Sound Data Management Training

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...

Saving the data!¶

AG Daws Back It Up 1 August 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/dyntczd

I was busy in the lab one day writing my Honours thesis when the fire alarm went off. I assumed it was a drill. I kept on writing. That is, until the fire warden found me. He said the lab next door was on fire and told me to get the hell outside with everybody else.

I stared at him, then at the ageing Apple Macintosh computer with all of my precious words painstakingly hammered into place with two fingers. (This was before I could touch-type.) Then I looked at the jars of extremely flammable fixative and solvents and God-only-knows-what-else lining the shelves. (This was also before occupational health and safety was given much credence.)

I can tell you one thing—Word’s auto-save feature didn’t give me much comfort on that day. I fought off the fire warden long enough to unplug the computer from the wall and disentangle it from various peripherals. Then I carried the damned thing downstairs in my arms.

That was when I started backing up my work religiously.