Dataquest

Data Recovery You Can Trust

Tag: Backup

  • Unknown Windows 98 Backup CDRs from 2002

    We don’t often get much call to recover CDs anymore, but this recent case was interesting. We received a set of five CDRs labelled image library backup 2002. The user had no idea what software created them, and just a vague memory that they may have been burned from a Windows 98 PC.

    Step 1… Read the discs

    As usual, our first task is to read all the discs, and in this case save them to image files (ISO / Bin Files) for scanning later. Due to their age (19 years!), I expected this to be the hard part, but all the discs read well. Good work pink Verbatim DataLifePlus®! In fact there were just six unreadable sectors near the end of the final disc. This seemed like a good point to begin the next phase, and actually see what files I could get from them.

    Where the problems start

    Mounting the disc images, just showed a single, (un)helpful file.

    Backup CD. This is a backup CD. Except for this file the contents of this disc must be accessed using your backup software

    Readme.txt (2002)

    The reason for such a vague message became clear later. The companies behind this software went through a number of years where they were sold, resold, sold again, rebranded, you name it. I suppose the generic message saved them having to update the code for every different version of the software.

    Hex editing

    I had a bit of a poke around inside the image files, to look for clues. Aside from the text above, the vast majority of the discs looked like compressed data. This is bad news if you don’t know what compressed them! There were a few little nuggets of metadata, and a few promising repeating strings. These strings lead me to this page. There were some similarities between my disc images, and the example headers from Will’s Zip Disk images. I tried the tools provided by Will, but couldn’t get them to work with my files. I contacted Will to see if he had any ideas, and he was extremely helpful and interested in the project.

    The old web

    In 2002, it was far more likely that you got your software on floppy disks or CDs, and your tech information from a paper magazine. Anything that was written online back then, has largely fallen into digital disrepair, or disappeared altogether. I’ve never seen so many 404 error pages than when I was trying to research these backup discs.

    Think Different™

    I’d seen a screenshot of a similar looking readme file, and that post mentioned Backup Exec. I’d heard of Backup Exec as a more recent tool for servers, but didn’t realise it started out as a simple tool to backup Windows PCs to removable media. After trawling though pages of dead links, I eventually found a couple of old versions of backup exec on archive.org. There was even a version named “Seagate Backup Exec for CD-R, Version 5.4” from 1996. It all started to seem so easy.

    Spin up the VM

    I booted a Windows 98 Virtual Machine, and installed the Seagate version of Backup Exec for CD-R. After a required reboot, the VM failed to boot, so something was incompatible. Old VMs like this can be temperamental, so I didn’t go any further trying to track down the fault.

    A problem shared

    I was speaking to a friend about this case, as he’d been a Backup Exec user more recently. He didn’t have any other suggestions for me, but after our chat, he sent me a couple of links he’d found. This one in particular mentioned another bit of trivia about the software companies. Apparently another company Stomp Inc once used the code from Backup Exec in a Windows tool called “Simple Backup.”

    Back to archive.org, and I found a copy of version 4.61. Had to be worth a try.

    veritas stomp simple backup main screen

    I installed this on the Windows 98 VM and rebooted… I half expected it to corrupt the VM again, but this time it booted up fine. Simple backup launched with a Veritas logo animation and then successfully read and restored the CDs. The job was complete. The software was even smart enough to cope with the couple of missing sectors on disc 5.

    In total, I extracted around 3.5GB of photos.

    Not over yet

    Although I’d successfully extracted the files from the backup, they were now trapped inside the Windows 98 VM. Usually VMs can communicate back to the host, but Windows 98 doesn’t easily work that way. To avoid messing around too much, I decided to just mount the virtual disk from Windows 98 to a Windows XP VM, which does have support for sharing files with the host. That got the data back out into the real world!

  • Free & Cheap Backup for iPhone, iPad, Android, PC & Macs

    If you’ve survived without backups and not lost data, you’ve been lucky so far. But why push your luck? There are a bunch of free & cheap ways to backup that could save you from the pain of losing data. Even better, you could help out your family, and give a gift that almost nobody will thank you for. At least until they drop their phone down the toilet. Then you’ll be hailed a total hero!

