Sound Data Management Training

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-five 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 file,” said Langley RCMP spokesman
Cpl. Brenda Marshall.

Google images of Langley Willowbrook

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.

Lost Thesis Poster¶

http://twitpic.com/45t7vu

Recovery¶

PostgraduateForum.com > Current PhD Students, PhD Life. 29 September 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/ct5e2no

I've 'lost' my thesis

Yes, I 'lost' my thesis today, at around 12:42pm (thesis RIP), microsoft word couldn't
cope with the size of the document and my file got corrupted. I'd removed a small chunk
of it and did some formatting to decrease its size yesterday but that obviously didn't
stop it happening. After a few hours trying to recover it, I gave in and called for
help. I then found out that, even if I'd managed to recover it, it probably wouldn't
be the whole document, there could be parts missing, formatting gone awol, etc No sweat
though, I regularly back up my work so it's just today's work that's been lost, well
morning and lunch really as I spent the afternoon attempting to savage it,-) bit
stressful but hey ho, not the end of the world. So for those of you who don't back your
work up, start doing it now! And regularly! I can't possibly imagine what would have
happened to me if I'd really lost everything weeks before submission...