Evidence Promoting Good Data Management¶

• Evidence Promoting Good Data Management
  • Anecdotal Tales Of Lost Data
    • Recovery of Overwritten Hard Disk Data
    • Stolen laptop had PhD research
    • Happiness is the return of a stolen computer, with data intact
    • Thugs steal Christmas, doctoral dreams
    • Laptop Stolen From OSU Doctoral Student
  • The Lost Laptop Problem
  • Laptop Reliability
  • Hard Disk Failures
  • Data management in the cloud
    • Google Terms Of Service
    • Microsoft Services Agreement
  • Archiving Data
    • BBC Domesday Project
  • Related Media
    • Disk Drives Break
    • Buildings burn down
    • Laptops Break / Get Broken

If you have any additional examples that you would like to share, please email them to: rdm.c4dm at gmail.com

Anecdotal Tales Of Lost Data¶

Recovery of Overwritten Hard Disk Data¶

5 October 2005 Linux Forums - http://tinyurl.com/8t7uaop

Hi, a friend of mine just overwrote two months of her
PhD thesis with an older version. I know recovery of
overwritten data is possible, but wonder if I'd need
special hardware to do it. Does anyone know something
about this ?

Thank You.

Stolen laptop had PhD research¶

19 March 2008 Surrey Leader - http://tinyurl.com/9hmtlv4

Thirty-fve minutes spent in Langley’s Willowbrook Shopping Centre cost
a Surrey woman much more than she had anticipated.
Langley RCMP say that while she was shopping from 1-1:35 p.m. last
Monday, someone broke into her vehicle and stole a number of items,
including a Mac iBook laptop containing the research she had compiled
as she worked towards her PhD.
“All that information was on that computer and she has no back-up
fle,” said Langley RCMP spokesman Cpl. Brenda Marshall.

Happiness is the return of a stolen computer, with data intact¶

27 May 2010 The Press, NZ - http://tinyurl.com/38sznnh

Never has a man been so happy to see a computer full of data
spreadsheets.

Claudio De Sassi's world fell apart when a car containing almost three
years work towards his PhD was stolen two weeks ago.
De Sassi, a Canterbury University academic, could not hide his joy
yesterday as police reunited him with his stolen laptop and backpack.

Thugs steal Christmas, doctoral dreams¶

22 December 2010 KRQE - http://tinyurl.com/9a5j56f

A tiny television sits where a big screen used to, and a Christmas tree
stands with little underneath it...

Even worse than the gifts, the crooks stole a MacBook Pro laptop and a
LaCie hard drive.

The hard drive had … her dissertation and nearly seven years of
research for her doctoral degree she was set to fnish in a few weeks.
Osuna had everything backed up on a separate hard drive in a safe, but
burglars made off with that too.

"All I could think about is that all that time is gone, all that effort,
everything is gone," Osuna said.

Laptop Stolen From OSU Doctoral Student¶

NBC4i January 06 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/bmybv9x

...her car was broken into and her chrome Mac book pro was stolen.
She has a back-up for all but the last six months of research, but the
most important part of the research had happened recently.

The Lost Laptop Problem¶

• 2010 Ponemon Institute report for Intel re. US laptops
  • On average, 2.3% of laptops assigned to employees are lost each year
  • In education & research that rises to 3.7%, with 10.8% of laptops being lost before the end of their useful life (~3 years i.e. within 1 PhD of allocation!
  • 75% lost outside the workplace
• Very similar results from 2011 European report!

Intel 2010 - http://tinyurl.com/8c9m4bn

Laptop Reliability¶

• 2011 PC World Laptop Reliability Survey from 63,000 readers:
  • 22.6% had signifcant problems during the product's lifetime
  • Of which...
    • 19% had OS problems ~1 in 25 of all laptops
    • 18% had HDD problems ~1 in 25 of all laptops
    • 10% PSU problems ~1 in 50 of all laptops

PC World 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/876qza5

Hard Disk Failures¶

• Failure Trends In A Large Disk Drive Population
  • Usenix conference on File and Storage Technologies 2007 (FAST '07)
  • Eduardo Pinheiro & Wolf-Dietrich Weber, Google Inc.
• Data collected from over 100,000 disk drives at Google
• As part of repairs procedures:
  • ~13% of disk drives replaced over 3 years
  • ~20% of disk drives replaced over 4 years

Article: http://tinyurl.com/octz6b

Data management in the cloud¶

See JISC/DCC document "Curation In The Cloud" - http://tinyurl.com/8nogtmv

Service agreements may give wide-ranging rights to the data service.

Google Terms Of Service¶

1 March 2012 Google Terms of Service : http://tinyurl.com/89dc9fa

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give
Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store,
reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from
translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your
content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly
perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you
grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting,
and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license
continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a
business listing you have added to Google Maps).

Microsoft Services Agreement¶

19 October 2012 Microsoft services agreement : http://tinyurl.com/8e4kucy

When you upload your content to the services, you agree that it may
be used, modifed, adapted, saved, reproduced, distributed, and
displayed to the extent necessary to protect you and to provide, protect
and improve Microsoft products and services. For example, we may
occasionally use automated means to isolate information from email,
chats, or photos in order to help detect and protect against spam and
malware, or to improve the services with new features that makes them
easier to use. When processing your content, Microsoft takes steps to
help preserve your privacy.

Archiving Data¶

BBC Domesday Project¶

1986 Project to do a modern-day Domesday book (early crowd-sourcing)

• Used “BBC Master” computers with data on laserdisc
• Collected 147,819 pages of text and 23,225 photos
• Media expiring and obsolete technology put the data at risk!

Domesday Reloaded (2011)

• Required emulation of software
• Images restored from original masters
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday

To allow long-term access to data

• Don't use obscure formats!
• Don't use obscure media!
• Don't rely on technology being available!
• Do keep original source material!

Google images for BBC Domesday

Related Media¶

Disk Drives Break¶

DataCent collection of disk drive failure sounds

Buildings burn down¶

Southampton University Mountbatten Building Fire

Laptops Break / Get Broken¶

• Shot laptop
• Google images of broken laptops