Lists abound at the end of the year, but one of my favourites is the roundup of data disasters seen in the laboratories of recovery firm Kroll Ontrack. The best story? It involves a security guard, a cigarette and 44 ruined PCs. More »
Bushfire season has well and truly kicked off in Australia. The big technology lesson to remember? Make sure you’ve got a good backup strategy in place that includes both physical and offline options — while drive recovery techniques are impressive these days, bushfires represent one of the most challenging scenarios, since they can literally melt your hard drive. More »
Data recovery specialists can do a remarkable job of getting data back from failed or damaged hard drives, but you’ll often pay a hefty price for the privilege. As such, the newly introduced data recovery insurance option from Kroll Ontrack and Covertec sounds like a sensible investment. More »
Dear Lifehacker, I dropped my external hard-drive which has all my photos from the past seven years and music collection on it. I took it to a professional but he said it would cost $2,500 to repair it. I’m a uni student so I don’t have that kind of money. More »
There’s a lot of flood-damaged computers out there right now, and a lot of people hoping their data can be recovered. That’s likely to require specialist skills, but you can make sure that the process has the maximum chance of working by not trying to dry the drives beforehand. More »
The sweet spot of a foolproof hard drive backup plan includes local backup to an external drive and off-site backup to the cloud. The problem: Most people don’t do it. Here’s a set-it-and-forget-it, step-by-step guide to backing up your data. More »
Android/Windows Mobile/BlackBerry: Nowadays, a lot of us store our whole lives on our smartphones. If your phone gets lost or stolen, free web service Lookout can back it up, locate it and wipe it all from a web interface. More »
Plenty of utilities can recover deleted files, but what if you can’t boot your computer, or the whole drive has been formatted? Here’s how to dig deep and recover the most elusive deleted files, or even whole partitions. More »
We know: your love your dog, your cat is more important to you than life itself. But is it more important than the contents of your hard drive? More »