    What is a Backup?

    First, I have to get this out of the way. A backup is an extra copy of the files. If you don’t have two or more copies of something in different places, it’s not a backup. A common mistake is buying an external “backup” drive, and then filling it up with data that you don’t have anywhere else. All that does is move the problem from one disk to another. If the “backup” drive fails you’ll still need to get it recovered professionally (👋). If you had another disk with the same files on, you’d be fine. It might sound wasteful to keep multiple copies of your files, but it is the only safe way. Even the most reliable disks have a 1% failure rate. If you made a backup copy of a paper document, you wouldn’t shred the original, so just think like that.

    What is a Cloud? ☁️

    A cloud is just a server somewhere. Modern cloud services are just huge networks of servers that can store your data.

    iPhones & iPads

    iCloud

    If you’re an iPhone or iPad user, you can’t beat iCloud for convenience. With an iCloud backup, you can load a replacement iPhone or iPad with your data, and carry on where you left off. It might seem unfair that Apple will sell you a phone for £1,099 and then want an extra £0.79 per month for iCloud, but once you get past that, it really is worth every penny. For under £10 per year, you’ll be mad to not sign up.

    Family Sharing

    If you have multiple iPhones & iPads in your household, you can also share iCloud storage using Family Sharing. That way, you can buy one of the larger storage plans and backup all the iDevices in your house. All the data is still kept privately for each person in iCloud, but the total storage is shared. This will also give you some other useful features like shared family calendars, notes & reminders.

    Google Photos

    Google photos works across pretty much any device. It doesn’t matter if you run it from your iPhone, Android Tablet, a PC, whatever. The free version only has a fairly small allowance (currently 15GB), but you can then pay extra for more storage as you need it. (£24.99 per year for 200GB in 2023)

    Android Phones & Tablets

    Google One. That’s the Google equivalent of iCloud and has tools to backup devices, and photos. (See above.)

    Mac & PC

    Regardless of what PC or Mac you have, you can’t beat an external hard drive for value. As long as your internal disk is big enough to fit all your files, you can then use an external drive to keep an extra copy of everything. If your internal disk is too small, the best option is to upgrade it, and then also keep an external backup drive. If you don’t (or can’t) upgrade the internal disk, you’ll need to juggle data and backups around external disks. This increases your risk of missing something.

    Computers can also use cloud storage, so if you already use one on your phone, it’s worth seeing what you can share with your PC or Mac.

    iCloud on your Mac will let you sync photos and documents but doesn’t allow you to backup and restore to the cloud the way it does with iPhones. If you use iCloud on a Mac, I’d still recommend an external drive.

    Attach an external drive to a Mac, and it will offer to use it as a backup with Time Machine. ⚠️ Be aware that it will erase the disk first! Time Machine will take a copy of your whole Mac, and keep it up to date. Even if you only plug the disk in once a month, Time Machine will catch up with any new files and copy them over automatically. If your Mac dies, you can use the backup drive to load the data to a repaired or replaced Mac.

    Windows 10/11 has a backup feature named “File History.” Much like Time Machine, you can select an external disk for backups, and then file history will keep track of file changes automatically. Unlike the Mac, File History doesn’t backup software and settings, so you’d need to get things setup another way first before you load the files back.

    Conclusion

    Do yourself a favour and get your files backed up. Remember, you don’t need to backup everything, just the things you don’t want to lose 😜!

  • Why Computers Always Guess the Wrong Copy Time

    In the previous part of this series, I explained why small files take longer to copy than large ones. This can make for unpredictable results when you copy a mixed batch of files. I decided to track the time estimates for such a copy and see how wrong the time estimates really are.

    Let’s kick off with another animation. I took a series of screenshots when copying files to another disk. I then tracked the estimated time to complete vs the actual completion time. I have also included the raw numbers at the bottom of the page.

