More hard drive & dissertation nonsense :: 29/5/10 ~01:15 :: Comments: 0 category: tech
I've spent the majority of the last week in the lab at uni getting hard drives prepared for my dissertation work. So far I've amassed 34 drives, I'm aiming for a total of 40 before I start.
As for preparation for them, I decided the quickest way to do it was simply to take one drive and do a full Windows installation on it (using XP SP3), then put some stuff on it; browse a few websites, install a few programs, plug in some USB stuff, put some photos and documents etc on the desktop. After that, I basically just cloned that drive, using md5sums to verify the copy and then booting each drive up after it's been copied to make sure it's working. Forensically speaking I shouldn't really be booting the drives because it does alter the content, but my dissertation scope means I don't need to worry about that, as long as I know definitively what files etc I should be looking for. I might not be able to recover some stuff that would be in the pagefile, but that's not really the concern; the question is whether I can recover anything at all from the pagefile, or from anywhere else. Anyway, I've got the following set of methods by which I'm going to attempt to destroy my drives:
Dropping from a pre-set height
Leaving the drive running with the platters exposed
Pouring bleach on the platters
Putting the drive in the dishwasher
Pouring battery acid on the platters
Running a high power magnet against the drive
Same with a low power magnet
Leaving the drive sitting on top of an old TV
Putting the drive in the oven
Set the fucker on fire
Additionally I'd quite like to try putting them in the microwave, but I don't know how feasible that's going to be. Firstly I'd need to find a microwave to use which can be destroyed, and for the sake of completeness I'm doing each of these experiments 3 times (with the exception of the magnet ones), so that could mean 3 microwaves...Not too practical, so I'll probably not do that. I'll probably not do the battery acid experiment either if I can't get my hands on another 6 drives, because it's going to be a pain to get the acid I imagine.
I say the magnet ones are an exception; each of those will be done 5 times instead of 3. 3 times with the drive completely intact and sealed, 2 times with the drive open and the platters exposed. I don't really think it'll make a big difference, but for the low power magnet it actually might. My experiment falls down a wee bit on that level because the vast majority of drives I'm using are only single platter drives. Using drives with multiple platters might reveal different results for the magnet tests because it's possible the lower/lowest platter wouldn't be affected that much. Don't really know. Although I'm curious about the magnet test now - the high power magnets I'm using are these:
Those magnets are really pretty bloody strong, and they actually came out of hard drives. They sit perhaps 2" away from the platters on a normal size drive; I'd never really considered why drives are the size they are, but I'm curious as to whether there's an element of that's how far the magnets need to be from the platters to avoid causing accidental damage. If that's the case, what about smaller drives? Perhaps they use weaker magnets? Sadly I have none of those to play about with, so this is entirely conjecture. I'll read up on it in due course, but it's interesting. Well, to me anyway.
As for the low power magnets, well that's just gonna be a fridge magnet. The cathode tube TVs/monitors use magnets (as I'm sure anyone who's put a magnet near a screen and noticed the discolouring would be aware) but that's going to be incredibly weak; I'm not sure if that will affect the drives at all. I'm not even sure if I still have an old TV around in the house, but I'll find a monitor somewhere I'm sure.
I do have a few concerns about the experiments. Particularly the dishwasher one; the salt residue is going to surely fuck with the electronics on the board since it'll conduct. Bit worried that plugging it in is going to cause a bloody huge surge. I had hoped to, after forensically examining the drives, actually connect the things back up and see if they are even still bootable. But I reckon that'll be a dead PSU and motherboard if I try it with the dishwasher ones, so I'll have to see what to do about them.
Anyway, whilst I was sitting in the lab trying to boot these drives and copy others, I got bored so decided to do an experiment that stems from the one I tried the other week of swapping logic boards; this time I tried to swap platters. This is a procedure that should theoretically work, professional companies do this, although they use specialist tools and do it in a clean room. I wanted to simply see if it can be done using a screwdriver, a pair of pliers and a desk. I did create a bit of a mess tearing the things apart:
Basically I expected this to fail miserably, not least because it's actually very difficult to take a hard drive apart without touching the platters. I tried holding them with paper towels to avoid fingerprints, but it probably still causes damage. And the short version of it is it didn't work, but it wasn't the spectacular failure I expected. The drives could be seen and recognised, the only problem I encountered was this:
Which basically means it can read the drive but can't work out the disk size. So instead of a 40gb hard drive, it gets seen as a 1.6gb drive. This was the same for both of them, I'm not sure why it seems to stop at 1.6gb. Something to do with sector sizes I assume, but I have no idea at all. Something else to look at!
