Beware Do-it-Yourself Data Recovery Solutions and Products

First published April 2005

by ActionFront Data Recovery Labs

www.ActionFront.com

Do-It-Yourself data recovery software may complicate your problems and diminish the prospects of a successful recovery.

The object of many fix/doctor/repair programs is to try to make the drive, file-system or volume usable – not to recover existing data. Do not run any program or utility that writes to the affected media or changes it in any way, if you need your data back. The programs that do recover data are limited to addressing assumed scenarios, not necessarily your data loss situation with its unique aspects. In contrast, ActionFront technicians have knowledgeable colleagues with 13 years of expertise to call upon, as well as proprietary software, a full range of legacy and leading edge hardware and clean rooms available.


Get The Latest DFIR News

Join the Forensic Focus newsletter for the best DFIR articles in your inbox every month.


Unsubscribe any time. We respect your privacy - read our privacy policy.

Approximately 70% of single hard drive cases sent to ActionFront have some form of physical problem; hence the foundation of the ActionFront recovery process is making a “mirror” or copy of the media in question and performing all subsequent recovery activities on the mirrored copy. As the media in question may completely fail under repeated use, using this process increases the chances for a complete recovery and preserves the original media in case further access is required. Remember, there is no software that can overcome hardware failure.

Free Advice May Prove Costly!

There are numerous Internet sites offering advice about data recovery and unfortunately, the advice is often just plain wrong! Much of the advice pertains to configuration and installation issues, missing the point that most data loss situations involve the sudden inability to access data involving a previously functioning computer system or backup or the accidental erasure of data or over-writing of data control structures. Installation advice is irrelevant or harmful in these cases. Other typical errors include:

– No warning about handling and ESD issues.

– No guidance regarding what sort of noises are acceptable versus noises that indicate device failure. Drives that make ‘obvious mechanical fault noises’ should not be repeatedly powered on and tested: it just makes them worse.

– Advice to physically manipulate a problem drive such as “twisting it quickly”.

– Misleading information about Windows utilities and partitions.

The first, basic question of dealing with any media problem is “What would happen if I lost access to the data forever?” While following free advice may resolve the situation, it may severely compound the problem. Can you afford to take that risk?

Leave a Comment

Latest Videos

In this episode of the Forensic Focus podcast, Si and Desi explore how artificial intelligence is being leveraged to uncover crucial evidence in investigations involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and examine the importance of exercising caution when implementing these tools. 

They also discuss a recent murder case in which cyber experts played a vital role in securing a conviction, and explore the unique challenges associated with using digital evidence as an alibi.

Show Notes:

A Practitioner Survey Exploring the Value of Forensic Tools, AI, Filtering, & Safer Presentation for Investigating Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) - https://dfrws.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019_USA_paper-a_practitioner_survey_exploring_the_value_of_forensic_tools_ai_filtering_safer_presentation_for_investigating_child_sexual_abuse_material_csam.pdf

Man charged with NI murder ‘faked live stream to provide alibi’ (The Guardian) - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/02/man-charged-with-ni-faked-live-stream-to-provide-alibi

A YouTuber accused of murder faked a 6-hour livestream to produce an alibi (Sportskeeda) - https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-a-youtuber-accused-murder-faked-6-hour-livestream-produce-alibi

European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference (EICC) 2023 - https://www.forensicfocus.com/event/european-interdisciplinary-cybersecurity-conference-eicc-2023/#more-493234

YouTuber reportedly faked GTA livestream to have an alibi while he committed murder (Dexerto) - https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/youtuber-reportedly-faked-gta-livestream-to-have-an-alibi-while-he-committed-murder-2052974/

Forensic Europe Expo - https://www.forensicfocus.com/event/forensic-europe-expo/#more-493225

In this episode of the Forensic Focus podcast, Si and Desi explore how artificial intelligence is being leveraged to uncover crucial evidence in investigations involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and examine the importance of exercising caution when implementing these tools.

They also discuss a recent murder case in which cyber experts played a vital role in securing a conviction, and explore the unique challenges associated with using digital evidence as an alibi.