    Why Computers Always Guess the Wrong Copy Time
    Why Computers Always Guess the Wrong Copy Time

    How wrong was the original estimate?

    The original time estimate was off by almost two hours! 1:59 to be precise. After 9 minutes, the estimate was off by an hour. After around 50 minutes copying, the estimate was only off by 1 minute.

    We can’t really use this data to extrapolate much, as it is specific to the data being copied. You’ll notice that the data toward the end of the copy was mostly media files. What the data does show quite clearly is that you cannot trust the time estimates.

    General Guide

    • Large media files – Fast copy, Accurate time estimate
    • Small office / text files – Slow copy, Accurate time estimate
    • Mixed data – Mixed copy time, Inaccurate time estimate
    Remaining
    Estimated Finish
    Actual Finish
    Wrongness
    03:45:00 17:16:00 15:17:00 01:59:00
    02:35:00 16:15:00 00:58:00
    01:00:00 15:18:00 00:01:00
    00:40:00 15:17:00 00:00:00
    00:04:00 15:17:00 00:00:00

    This is the second post in a mini-series about copying files. 

    Read Part One here about copying small vs large files.

    Read Part Three here about copying a failed disk

  • Seagate Ultra Slim Portable Drives

    Seagate has another batch of dubious drives in circulation at the moment. These slim disks are often used in external Ultra Slim Portable enclosures, but also appear in laptops. Visually these disks have a new-look design that seems a bit strange at first glance. For starters, instead of a solid metal top cover, these disks only have a partial top lid, sealed by nothing more than the printed label. If you decided to peel the sticker from one of these, you’d be unsealing the top cover and allow dust to fall straight onto the disks. This is BAD.

    Aside from the visual differences, these disks also feature a number of new firmware changes that are barriers to recovery. The industry standard recovery tools only have limited support at this stage but the good news is that we can already recover from most common issues.

    D.S.A.A (Dead Shortly After Arrival)

    Another fun feature of these disks is the way that some of them just fail after a couple of weeks light use. As always, we only see faulty disks here, but it’s always a surprise to see a disk that’s only a few weeks or months old on our desks.

    Something we’ve seen more than once is a customer that buys an external drive, copies a load of data onto it, wipes their computer, and then finds when trying to load the data back on that the backup disk has failed. Always remember to take two separate backups when erasing your main disk!

    Variability

    Another annoying trait with these disks is that they are manufactured from lots of different internal parts. This makes it a nightmare to locate suitably matched heads when we need to replace them.

    List of Affected Models

    • ST1000LM035
    • ST2000LM007
    • AKA Rosewood Drives

    Seagate Ultra Slim Portable Drives

  • ATP 259: I Hired Myself

    ATP – 259: I Hired Myself ?

    TL;DR/L – Storage is hard. Move your data with you. Make redundant copies. Don’t trust manufacturer-quoted lifespans.

    In this week’s Ask ATP, the guys got a question about long-term data storage. As my accidental pet subject, I always pay close attention to storage-related chat. Fortunately whenever our hosts talk about storage it’s from a thoughtful & sufficiently cautious point of view. They know that storage is unsafe, and then plan ways round it. After hearing their countless conversations about Synology & Backblaze I know I can always trust ATP on this topic.

    I don’t have much to add to the discussion here. They covered the important stuff. If you’ve not listened already, it’s well worth your time. Also, before talking about data storage, there was some interesting discussion about Raspberry Pi , which is always cool.

  • First, Do No Harm

    First, Do No Harm

    The maxim “first, do no harm” is a great first rule for data recovery, and is at the heart of our whole approach. If you’ve lost data, it’s only natural to panic, but the safest thing to do is stop and get advice. It’s usually best to switch everything off, but there are rare times where you wouldn’t want to do that either.

    When you should switch off a failed disk

    If the drive has failed completely and you can’t access the data, definitely switch it off. If the disk is clicking, or making strange noises, switch it off. Certain types of hardware failure will get worse if you leave the drive powered on. If the heads have been damaged, they could scrape all the magnetic storage coating from the disk. When the heads are stuck on the disk, they can be wrenched off and take a chunk of disk with them.