Next week I'll hopefully be getting my hands on the rest of those drives, then towards the end of the week I'll start breaking the things. Youtube videos of burning drives coming shortly.
Foods :: 19/5/10 ~23:30 :: Comments: 4 category: random
Whilst Glasgow does have some decent places to eat, I really miss the food I tended to eat out in Florida.
Quiznos, for instance. We do have Quiznos here now, there's one on Union St and at least on in Edinburgh too, but it is absolutely not a patch on the US versions. It's basically a somewhat upmarket version of Subway, but out in the US they're just really damn good. The two fast food places I think I miss most though are Moes and Pita Pit. Moes is a southwest/mexican type place which do absolutely awesome burritos. And they're big enough to kill you too. Pita Pit, I don't know how wide that chain is, there are certainly 2 or 3 in Gainesville, FL and I know it's elsewhere too but I don't think it's a particularly big chain. Again, sandwich-type fast food place, but it is fucking amazing. They had this really awesome mango habanero sauce. I'd kill for some of that just now. Another thing I miss from out there is that there's a habanero version of tabasco, which is absolutely amazing. Apparently a couple of places here stock it now, including Sainsburys, so I'll need to keep my eye out for that. On the topic of hot food, there's a salsa company out there called Desert Pepper, I think they're based in Texas. They have a habanero salsa which is by far and away the best salsa I've ever had in my life, I've never had anything else that even starts to compare to it. And I can't find anywhere that'll ship it over here to the UK. Testicles.
Anyway, chains and the like aside, my real rant here is about Glasgow (and indeed Scotland) having a complete lack of South American, and particularly Cuban restaurants. I've been to a few places out in the US that do Cuban stuff, and I discovered that cuban sandwiches are quite possibly the best things in existance. I've managed to find a Cuban restaurant in Edinburgh which I'm going to drop into quite soon, but aside from there (and they don't fucking do cuban sandwiches) I'd have to go to London to find Cuban food. And I'm seriously tempted to do so if I can get cheap flights. There's a place in Gainesville, FL called Virtually Cuban, and I'd really love somewhere like that to open up here. I dunno if there's much of a market for that kind of stuff here though really, Florida (and particularly south Florida) has a lot of South Americans there so there's an actual market for it. Although in my opinion, if a place like that opened up here and did the food like it is out there, it'd be successful as hell because it's fucking awesome and there's nothing else like it here. But I'm hardly an entrepeneur, I have no fucking idea what I'm talking about.
I just want a cuban sandwich. Tomorrow, I shall scour Glasgow for the ingredients - it will be very easy to find them in all honesty, it's nothing too complicated: ham, pork, swiss cheese, mustard, mayo, pickles. What is going to be absolutely impossible to find is cuban bread (imagine a really fat and softish baguette) and it really needs a proper sandwich press to be cooked on. I don't even know what it is about it that makes them so amazing, they just are. In the year I spent in Ft Lauderdale, there was a little Venezuelan restaurant just across the road from where I worked, which I went to regularly to get this kind of stuff. I always felt incredibly out of place there since I was the only person not speaking Spanish, but it was worth it anyway. I miss awesome cheap food. Actually, right now I miss Florida. Amongst other things.
I've tracked down 4 Cuban restaurants in London. None of them do cuban sandwiches. This country fucking sucks.
Theory can fuck off :: 17/5/10 ~01:30 :: Comments: 1 category: random/tech/uni
Well, I said I'd post something this weekend, so I feel obligated to do so now. Damn you all, all 2 of you.
The sad fact is that my comment about yesterday in my last post was shoe related. Hanon were releasing a new pair of trainers that I really wanted to get, New Balance x UNDFTD Desert Storm CM1500s.
