lifehacker.com — [Unstoppable Copier] allows you to copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together. Using this method most types of files can be made useable even if some parts were not recoverable in the end
Apr 18, 2007 View in Crawl 4
schestowitzApr 19, 2007
it's mainly a blurb introducing a tool ( <a class="user" href="http://www.roadkil.net/unstopcp.html">http://www.roadkil.net/unstopcp.html</a> ), but there's no news there really.
unusualbobApr 19, 2007
solution = firewall
outhouseinputApr 20, 2007
A firewall won't protect you against something like this. They are sneaky; the routines are written directly into the code so it's virtually undetectable. And that's what makes it scary.
evolverApr 20, 2007
str3ama, I take it you don't keep up with the tech news. There is nothing made up here. there is (or was) a lawsuit in California which was broadcasted on ZD Net about the "spy ware" to some and "phone home" to others when it was PROVEN by network engineers that the so called "Windows Genuine Advantage" (WGA.exe) only gave an advantage to Microsoft by sending hardware data as well as the IP address back to Microsoft.(IP address = potentially identifiable, ESPECIALLY with a hardware signature) I have personally tested this little demon with firewalls and found out it "dialed home" with hardware info and IP address every time you logged in AND every time you searched for a file. (You can't transmit data over the Internet Anonymously unless you go through something like the TOR network and trust me MS doesn't do that). I'll even give you the address it was using: sa.windows.com. How subtle is that? Even Microsoft admitted it dialed home, but came up with the lame statement that it wasn't spy-ware but they merely "forgot" to inform people what WGA did. Definition of spy-ware: You collect potentially confidential without informing the user ( let alone getting their consent). Microsoft did not give any announcement until AFTER someone caught them. (Little late then). That qualifies as spy-ware. If you collect information without telling someone AND giving them the choice not to install it afterwords its spy-ware. Simple as that. This is ALL documented around ZD net and other communities. Nothing made up here. Its in print. (plus ways to hack and shut the bloody thing down can be found). Vista is well know for its DRM integration. (Sony and even Symantec have been caught using Rootkits and/or rootkit techniques). So what part am I making up? I strongly suspect you either work for or benefit financially from MS (professional blogger for MS maybe?) or even the RIAA. Just do a search on WGA, you'll find LOTS. I tell people to avoid XP and Vista like the plague and stick with Linux. Ubuntu (7.04 is REALLY nice FYI) or Debian are my top pics.Oh, that mail program I mentioned, made big tech news years ago (but perhaps you are too young to remember). I wish I could remember the programs name as it was around 8-9 years gone by. The FBI would LOVE to know the author of that one. Brilliant proof of concept.Oh, if you still think this is "made up" I have a challenge for you: Install Windows Media Player 10, and then try to remove it without reformatting the drive. A colleague brought this to my attention 2 days ago and it so sad its funny. Guess what "windows advantage " MS sticks you with on their latest updates for Media Player. Hint: its NOT security. Try DRM. And System Restore will NOT REMOVE IT nor will Add/Remove programs. But, hey, I'm making it up, right? Go for it Man!! And when you become a believer that MS (aka big brother) is watching (and crippling) you (and selling you to Hollywood, among others), perhaps you'll check out the open source community so you at least you have the opportunity to examine the code BEFORE you compile/install it. Not all Open Source is free (to avoid confusion here), but as you did correctly pointed out (which is why I do NOT use the following), Adobe, Yahoo and many other software companies are following this unethical trend: Take people's potentially private data and sell it (or profile you which eventually gets sold internally or externally), even if you pay for the use of the products. (Double dipping I call it). The sad part is even if you pay for many of these products, you may still get spy-ware in it. But if you've paid for it you can at least try to sue (as this brave fellow in California did in response to Windows XP WGA).