Show Notes:

A Practitioner Survey Exploring the Value of Forensic Tools, AI, Filtering, & Safer Presentation for Investigating Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) - https://dfrws.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2019_USA_paper-a_practitioner_survey_exploring_the_value_of_forensic_tools_ai_filtering_safer_presentation_for_investigating_child_sexual_abuse_material_csam.pdf

Man charged with NI murder ‘faked live stream to provide alibi’ (The Guardian) - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/02/man-charged-with-ni-faked-live-stream-to-provide-alibi

A YouTuber accused of murder faked a 6-hour livestream to produce an alibi (Sportskeeda) - https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-a-youtuber-accused-murder-faked-6-hour-livestream-produce-alibi

European Interdisciplinary Cybersecurity Conference (EICC) 2023 - https://www.forensicfocus.com/event/european-interdisciplinary-cybersecurity-conference-eicc-2023/#more-493234

YouTuber reportedly faked GTA livestream to have an alibi while he committed murder (Dexerto) - https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/youtuber-reportedly-faked-gta-livestream-to-have-an-alibi-while-he-committed-murder-2052974/

Forensic Europe Expo - https://www.forensicfocus.com/event/forensic-europe-expo/#more-493225

YouTube Video UCQajlJPesqmyWJDN52AZI4Q_7QiFTiuY7Vw

AI In CSAM Investigations And The Role Of Digital Evidence In Criminal Cases

Forensic Focus 22nd March 2023 12:44 pm

Throughout the past few years, the way employees communicate with each other has changed forever.<br /><br />69% of employees note that the number of business applications they use at work has increased during the pandemic.<br /><br />Desk phones, LAN lines and even VOIP have become technologies of the past workplace environment as employees turn to cloud applications on their computers and phones to collaborate with each other in today’s workplace environment.<br /><br />Whether it’s conversations in Teams, file uploads in Slack chats, or confidential documents stored in Office 365, the amount of data stored and where it is stored, is growing quicker than IT and systems administrators can keep up with.<br /><br />Corporate investigators and eDiscovery professionals need to seamlessly collect relevant data from cloud sources and accelerate the time to investigative and discovery review.<br /><br />With the latest in Cellebrite’s remote collection suite of capabilities, investigators and legal professionals can benefit from secure collection with targeted capabilities for the most used workplace applications.<br /><br />Join Monica Harris, Product Business Manager, as she showcases how investigators can:<br /><br />- Manage multiple cloud collections through a web interface<br />- Cull data prior to collection to save time and money by gaining these valuable insights of the data available<br />- Collect data from the fastest growing cloud collaboration applications like Office365, Google Workspace, Slack and Box<br />- Login to a single source for workplace app collection without logging into every app and pulling data from multiple sources for every employee<br />- Utilize a single unified collection workflow for computer, mobile and workplace cloud applications without the need to purchase multiple tools for different types of collections – a solution unique to Cellebrite’s enterprise solution capabilities

Throughout the past few years, the way employees communicate with each other has changed forever.

69% of employees note that the number of business applications they use at work has increased during the pandemic.

Desk phones, LAN lines and even VOIP have become technologies of the past workplace environment as employees turn to cloud applications on their computers and phones to collaborate with each other in today’s workplace environment.

Whether it’s conversations in Teams, file uploads in Slack chats, or confidential documents stored in Office 365, the amount of data stored and where it is stored, is growing quicker than IT and systems administrators can keep up with.

Corporate investigators and eDiscovery professionals need to seamlessly collect relevant data from cloud sources and accelerate the time to investigative and discovery review.

With the latest in Cellebrite’s remote collection suite of capabilities, investigators and legal professionals can benefit from secure collection with targeted capabilities for the most used workplace applications.

Join Monica Harris, Product Business Manager, as she showcases how investigators can:

- Manage multiple cloud collections through a web interface
- Cull data prior to collection to save time and money by gaining these valuable insights of the data available
- Collect data from the fastest growing cloud collaboration applications like Office365, Google Workspace, Slack and Box
- Login to a single source for workplace app collection without logging into every app and pulling data from multiple sources for every employee
- Utilize a single unified collection workflow for computer, mobile and workplace cloud applications without the need to purchase multiple tools for different types of collections – a solution unique to Cellebrite’s enterprise solution capabilities

YouTube Video UCQajlJPesqmyWJDN52AZI4Q_g6nTjfEMnsA

Tips And Tricks Data Collection For Cloud Workplace Applications

Forensic Focus 20th March 2023 12:00 pm

This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Important: No API Key Entered.

Many features are not available without adding an API Key. Please go to the YouTube Feed settings page to add an API key after following these instructions.

Latest Articles

Share to...