Pic nabbed from Hanon
Anyway, I knew these were going to be released on Saturday. I phoned them up on Wednesday to ask how many pairs they'd have - they told me 1 UK9 which had already been reserved for a member of staff, and 1 UK10, and they were being released at 10am on Saturday. So I had to hope that I could get on their site quick enough to buy that single pair in a UK10 before it sold. To cut a long, tedious and awful story short, I was out at the pub on Friday afternoon and, slightly inebriated, I phoned Hanon again to double check. Turns out that they also had 2 pairs in a UK9.5 which they'd neglected to tell me about previously, and they also let me order one over the phone. I was up at 10am on Saturday anyway and watched the site to see what happened; within 15 minutes everything below a UK11 had sold out. So, glad I called. Drunkenness has its benefits.
I have been attempting to do a bit of uni work, or rather work on my dissertation of late. My primary problem is the lab setup in uni - I need to install Windows XP on a computer, then download a few random bits and pieces onto it, go to a few websites etc, basically emulate what a hard drive that could be taken out of a home PC would look like. My problem is the uni lab I use has an incredibly frustrating setup, whereby connecting a new computer to the internet is an arduous chore. And it's been driving me up the sodding wall, to the extent that I brought a hard drive home from the lab which I'd already installed Windows on, only to find that I don't have any sodding working computers lying around that can take an IDE drive.
But enough of that part. Tonight, I decided I really ought to perform a quick experiment with hard drives. At present, I have pretty much no understanding of how the drive communicates between the heads and the cache. There must be a low level instruction set on that drive which deals with the requests to read and write. What I wondered was if this instruction set differs between different drive types; ie could you take the circuit board from a SATA drive, dump it on an IDE drive, and would it be able to read and write. Well the first problem I've run into is the fact that I don't have a single spare unused SATA drive in my house, something I need to remedy quite quickly. I'm sure I'll encounter various other problems once I actually have some hardware to work on. Instead, I experimented with something I was fairly sure was doomed to fail; I changed the circuit boards between two hard drives, but the drives were quite different, aside from the vendor (both Maxtor). The first drive (model number 86480D6) is a 13328 cylinder drive with 15 heads, it's a 6GB drive with a 256KB buffer. The second drive (model number 4D040H2) is 16383 cylinders with 16 heads, 40GB capacity and a 2MB buffer. The 6GB drive is claimed to be 5200RPM as opposed to the 5400RPM of the 40GB drive, but frankly I'm assuming they're both going to be 5400RPM cause I've never heard of a 5200RPM drive before this.
So, two drives, very very different configurations; the point in exchanging the circuit boards was simply to see if this would work. Now, theoretically at least, there's absolutely no reason why switching the boards between 2 identical drives wouldn't work. But since I don't actually know how the drive communicates internally, I don't know what precisely would have to change the mess with this. As you can probably guess, the drives didn't work with the switched board. Well, that's a mild assumption on my part - the 40GB drive didn't work with the 6GB drive's logic board. The 6GB drive is the one I tore to hell in an earlier post on here, so I didn't even bother trying it. What was interesting though was the noise the 40GB drive made when it was trying to seek on the 6GB board. Clear clicking sound, very very much like what you'd hear when your hard drive is dying. So, a bit more research for me to do there, but I do wonder if there's something related to what was causing the drive to be unreadable, and one of the more common forms of hard drive failure, since that clicking sound is something a lot of people will tell you to look out for. Might just be a complete coincidence, or then again it might be completely unrelated - simply the heads attempting to move to a certain location but being unable to because they're calibrated/configured for something else? I don't have the slightest clue, I don't even know if that's possible come to that. Hence, still some work to do there.
Perhaps also obvious is the fact that different manufacturers use different layouts for their hardware. I have a Seagate drive here that I pulled out one of my old computers, another old IDE drive, 7200RPM 250GB. The location of the connectors for the heads on the Seagate drive is different from the Maxtor drives; it's hardly a massive assumption to say there's probably no industry standard for hard drive hardware layout, but then it is something that I find a bit curious - when you're dealing with response times as small as this with performance gains for drives, does the layout make any significant difference? I'd assume not, but I don't know. I am quite tempted to open the Seagate drive up just to do a comparison with the Maxtor one I took apart earlier, but I've got no clue what's on the drive, so I'll need to back it up before I consider destroying it.
