Make Your Own Backup System – Part 1: Strategy Before Scripts
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/07/18/make-your-own-backup-system-part-1-strategy-before-scripts/
Another bad retro diskette! At first glance, this one seemed pretty much gone. None of my disk imaging tools were able to read it. Windows Explorer just crashed.
Only a low level KryoFlux dump managed to uncover the physical cause behind this: A corrupt root directory beyond any chance of repair. Luckily, both the file allocation tables as well as most of the data clusters were still in good shape. I used a hex editor to manually recover all the files from the valid tracks. It worked!
I guess these games are nothing special, but it still made me happy to pull usable data and working files from such a destroyed file system!
A minute of archiving all 77 tracks of an 8'' system diskette for the IskraData 1680 computer (which we don't have yet 
)
Friend has C64 5.25 inch floppies they want to retrieve text files from. Who can help? Located near Burlington or Durham NC USA.
Please #boost!
#retroComputing #c64 #Commodore #dataRecovery #floppies
Okay, this is a long shot, but maybe someone can help.
I've got a Nokia phone with KaiOS on it (Firefox OS offshoot). It's utter garbage and I would like to switch to a new one.
The one problem is that there's a lot of WhatsApp chats on there that I would like to keep, mostly for sentimental purposes. And since this is a niche OS with a WhatsApp implementation developed specifically for that phone, which lacks all but the most basic features (no WhatsApp web, no calls, no file transfer, and crucially no backups), if I just took the SIM out and stuck it into my new phone, I'd lose all that.
Does anyone have experience with that sort of situation, or with KaiOS in general, and could give me some pointers about manually scraping that data off the phone? I don't have high hopes, but perhaps someone out there knows something.
Recovering a Physically Broken SD Card - There is much to be found online about recovering data from corrupt SD cards, but ... - https://hackaday.com/2024/04/03/recovering-a-physically-broken-sd-card/ #datarecovery #repairhacks #repair #sdcard
You'll have already seen the text of the this if you follow my high-traffic chatter account, but I remembered that I have a blog that I can use for things!
In this case:
Working with IMA floppy disk images on Linux
https://hauntedgames.net/working-with-ima-floppy-disk-images-on-linux
Archiving data from the PS/1 Model 2011 (which was still in use in 1998! 
): The system has a 30 MB hard drive with a "rare" ESDI interface, a predecessor to ATA, which we have nowhere to connect 
, so decided to use the DOS tool Interlink/Intersvr via an LPT cable. 
Ahhh booo. Straight run of good discs, and now a rough quality one. No matter. Time for the magic of cyclometicone. #digipres #datarecovery #floppydiskimaging
Hunting for rare Slovenian software from the early PC era, we've combed through dozens of hard drives of all types and sizes. 
Preserving Floppy Disks - Time is almost up for magnetic storage from the 80s and 90s. Various physical limi... - https://hackaday.com/2023/09/15/preserving-floppy-disks/ #retrocomputing #investigation #datarecovery #raspberrypi #stenography #floppydisk #decpdp-11 #computer #antique #police #audio #court #retro
We're really bad at putting stories on our #Patreon. However, here's a job that took a long time to do and therefore a long time to write about. And boy does it feel good:
How to recover data from a failed #sandisk Extreme SSD drive*. The data appears to remain on the drive though it is not available through the OS. Do not format or otherwise modify the disk prior to recovery.
First make sure you have empty storage greater than two times the size of the #sandisk drive.
Remember advertised drive size may not exactly translate across manufacturers. For example, a 1TB #sandisk SSD drive may not fit on a formatted 1TB hard drive.
1. Image the drive using DD or FTK Imager. If you use FTK Imager select DD as the output format. Set the image fragment to 0 to make a single output image file. After the image is made rename the output file to have a DD extension rather than 001.
When you load the drive into Windows it will appear empty due to the firmware bug. Ignore that, the imaging software will grab the drive contents directly.
2. Load the image file into PhotoRec data recovery tool and select free search to search the entire drive. Export the recovered files to the free drive.
The files will not remain in the same folder structure, but at least the files are recovered.
The recovery process will take hours to go through all the sectors on the entire disk image.
FTK Imager: https://www.exterro.com/ftk-imager
PhotoRec: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
*I tried this on a single 1TB drive formatted NTFS, that did not have firmware patch applied. Your experience may vary. #forensics #datarecovery #westerndigital #ftkimager #dd #photorec
Data Recovery in the Woodshed - A 1TB drive fails. How do you recover the data? If you are like us, you imagine a ... - https://hackaday.com/2023/08/18/data-recovery-in-the-woodshed/ #datarecovery #repairhacks #mischacks
When The Professionals Trash Your Data Tape, Can It Still Be Recovered? - People trying to preserve digital artifacts held on old media often not only have ... - https://hackaday.com/2023/05/26/when-the-professionals-trash-your-data-tape-can-it-still-be-recovered/ #retrocomputing #datarecovery #onstream #frogger
Data Recovery — A Guide to Cloud Backup Solutions - Although the business landscape is becoming more data-driven than ever, it has its... - https://readwrite.com/data-recovery-a-guide-to-cloud-backup-solutions/ #dataandsecurity #datarecovery #cloudbackup #readwrite #cloud #tech #data
Dead EEPROM Dumped With Help Of Body Diodes - [Jason P], evidently an enjoyer of old reliable laser printing tech, spilled a dri... - https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/dead-eeprom-dumped-with-help-of-body-diodes/ #datarecovery #repairhacks #bodydiode #hardware #esddiode #eeprom
An eMMC Gives Up Its Secrets - An increasing phenomenon over the years since mobile phones morphed from simply te... - https://hackaday.com/2022/08/17/an-emmc-gives-up-its-secrets/ #reverseengineering #datarecovery #raspberrypi #flash #emmc
Hackaday Links: August 7, 2022 - If you ever needed proof that class-action lawsuits are a good deal only for the l... - https://hackaday.com/2022/08/07/hackaday-links-august-7-2022/ #quantumprogramming #hackadaycolumns #proximacentauri #hackadaylinks #datarecovery #quantumgates #classaction #dataprivacy #settlement #timhortons #tracking #chorizo #sausage #slider #qubits #sdcard #jwst
Adafruit Hack Chat Helps You Copy That Floppy - You might think the era of the 3.5 inch “floppy” disk is over, and of course, you’... - https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/adafruit-hack-chat-helps-you-copy-that-floppy/ #digitalpreservation #hackadaycolumns #datarecovery #adafruit #hackchat #floppy