evolverApr 20, 2007
owdenbowden, in an attempt to help an interested party ( as opposed to throwing silly comments with clearly no research first), its getting harder and harder to find stuff trustworthy. This is why I've recently become a huge fan of open source because if anyone does something funny, the community has the opportunity to jump all over it. That said here are a few things myself and my colleagues use to recover data:1. <a class="user" href="http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/">http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/</a> Bootable USB stick with R.I.P Linux (Recovery is Possible). It has a lot to offer for is relatively small size.I boot with that, and run ddrescue. Its not as user-friendly as some gui tools but it works 90% of the time for me (damaged drives from head crashing is sometimes damaged beyond repair as are drives with dead motors as I don't have facilities to ready disk platters so I keep RAID on all my machines)2. A colleague uses Knoppix disks which are VERY user friendly. My only issue is last time I checked Knoppix only included dd and dd_rescue. these tools work to be sure but...from all reports and experience, GNU ddrescue is better. I can hardly wait until Knoppix includes it in their distros.3. <a class="user" href="http://www.e-fense.com/helix/">http://www.e-fense.com/helix/</a> The Helix Knoppix distros is one of my favorites. When you learn how to use this baby, the world better watch out. Few secrets (by the average user at least) will be safe from you. Of course you can do the tasks of mere mortals like recover data from damaged disks as well. (unfortunately the don't include ddrescue in this one either...MAN).4. You'll probably enjoy this one but I haven't had time to test it thoroughly yet but I'm familiar with many of the tools they include: <a class="user" href="http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12">http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12</a>This distro is specifically for Windows users.5. I have a friend testing this one for cloning disks for clients:<a class="user" href="http://www.livedistro.org/release-announcements/gnu/linux-releases/gparted-clonezilla-livecd-1-7">http://www.livedistro.org/release-announcements/gnu/linux-releases/gparted-clonezilla-livecd-1-7</a>I Personally prefer G4U for centralizing disk images but this guy is almost strictly a Windows user but is trying to strive out into a new frontier (I won't say "final"..to Trekie). Its not specifically for data recovery though. But its a very decent disk cloner.One thing to note, Data recovery from damaged disks is not something people should take too lightly. The other thing I don't like about this program (aside from lack of ability to see source and I doubt anybody has the time to decompile it to look for "little green worms") is that PROPER data recovery from a damaged should do the job with MINIMAL interaction with the defective drive. Otherwise you risk further damage to the disk and data therein (especially in the case of a head crash). All the above links/tools are what people call "LIVE" CD's which means when you boot from them the entire operating system is loaded from the CD/USB into memory. It doesn't touch any hard drive unless you tell it to. This critical in my opinion to data recovery so this tool which it doesn't claim to be a serious recovery tool, gives a false sense of security and could encourage people to not stop and think when data starts to get corrupted. Let it go too long and even the tools above have a limited change of success. In regards to how do you know if something is safe. Well unless you can see the code and have the opportunity to compile it yourself, its hard to know. Best thing to do with any new program if you don't have the time to troll through the code (if its open source) is to let it sit for at least 3-6 months and see what the other brave testers come back with. That includes open source solutions by the way, because some of them are not at full "1.0" release status. The majority of free open source projects are below 1.0 status meaning there are issues being worked on. Many of them are still very usable (like MythTV for example) but newbies or people looking for user friendly solutions (if they exist) should stick with 1.0+ open source free software if they go that directly. Don't trust anybody (including me). Double check all data with other sources and you'll be well ahead of the game.4. This is new and a friend of mine is testing it out for use with Windows Machines (2000/XP):
evolverApr 20, 2007
Hmmm...good question. I strongly suspect you can rip it. Mind you I advise you to be the legal owner of the disk and do it for archive purposes ("fair use"as they call it in the US I believe). I don't get into this too much but look for ripping tools. The Linux community has MANY of them with different levels of effectiveness. If there isn't a tool for ripping this specific DVD format, there soon will be.
santeApr 21, 2007
@evolver: Thanks for posting those links. I was being too lazy to look them all up. :) I've heard great things about Acronis but since my copy of Ghost 2003 came free with an external hard drive I bought a few years ago I'm still using that and I've never needed anything else.
santeApr 21, 2007
The reason I suggested a second internal drive rather than an external is so you can quickly and easily make the cloned backup drive your primary drive and be up and running again in minutes simply by changing the cabling. Not every PC can boot from an external USB hard drive, so you may be limited to dumping an image file of your primary drive to your external. In that scenario, you'd have to boot off of your disk imaging utility's CD and restore the image from the external USB drive. If you have 100GB of data you're looking at over an hour restore time easily.With a second internal drive you can still unplug it after your clone/backup is done. Just shut down the PC and unplug the PATA/SATA cable and power cable. Only reconnect it to do a restore or a fresh clone/backup.If you want to completely prevent against electrical surges, mount your internal hard drives with rubber grommets so bare metal isn't touching the drives.You're right about the benefits of keeping your backups off site though.
quadducApr 23, 2007
@evolver: I mostly agree with you, but you are not using the term "free software" correctly. "free" in "free software" refers to freedom, not price. The e-mail program you were talking about and Unstoppable Copier is not free software – they are proprietary "freeware" applications. That means you can use them without paying for them, but not in any way you like, you can not study and adapt the source code, you can not redistribute it (at least not as freely), and you can not improve it. The inability to see the source code is, of course, also what makes spyware possible.Open source is basically free software with a less ethical and more practical viewpoint – <a class="user" href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html</a> has more on the differences.dd_rescue and the other dd tools are free software. There are more advantages of free software besides the ability to see the source code – you can also use the software however you like, redistribute copies (also commercially), improve the software or have someone else do it and adapt the code to your needs (license requirements apply if you're going to redistribute it – normally it must be released under the same free license)See <a class="user" href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html</a> for more.