So, next step is to switch the logic boards between SATA and IDE and see how badly that fucks everything up. Then it's switching between 2 identical IDE drives, and being immensely confused if they don't work perfectly. At the same time, I need to actually get that uni system working so I can set up my initial XP disk, which then needs to be copied onto another stack of hard drives. Then I can start to break the sods!
I do have one other nagging worry about the way I'm doing this. To attempt to save myself a bit of time, I've decided not to bother installing Windows manually on 20-odd drives. Instead I'm configuring 1 the way I want it, then making a forensic image of it through the wonders of dcfldd, and then just copying that image onto all the other drives. The problem is I don't know the state of these drives I'm mapping this image onto - will being partitioned/unpartitioned mess with this, if they already have data on them will I find remnants of stuff I shouldn't be finding which will affect my results, etc. In theory every disk I'm using is blank, Systems Support said they were going to run DBAN on them all before handing them over to me. Well, the one disk I've tried to use so far wasn't wiped. So I really do have an unknown factor to deal with now in the contents of the drives, and if I need to start partitioning all these drives then that's just another massive time consuming chore to go through. Pain in the arse.
Oh hello there :: 12/5/10 ~20:45 :: Comments: 0 category: random
Well then! My exams are over. Uni is not, however; I still have my dissertation to do. Which will be fun, but my first challenge is to get one of the sodding computers in the lab at uni to actually connect to the network. Not as easy as it ought to be. But I shan't bother worrying about that too much for now. I'm pretty much on holiday from now til I either get a job or accidentally fall onto the tracks at the station and get punched in the face by a train. With a bit of luck, the former is more likely. I do need to start applying for jobs again sometime soon, I had planned to wait until the end of the week/start of next week to start looking again, but in reality I might start earlier; I had forgotten how fucking boring having nothing to do it. There's only so much shite I can post on twitter and read on the net before I'm just sitting about doing nothing. Still, trying to keep busy, and utterly losing track of stuff in the process. Trying to get some stuff planned for the summer, will see where that goes though. Current plans are a trip down to Alton Towers with a few friends, possibly followed by a second trip in August with people from my old job, if that ever happens. Also hopefully be going to Amsterdam for a mate's 21st next month, and I'm still considering a trip to Trondheim at some stage. All depends on money really though, this not working thing is getting really rather tiresome. My US bank account has been drained somewhat, primarily cause I used it to pay for my 2nd tattoo, which cost a rather harsh £200.
I'd wanted to get a second tattoo for absolutely ages, finally just made up my mind on what I wanted and got it done. I went to a far more professional place than where I got my first one done. First one was done at Bodyline, where I seem to remember sitting in a room that could easily have passed off as someone's living room, then just leaning over the back of an office chair for 45 mins while I had needles shoved in my back. I didn't take proper care of my first one, it's a little bit faded and cracked because of it; will quite likely get it fixed up over the summer if it isn't going to cost too much. My new one, I went to Blancolo (warning - flash website with loud music which can't be turned off, be prepared to vomit). Felt like a far more professional place, the room was much more like a sterile hospital-ish room, with dentist-esque chairs. Was sat sideways against one of these chairs leaning against the backrest for about an hour and 15 mins for this one, which was alright except my leg kept falling asleep. I'd made a point in past of saying that getting a tattoo doesn't really hurt, it's quite an uncomfortable experience but not sore. From my latest experience, it's a fair bit worse than I remembered it being - I'd still not say it's painful, but it's really quite incredibly uncomfortable at times. Although having said that, I already want to get another one. The two I have are both on my back, one on each shoulderblade. If I were to get another, I have not the faintest clue where I'd get it. I do quite like the idea of getting one from the top of my shoulder down towards my chest, but buggered if I can find a design that'd look even remotely decent for what I want. Also just don't know if I'd bother anyway, in all reality. Only other place I'd consider is the top of my arms, but again, don't know if I actually want that. It'll probably be quite a long time before I get another regardless, if I do. I'll stick to just getting my old one fixed up. Which means another 2 weeks of rubbing pretty horrible nappy rash ointment into my back, blah.