    If you’ve accidentally deleted some files from a disk, switch it off. You might not realise but as your computer sits there idle, there are all sorts of processes, downloads, updates and other background tasks that will be writing to your disk. Also  a system task could attempt to repair the disk, or reset the computer and overwrite your files. All of these issues are avoided if the device is turned off. Your computer will happily reuse the space where your deleted files are, so once files are deleted it’s crucial to stop the computer accessing the disk. Once data is overwritten it really is gone for good despite what anyone tells you.

    If you have a cloud service setup, you should download the data using another computer & disk. Make sure you check the downloaded data thoroughly before writing it back to your original disk. If you write the cloud data straight back to your computer, you’ve lost any chance of getting more data back if there’s something missing.

    When you shouldn’t switch off a failed disk

    If the data shows up at some point, copy it straight off. Hard drives are complicated machines, but sometimes the stars align and give you one last chance to access the files. Make sure you have enough free space on another disk, and make a copy of your files while you still can. There is a chance that if you power the disk down it might never show up again. Don’t waste that chance!

    ⚠️ If you start copying files and the speed goes down, while the time remaining goes up, you should stop and get advice. The hard drive could thrash itself to pieces trying to read the files and make recovery much more difficult. You don’t want to leave the disk unattended during this process, as it could fail and need to be switched off.

    Contact Us Now…

    For a fast reply from a real person.

  • Add Another Time Machine Disk

    If you need to add or change your Time Machine™️ backup drive, the process is pretty simple. Plug in a new disk and make sure there is nothing on it that you need. In most cases Time Machine will ERASE the disk before using it! You have been warned.

    Now might be a good time to find the disk on your desktop and rename it to something obvious like “backups” for example.

    Next, open Time Machine Preferences from the Time Machine menu. If you don’t have the Time Machine icon near the clock, you can also find the settings within “System Preferences”.

    Open Time Machine Preferences
    Open Time Machine Preferences

    Click Add Or Remove Backup Disk
    Click Add Or Remove Backup Disk

    Select the New Disk
    Select the New Disk

    Click the “Use Disk” button, and Time Machine will start making a new full backup to this new disk. This may take a few hours.

  • Why Cloud Backup Is Not Enough

    Why Cloud Backup Is Not Enough

    If you have a computer, tablet, or mobile you most likely have some of your data stored in the cloud. It may just be syncing your contacts or calendar, or even backing up your photos from your iPhone or Android phone. Whatever the reason it is now a cheap way of keeping your data safe. Or is it?

    Never take for granted that your data is getting backed up correctly. Check it yourself.

    I had a situation just recently where my wife’s iPhone had just gone through a 60℃ wash.

    “That’s okay,” I said,  “We have all your data on iCloud…”

    A few days later we replaced the phone (thanks insurance) and restored the data back from iCloud.  That’s when we discovered iCloud hadn’t been copying Contacts and some other data. Fortunately I had  also kept another backup using iTunes on my Mac so was able to restore from there.

    Now would be a great time to check your iCloud settings and make sure there’s a green tick next to everything you don’t want to lose!

    Another thing to look out for, especially if you have a lot of data, is your upload speed. Unless you have fast broadband,  uploading large amounts of data can take time. You’re unprotected until all of the data has reached the cloud. In some cases it can take hours, even days, depending on how much data you have and the speed of your network.

    Once you have uploaded all your data, your device will only need to copy new changes so won’t take so long. As a Plan-B, don’t forget to backup to a computer once in a while. You can thank me later.

    Don’t leave it until it is too late. You never know when your phone will take a spin in the washing machine.

  • APFS Data Recovery

    When Apple release the latest version of macOS (named Sierra) in Autumn, it will include the new APFS filesystem. Apple haven’t launched a new FS for a long time, and this filesystem won’t work for bootable disks at first. Eventually Apple will make this the default filesystem across the whole product line, from the iPhone, through to the Mac.

