electronics), it can jolt it back into life. Then it's boot from a Gentoo Live CD, and backup everything quickly over NFS.

    A little gem I heard a while ago: There are 2 kinds of people. Those that have lost data, and those that will.

  • Real men (and women) use rsync (Score:3, Informative)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Sunday November 14, 2004 @03:53PM (#10814512)
    After trying many, many techniques over the years (since the DOS v3 days) I have run across the best way to do automated data backups.

    Just use rsync [anu.edu.au] to duplicate your local volume to another local, but independent hard disk. Easy enough to do on *NIX with cron, and on Windows use the rsync in cygwin [cygwin.com] on a scheduled task. Hard disks are cheap these days, and this method gives you a fully local time delayed duplicate (so you can recover deleted files).

    Advantages to this method:
    • The rsync protocol makes sure that only changed data is transferred, so the entire process is quite fast.
    • Backed up files are on a normal volume, no compression/packaging, easy to access
    • The backed up volume can be periodically zipped up to form a permanent back-archive
    • NO media to swap around
  • One place I worked at, they had a problem where EVERY Monday morning, they'd have to recreate boot floppies for the PC/XT machines some of the secretaries were using. This went on a few weeks before one of the techs noticed something: said secretaries were 'storing' their boot floppies by affixing them to a nearby filing cabinet - with fridge magnets!

  • Google Desktop Search to the rescue (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZeroTrace ( 594778 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @04:25PM (#10814763)
    I found myself in a predicament a few weeks ago where I had just finished adding three pages to a term paper and went to back it up to my USB drive. Needless to say, I somehow managed to delete the file and corrupt the copy on the USB drive. As I was frantically thinking about solutions I glanced down at the taskbar clock to see how much time I had before it was due.

    At this point one of my tray icons caught my attention... Google Desktop Search. I had been playing with it for a few days and remembered the caching functionality. I opened it up and did a search for the file. Magically, it appeared with a cache and the entire document, in all of it's glory.

    This was proof enough for me that aside from the security concerns, desktop search tools do have distinct advantages. Especially instant backups :)

  • "female" user (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dvdeug ( 5033 ) <dvdeug@NoSPaM.email.ro> on Sunday November 14, 2004 @04:28PM (#10814782)
    Anyone else notice how

    A female user placed her laptop on top of her car while getting in. Forgetting about the laptop, it slid off the roof and she then reversed straight over it as she set off

    mentions a female user and all the rest just mention a user, as if we could assume that a user would be male, and the fact that the user was female was too important to leave to pronouns to show?

    • Re:"female" user (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )

      as if we could assume that a user would be male, and the fact that the user was female was too important

      They were probably just trying to point out the fact that stupid behavior is not limited to men, although they make up the vast majority of stories.

      You'll see the same thing, any time there's a story about a group that is assumed to be one sex, or have other universal identifing features.

      If this was a story about flight attendants, you'd see the same thing in reverse.

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