Anyway, that aside, I've done really fuck all lately, my life has been excruciatingly boring. Uni really took over for the past while, even though on reflection I spent a hell of a lot more time procrastinating than actually working. Something that is bound to be reflected in my exam results, but as long as I've passed them I genuinely couldn't care less. I've bought countless pairs of shoes, I actually do plan on updating my shoe page at some stage in my life, it's just working up the motivation to photograph the bastards. And even though I use a basic template for the individual pages so there's really not a lot of typing to do, I just can't be arsed at the moment. Speaking of coding, I had a go at configuring a Captcha for this so I could get comments to go up instantly, but I've run into a few wee problems which I'll try to iron out over the course of the next week or so. Not entirely sure if I actually want to do it too, it might get rid of the spam but I still don't know if I want comments going up instantly, some of you people know far too much about me for me to not want to vet/ignore some of them. Excuse my paranoia, but it's most certainly justified.
Not much else to add for right now, this post is more just to try to kick myself into posting again. I shall have a post to make on Saturday which will either be happy or angry depending on events of Saturday morning, and I have a few other things going on this week that I might ramble on about at the weekend too, but I'm not getting ahead of myself. Plus, if I wrote about them now, I'd have sod all to post at the weekend, which would just be boring. Much like this!
Pointless update ii :: 4/5/10 ~01:00 :: Comments: 0 category: random
Two exams incoming. First one is on Thursday, then one on the following Tuesday. Then, with a little bit of luck, I have no more exams ever. In my whole life. I know that's quite possibly complete nonsense, I'll need to do courses etc which will be examined if I'm working in the computing industry, but for now it's the thought that's stopping me from going and drowning myself in a shallow puddle. After that, I shall update this. I have ravings about shoes to do (I might even finish my shoe page at long last). And other stuff. Self indulgent, but surely that's what a blog is for. Bollocks to being informative.
Anyway. Have a video, which Gemma showed me, and I quite like it. Wear a seatbelt.
Pointless update :: 16/04/10 ~19:00 :: Comments: 1 category: random
I'll start properly using this again quite soon I imagine. Right now I'm a bit too snowed under with uni work, job interviews, and dealing with other stuff to bother posting inane rubbish. But I shall share with you all why I don't have comments instantly go up on my website when they're made:
I appreciate that using a Captcha or similar would most likely remove this problem, but I'm too lazy for such things.
London :: 28/03/10 ~12:45 :: Comments: 0 category: random
An update! I do remember I have this website after all.
I got home yesterday from London, was down there for a couple of days just to get away from Glasgow. I do quite like London in all honesty; I have frequently said I hate the city, and the reasons I state are still true. It's really dirty, it's ridiculously busy, it's not particularly safe*, it's bloody expensive, and it's got some really quite scary people in it. No one, regardless of anything, should be allowed to wear pink jeans on the subway.
Anyway, I went round a few shops as you do. In particular I went to Dover Street Market, an 'upmarket' (read: thoroughly pretentious) clothes shop, and the Bape shop. Dover Street Market was quite an interesting experience, to say the least. I saw some nice stuff there, by a few brands I particularly like, but I'd need to be pretty much insane to buy anything from there. A Neighborhood x Fragment hoody is not worth £275. In fact, no item of clothing not made of the skin of a dead cow is worth £275. It was entertaining if nothing else. The Bape shop was more normal, very much like every other trandy designer shop in that it's a fairly small shop with bugger all in it (a rack along 2 of the walls and a table in the middle, that's pretty much it.). Those 2 shops scared me enough though, I wandered round normal places like Selfridges after that.
Speaking of Selfridges, they have a section in there for Edible, home of the ants from my last blog post. Couldn't resist investigating what was there. The oven-baked tarantula is smaller than I expected it to be, but I wouldn't in a million years consider eating them, it looked fucking terrifying. They didn't have too much stuff there, I was quite tempted by a wee bottle of vodka with a scorpion in it (I appear to have developed a taste for vodka lately, after hating the stuff for years. No idea why.) but in the end I opted for a packet of BBQ worms and a scorpion in toffee. The worms, well, I'd not advise people to try them. They don't really taste of anything, and they have a pretty vile aftertaste. I think that's more the BBQ flavouring than anything else though really. I've not had the scorpion yet, but I liked the last one I ate, so it should be good.
