Port 25 - Communications from the open source community at Microsoft

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1. norberto said:

   Or if you want the easy way because as a windows user you don't know nothing about command line, boot the PC/Server with any Ubuntu Live CD, and through a Gnome GUI better than Windows GUI, you can make all the recovery tasks.

   posted at 06:44PM 05/24/2007
2. einhverfr said:

   Norberto, do you have a good GUI front-end for dd?  Mounting loop devices? Last I checked, the necessary utilities did not have GUI counterparts on the front-end.

   .

   Before you say "just mount the disk and copy the files off," I explain why this is a bad idea.  If a hard drive is beginning to fail, you want to limit your interaction to it to making one good copy.  This also provides some safety in case you really screw up on the copy.

   .

   You *can* use GNOME to explore which devices you think may be candidates for recovery (replacing the sfdisk section) but most of the rest of this still needs to be done on the command-line.

   .

   Also, you *can* create a dedicated workstation with many of the appropriate GUI tools (like AIR for people afraid of the command-line).  But you don't have a comprehensive set of these tools on general-purpose live-cd's to make this both safe and optimal.

   posted at 07:01PM 05/24/2007
3. einhverfr said:

   Just to clarify-- most of these tools *do* have GUI front-ends, but they may not be distributed by default, and they will rarely exist on the live CD's.  This is designed to work with any live CD or dual-boot system where the Linux boot drive is intact, without any additional packages.

   posted at 07:08PM 05/24/2007
4. norberto said:

   Ok einhverfr, you are right.

   We can create a dedicated GUI workstation on the fly.

   1) Download Ubuntu image from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and burn a CD or make a request for a free CD from Cannonical.

   2) Once boot Ubuntu live CD go to this page and follow the shorts instructions.

   http://www.howtoforge.com/creating_dd_images_with_air

   3) Booting Live CD will install the apps on memory not on hard disk. Also you can get GParted from Synaptic. The system will automount any usb hard disk.

   Linux can be easy too for any windows user.

   posted at 08:30PM 05/24/2007
5. norberto said:

   Very important!

   If you make a request for a free Ubuntu CD don't forget to share it.

   Pass it on!.

   posted at 10:33PM 05/24/2007
6. einhverfr said:

   Norberto:

   -

   I suppose we have different approaches, which is OK.  Rather than trying to convince you that my way is the One True Way(TM), I am going to explain my viewpoint and why I feel most comfortable making the recommendations that I did.  I will assume for this post that Ubuntu does have a GUI facility for mounting images on loopback devices (most of what I do is on Knoppix and Fedora so I am not entirely familiar with what every other distro ships with).

   -

   Most of the time I am using an existing station and I am comfortable with the command line.  Furthermore advanced tools mentioned in the paper (like Lazarus) don't have GUI front-ends, so for serious file recovery work, I don't think the command-line can be avoided if the few techniques mentioned in the paper don't work.

   -

   Secondly, I have to ask myself how much effort should go into making data recovery something that is easy for anyone to do.  Handing any sort of computer newbie a set of tools is one thing, and most of them can make things work if nothing goes wrong.  However, if nothing went wrong, you wouldn't need to recover your data, nor can you always know exactly *what* went wrong ahead of time.

   -

   I would be concerned about the dangers of data loss inherent in someone who doesn't understand what they are doing trying to recover files from a damaged disk.  I devoted a substantial section to warnings because of such concerns.

   -

   These concerns don't go away GUI tools and in fact they can be compounded because of inherent differences with the command line.  While GUI's are the best tools for providing dense information to the user, the ability to provide complex instructions to the computer are somewhat more limited.  For this reason, GUI tools are forced to be more specialized than command line tools.

   -

   When I worked at The Evergreen State College's academic computing department, one message that was drilled into my head over and over was that if you don't know what you are doing, let someone else try to recover the data who does.  I took it upon myself to understand enough that I could reasonably attempt data recovery for non-critical issues (and in fact had to recover some of my own papers after sitting on a floppy disk and getting sand in it).

   -

   At the time, we had Mac, Windows 3.1, and NT3.51 systems.  I  quickly learned that the tools written for the command line were easier to use, less error prone, and more likely to be successful than the GUI tools on NT or Mac.  So perhaps I am biased, but I think that this is the *best* solution, even though it might have a learning curve.  But then all data recovery has a learning curve.

   posted at 12:39PM 05/25/2007
7. norberto said:

   einhverfr, you are right and I agree that the best and short method it's using console commands, but are you saying that windows users must learn to use Linux command line? It's a joke?

   Personally, I learn on some realtime Unix and OS9 Systems (not MAC OS9) -before any GUI and before any Apple and Bill Gates marketing- and I prefer that Windows people learn to know Linux Systems as easy as we can, with the less possible console interaction. On the other hand some people always continue showing Linux like a complex system only for geeks

   I am surprised which an expert who advises to Microsoft about Linux and open source does not know the today most popular distribution and the first distribution installed on a commercial PC. Perhaps you would have to try and install yourself some new distributions.

   posted at 01:16PM 05/25/2007
8. einhverfr said:

   Norberto:

   -

   Personally, I would not want anyone who was not already a Linux user to try the techniques in the paper.  You don't want to be learning the platform at the same time you are learning the tools to recover important data you or your customer cannot live without.  That is a recipe for disaster in this area.  As I say, if you don't know what you are doing, avoid learning on important data.

   -

   As for Ubuntu-- I have used it on occasion and have a great deal of respect for what the distro has accomplished.  However, most of my systems have been running Red Hat and Fedora since before Ubuntu began to rise to prominance, and I only have so much bandwidth to follow closely so many distros.  So while I have a general understanding of what the distro is up to, I do not keep up with every package available on every version (with their release cycle....).  Heck, I can't even always keep up with everything being added to Fedora...

   -

   Also, the largest open source program I work on (LedgerSMB-- take a look at it) already has other members of the core team involved in supporting Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and Gentoo.  This leaves me to pick up Fedora and OpenSuSE.  We hope to have some help on Slackware in the near future.  We also other help on OS X distributions, and I am picking up the task of a  Vanilla Perl/WIX-based installer for WIndows.

   -

   You may be interested to note that we have adopted the Ubuntu Code of Conduct for our project.

   -

   However, this brings me to my main point.  This is not about any specific linux distribution.  Distros come (Ubuntu) and go (Caldera OpenLinux).  Trends are important in a lot of areas, but what is more important is an understanding of community issues, core distribution issues (such as LSB), etc.

   -

   In short my goal in advising anyone is not to keep them up to speed on the latest trends, but look at the larger issues of how specific issues are being solved.

   posted at 02:03PM 05/25/2007
9. norberto said:

   Ok. Then the article is for most linux people that know how to recover data, or know where to ask for the best methods? or it's for windows people that don't know nothing about it?

   posted at 03:51PM 05/25/2007
10. einhverfr said:

    This is for Linux users who are comfortable with the system and want to see how to use it for data recovery on Windows systems. - I do not recommend learning a platform at the same time you are doing work where a mistake can cause serious problems (as it can with data recovery).

    posted at 06:54PM 05/25/2007

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