Posts by Joe 61

Microwaved hard disc, run-over PC and other data disasters

my recovery story of the year

had a poor grad student come to me and say her computer had been hit by a car when moving back to school. i figured... ok, she was packing and left it on the ground and never put it on the car and ran it over, pretty tragic. turned out.... she had it packed and strapped down with all her stuff on the car, it slipped off on highway around 75 mph and got it full-speed by a SUV. bag contained both her machine and ext hard drive. her ext hard drive enclosure took the brunt of the blow.... her laptop was smashed up beyond repair... however the internal drive worked and i was able to help her recover!!! her external actually took the blow well, it disintegrated it's own ext enclosure and even shattered her connectors to the sata pins, but the drive itself maintained it's integrity... it plugged in, no broken plastic or anything into a new external enclosure! i thought "this thing may work!". it was then i rested it on a flat surface and realized that it (the bare-bones drive) was no longer a flat surface... the impact had essentially warped the drive just barely. and... ya... it powered up but could not spin. overall i was still impressed! but dont let your computer take a 75MPH blow or you could be sending your drive to these guys.

just had to share.

Large companies ignore data centre advice - survey

maybe you're misinterpreting the reason for the consultant?

i know if I was doing a major overhaul of my data center i would have consultants in. however, i wouldn't have them in to tell me exactly what to do. it seems a responsible and learned admin would have a picture of what he intends to do for the upgrade or data-center build. then you get a consultant or 2 in and get some opinions. i, personally, wouldn't even detail my plan to the consultants. i'd let them (and yes i'd probably get 2 in there) completely design as they wish, then i'd take my plans as well as both of theirs and develop a solid system. the in-house sys-admin should usually have a better feel for the inner workings and details that may make what the consultants advise not work practically for the situation. if the in-house admins are just throwing out the ideas based on money, then that's irresponsible; but to take a consultants advise in entirety without any questioning or personal research is equally irresponsible. this article seems to make a few assumptions that aren't fully justified in what is written.

2016 bug hits Windows phones

I'm bugged!

HTC Touch: Model No.: RAPH800 as listed in 'Device Information' Rom version: 1.03.651.4 Rom date: 11/11/08 Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional CE OS 5.2.19965; so there, someone saying they are affected =)

FYI, it happens intermittantly. My first message of the new year was dated 1/1/16, as a side-effect it wouldn't show the time of the message being that the date was so far away from the current date it thought it was irrelevant and showed the year instead. From there on out about 1/3 of my texts show incorrect date. Probably is SMS protocol related therefore. Probably I should update my firmware, but I've had WinPC phones brick on me before doing so.