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My Hard Drive Died | Scott A. Moulton

My Hard Drive Died!

When you absolutely, positively need your data back!

Presentations and Articles

 

 

*** CLASSES!!!! Take a WEEK Data Recovery Class with LABS!

Scott Moulton is teaching WEEK long data recovery
classes with HANDS ON LABS
Data Recovery Class covers physical rebuilds of drives, platter replacements and Headstack moves. It also covers logical rebuilds of Windows, Mac's and Linux and Solid State Drives.  If you are interested in taking a class from Scott Moulton please click here for more info!

 

 
3D Animated
Hard Drive Recovery

presented by Scott Moulton &
 Forensic Strategy Services, LLC.

Other info on this Page:
Interviews and Videos
iPhone - WTF were you guys thinking?
Why I Don't Recommend Spinrite on my Software List!
Response to Google Study on Hard Drive Failures Paper
Problems with Vista doing data Recoveries
Make Your Own Clean Room - Cheap

Matching Hard Drive Serial Numbers
Software Links

 

Data Recovery Information

Defcon 15 2007 Advanced Data  Recovery Presentation!

Hard Drive Data Recovery Whitepaper PDF.

DEFCON 14 PRESENTATION VIDEO

TOORCON06 PRESENTATION VIDEO

Interviews with Scott A. Moulton

Interview on DL.TV with Patrick Norton

Interview on Computer America-072407
http://www.computeramerica.com/

Interview on Hak5.or episode 2x9

ShmooCon 2007 Presentation 3D Material!

CyberSpeak Forensic 0n Feb 11th 2007

Conferences
Defcon 14 - August 4th, 2006 &
Toorcon #8 on October 1st, 2006 &
Security Opus on October 5th, 2006
University of Florida ITSA Day Nov 8th 2006
CyberCrime Summit on March 20th 2007
ShmooCon on March 23rd 2007
ICLE Ga on Oct 13th, 2007
Defcon 15 on August 3rd 2007
Summercon on August 25th 2007
Toorcon #9 on Oct 19-23 2007


ToorCon06 YouTube Video in 7 Parts (limited to 10 mins)


Part1 : Part2 : Part3 : Part4 : Part5 : Part6 : Part7
Complete PlayList or Play Straight Through All Parts

 

IPhone - WTF Were you guys Thinking?!! -The Rant

The iPhone does not do a lot of things we are use to in a phone. Who's idea was it that you can not collapse folders in the IMAP list. I have 1 gazillion folders, and that list without collapsing is like 25 pages long. Apple, What were you thinking?  <--- iPhone Rant Page --->

Why I Don't Recommend Spinrite on my Software List!

I get many questions about why I left off Spinrite on my recommendations of recovery software. I specifically leave off Spinrite because under the strictest terms it is not data recovery software. Almost every single data recovery package knows, and will warn you not to write the data back to the original source drive. Data Recovery/Forensics software almost always recover from a source to a destination.  Spinrite does not do that, it refreshes the surface and controls reads to get the maximum amount of data from the sectors and then puts it back down on the same drive. <--- Click for More --->

Response to Google Study on Hard Drive Failures
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Well after reading the Google study, I have to question the containment of the drives or the way temperature was measured.  I have to say that I am 100% convinced that temperature does indeed affect hard drives.  The question at this point is how and when.  I have had hard drives in with obvious heat damage, arms and heads deformed due to heat. I have chips that are burnt and physical damage to the platters caused by heat. I know temperature does greatly affect recovery <--- Click for More --->

 

Problems with Vista doing data Recoveries:

I am testing Vista with some of my recoveries and I have found some major problems mounting and using big hard drives in Vista. For example, I have a 750gig NTFS formatted drive with several thousand small files on it. XP sees it just fine and no problems. However when plugged in Vista it first pauses.
                                                                            <--- Click for More --->

Matching Serial Numbers on Hard Drives

 

This link is where I keep track of documentation on how each hard drive needs to be matched for a working donor drive.  I get this any where I can, use it if you can, and if you happen to find something out please let me know so I can add it to the collection! <--- Click for More --->

Recovery software Links:  <--- Click Here --->

MAKE YOUR OWN CLEAN ROOM - CHEAP
http://www.thenook.org/archives/3487.html

This is a cheap way to make a clean room, or rather glovebox for working on drives.  Works well and will get the small jobs done. When it is something important I usually use a
clean room but you can box5use a glovebox. I added a link to the place I found the better instructions about creating one. Most common tech procedures apply here, but of course we are trying to do it cheap. In addition, when the platters spin, the air bearing created will usually spin off small debris. The drive was actually designed this way. However if you touch it, game over.

My Clean Room
People still ask me a lot about what clean room I own.  This is what I own below. This thing is larger than it looks.  I had to have a cabinet maker disassemble it and reassemble it in my lab space. It weighs about 600 pounds, and it took 4 hefty movers (people) to get it in the lab, to lift it up on the table legs and to bolt it to the support and it was only about 1/2 inch from the ceiling when installed.

Horizontal Laminar Flow Table Top Work Station - C1000 Series

The horizontal laminar flow C1000 Series provides an economical contamination controlled environment and is the choice when floor space is at a premium. These self-contained units can be placed on existing tables, benches, or matching base assemblies. Available in 6 sizes.

Features Options
  • HEPA filter eliminates 99.99% of all particles 0.3 microns or larger
  • Disposable fiberglass prefilter(s)
  • 8' grounded power cord
  • Aluminum grille intake
  • Perforated aluminum grille on face of unit
  • Blower switch and light switch
  • Fluorescent light fixture (bulbs not included)
  • Mica laminated work surface
  • Acrylic side panels
  • 99.9995% ULPA filter at 0.12 microns, laser scanned
  • Duplex outlet
  • Speed control
  • Magnehelic gauge
  • Ionization: AC
  • Stainless steel work surface
  • Static dissipative work surface
  • Stainless steel or solid polypropylene construction
  • Heavy duty frame for base support
 

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Forensic Strategy Services, LLC.
601B Industrial Court
Woodstock, Georgia 30189
ph 770.926.5588
fax 770.926.7089
email:Scott@ForensicStrategy.com

Hours of Operation: Mon-Fri 8am to 5pm

My Hard Drive Died.com (copyright 2006)