So the main point of why I went to London in the first place was to go somewhere I'd been planning on visiting for absolutely ages - Highgate Cemetery. It was pretty quiet when I was there, maybe only 10/15 other people wandering the whole place. Admittedly I've not heard of the majority of the more notable people who are interred there, and buggered if I could find Faraday's grave, but it was an interesting afternoon all the same. Have some photos. I took about 30 decent photos in all, which I'll stick up on Facebook. A few choice ones for here though.
Douglas Adams
Karl Marx
George Eliot
Patrick Caulfield
Random graves
*On Thursday, a kid got stabbed in the middle of the platform at Victoria station, in front of about 14 million people. Well that's a bit fucked up, isn't it? On top of that, on Friday night at about half 12 I got slightly lost walking home, and ended up walking past Bedford Square, which was cordoned off and guarded because someone had been murdered there earlier that night. Hmm.
Finally, Twitter is being an arse for me and keeps deleting posts. I'm leaving that twitter feed there for now because I do actually quite like it, but I might take it down and just stop using the service if it keeps this nonsense up.
What The Fuck Am I Doing? :: 27/02/10 ~02:30 :: Comments: 4 category: random
Since the majority of people who read this (all 4 or 5 of you) are people who know me, I'm sure you're aware that I'm adventurous when it comes to food. I'm more than happy to try anything once, and I tend to like most things. Aside from olives. Good god those are vile.
Anyway. A fair while ago now, I placed an order with Edible for some bits and pieces. I ordered chocolate covered ants and a chocolate covered scorpion, which I ate quite a while ago; they were good, but the chocolate was pretty thick so it was hard to taste a lot else. The ants were very salty though. Anyway, one of the other things I ordered was a tub of giant toasted ants. This tub has been sitting on my desk ever since, because I was quite frankly scared to open it. Tonight, I thought I'd give them a go!
Unlike what the website shows, it's actually a screw-top tub they come in, not a bag:
I won't apologise for the blurry picture, you should expect it by now. Anyway, allow me to recite the text on the label:
The world's larget ant
Nutty bsacon like taste (I disagree)
Rare delicacy of the Guane Indians (can't be that rare if you can buy it online!)
The back of the label reads: Giant toasted ants are one of the largest speciest of ant to be found in the world. They are harvested in Colombia by the Guane Indians, during the short rainy season between March and June. They are then toasted in a mud pot over an open fire. The Guane Indians believe that these ants have youth giving and aphrodisiac properties. Giant toasted ants taste similar to crispt bacon with an added earthy spicy kick.
And, here they are. This photo is fucking awful. Not quality wise, but seriously, when I unscrewed the cap and I saw this, I was genuinely put off.
I can only describe this as a cluster of dead gigantic ants. The chocolate covered ants I ordered off the place were big, but not as big as these scary bastards. And the smell when you open the container is ungodly. It does smell oddly familiar but I can't place it at all. I was absolutely petrified to tip these things into my hand, or even to pick one out of there, I had to use a spoon to pull one out. And I'm really not usually terribly squeamish about this sort of thing (spiders aside), but by god it took me time to work up the will to eat one of these.
There's one sitting next to a 10p coin, so you can get a rough idea of what size these things are. So, I ate that. I do take issue with their taste descriptions; nutty, I can kind of see where they're coming from. Bacon? No, not anywhere near. They have a distinct taste, but it's very difficult to compare it to much. They're certainly not as salty as the chocolate covered ones, even though it's the same insect. Not sure what to make of that, really. They're also quite dry and flaky, it does kind of feel like chewing dry popcorn. And you do need a drink to wash some of the flakiness away. I think what put me off most was the fact that you can entirely recognise these things. I tried to take a lot of photos of the ant on the plate to show the detail, but my photos all suck. But the head is clear, you can see the weird little pincer-things where its mouth are, the tips of its legs and stuff. It's a bit horrific really.