    APFS Data Recovery
    APFS Data Recovery

    APFS Upgrade In Place

    I have heard that Apple will release a tool to upgrade an existing HFS+ volume to APFS. If you run the upgrade I strongly advise you to make at least a couple of backups first. I would suggest a Time Machine backup and a bootable full disk copy, with online backup if you have it. While the upgrade is cleverly designed to minimise the risk of disk corruption, there is always the chance that failure could leave you with no option but wipe & start again. This is especially true of older Macs that you may have updated through multiple OS versions and accumulated all sorts of nasties along the way.

    APFS Data Recovery

    We are already working through the APFS documentation to keep ahead of these failures. We will have some recovery tools ready soon. As with most recoveries, the most important thing is to stop as soon as you hit a problem. Remember my new catchphrase, “Most damage to data happens AFTER the original failure!” Or, “It’s not the failure that killed the data, but the failed repair.” (I know, snappy right.)

    If you’ve lost data from an APFS disk, contact us now, or have a look at our Mac Recovery Services for more info.

  • Easter Backup Tips

    Easter Backup Tips

    The long weekend is only hours away, so if you’ve got a few spare minutes over Easter, why not get your data in order & sort out some backups. Save yourself the dread of losing all your documents or photos, and then sit back and eat some chocolate eggs!

    Simple Start

    First, when people talk about backups, they actually mean just make copies of your files. It sounds obvious, but this is often misunderstood. If you have a few really important files, you can make a backup of them by copying them somewhere else. That could be a memory stick, SD card, CD, DVD, Dropbox, whatever. The important thing is when you’ve copied the file, do not delete the original. For a backup to be useful, it must be a copy of some data.

    The Plan

    If you want to take things a step further, you probably want a way to automate the backup process. That way, your computer keeps track of new & updated files, and you don’t need to think too much about it.

    Step 1

    You ideally want to have enough space in your main computer to hold all your important data. This may mean investing in a larger hard drive or SSD, but is by far the easiest way to stay safe. Now whenever you use the computer, you always store the files on the large internal disk. This means any backups you make can simply be copies of this main disk.

    To sidetrack slightly, imagine if you instead stored photos on one external disk, documents on your laptop, and movies on another disk. This would be a nightmare to keep backed up, as you would constantly need to attach and reattach different disks.

    Step 2

    Now all your data is stored on the main disk inside your computer, backups are simple. On a Mac, point Time Machine at an external disk. On a PC, point Windows Backup (File History) to your external disk. Both will create a copy of your main disk, and then take care of scheduling future copies to keep you up to date.

    Never store files directly onto the external disk, as they won’t be backed up anywhere else if the disk fails. Now, when you make new files on your computer they will eventually get backed up to your external disk too. Just remember to either keep it plugged in, or plug it in regularly to catch up.

    Step 3

    Once you have a single backup sorted, you might think of a few ways you could still end up losing data. For example, if the external disk is always plugged in, any electrical spike through the power lines could kill off both disks in one go. It does happen, even if you have a surge protector! Also, what if there was a fire or flood. Both disks side by side could get damaged. Then there is also the risk of the computer and all the surrounding equipment being stolen.

    Luckily, there are also ways to protect yourself here too. A simple way would be to use another external disk to make a backup, but then unplug it and store it in a safe somewhere. It could be in a friend’s house, or at work, or anywhere really. Ideally not in the same building as the other disks, to cut down the chances of all disks being lost at once.

    There is another way to avoid the worry of storing another disk outside your house. Online backup. Sometimes known as cloud backup, online backups give you storage on a server somewhere, and a small program on your computer to send the data over. We’ve heard great things about Backblaze for online backups. Their ex-Apple engineers have created a really simple service, that’s super cheap with unlimited storage.

    Done

    So now, with your backup disk humming away on your desk, and your files beaming over to a Backblaze server online, you can relax and stop worrying about losing all your files.

    If you’re reading this too late and have already lost data, get in touch and we’ll see if there’s any way to get it back.