That awful little bit above this post is a live Twitter feed for me. I've decided to put it up there for 2 reasons - firstly, because I want to start using Twitter a bit more but I have sod all impetus to do so, and secondly because there's occasionally stuff I want to put up on here but it's entirely too insignificant or unworthwhile to be a blog post of it's own. And I refuse to put stuff like that in my Facebook status either, since I have people like my old boss on there, who I'd rather had at least the impression that I'm professional and intelligent. Even if that's a massive pretence at times! But yeah, microblogging I think is the wonderful new term for it? Whatever, it's an awful idea, so I'm using it.
I might take the twitter feed down eventually. Personally I don't like it at all, it's clunky and it's in the way, but with my site layout there's really nowhere better and obvious for it, and I refuse to change my layout for the sake of bloody twitter. But also if this doesn't actually encourage me to start using it again, then I'll probably just remove it from here. As it is, prior to the update on there about me putting this up tonight, the 4th post (I'm sorry, I will not call them 'tweets') was 10 days ago. I follow a few people on Twitter, the updates I actually check for most are to do with shoe/clothing places sadly though. I'm still a bit derisory towards Twitter in general, it's a good idea in theory but a horrible one in reality, and I don't care about a lot of the stuff I see flicking up there every day. But I can see its benefits, and I'm sure I'll fill it with complete crap before long. So yes, this is a trial run for it really.
In other irrelevant news, I'm going to once again attempt to update my shoes page in a while. I've got new stuff to add, and I need to get the rest of them sodding photographed. I'll also try to get another post up about file recovery when I can find the motivation to go through all that again.
Addendum: Dissecting a Hard Drive :: 20/02/10 ~19:15 :: Comments: 0 category: random/tech
Someone asked me if the drive I took apart still works after I put it back together. No, it doesn't. Not least because the platters must be totally unreadable and scratched to hell, but I also took no antistatic precautions before taking it apart, I would ahrdly call my keyboard tray (where all those photos were taken) a clean surface, and also perhaps because the small screw I mentioned that was in the side of the heads which I couldn't photograph - that screw is still sitting on my desk. I had no idea what it was there for, but I assume it was there for a reason.
I'm still waiting on my contact within the police to figure out the precise scope of my dissertation, but I have until Friday to send a list of questions to my uni department to be forwarded on to the police, so I can try to figure out a few things about what I'm actually doing for them here. The questions I've asked are pretty specific, stuff like do they want me to look at logical or physical failures in particular or look at both, do they want me to look at external drives (but not flash memory since that's off topic anyway), and what exactly they expect me to be able to recover from a failed drive. I do have a few concerns about what they are looking for from this research. If they expect me to take a failed, broken drive and somehow resurrect a complete, working filesystem... well that's a lovely world of rainbows and unicorns they're living in. I also asked if they could let me know what the most common types of failure they see are, if they actually know. The other thing I'm worried about is logical failures; if they want me to try to recover data from a logical failure, then I need some actual failed drives to work with. I have no idea if it's possible to force logical failures on a drive, but moreover, if it is possible to do so, then I'll know exactly what's wrong with the drive and be able to workaround it appropriately. I guess that could be one possible use of the research though, if they want me to establish some kind of guidelines for identifying what possible failures there could have been and what you can do to work around them. But I guess i have to wait and see.
Updated my music page with a bit of ramblings about the 2 gigs I've been to this month.
Dissecting a Hard Drive :: 17/02/10 ~00:15 :: Comments: 0 category: random/tech
Following on somewhat from my last post about my dissertation, I decided to destroy an old drive I had floating around. I got a proper screwdriver set today so I can take apart drives, since hdds tend to use torx screws and I had sod all to use on those. The drive I'm using here is an old Maxtor IDE drive, this particular one is a 6gb 3.5" one (model number is 86480D6 if you particularly care). And here it is!
Hadn't really thought to take photos before I started this, so I'd already taken the screws out there. There were 2 screws which had labels covering them in the middle. I would appear to have voided the warranty by tearing them. Oh noes.
So, there you go, just a standard (if very old) hard drive. The fact that it's IDE doesn't really affect anything, since the mechanics of data storage on a hard drive are irrelevant regardless of the connector type; it's still got platters and heads. This drive is pretty old, so the technology is a bit dated.
The board is a standard printed circuit board, there's not much of interest on there. As part of my work, I'm planning on trying to switch individual components about a bit from drive to drive, or at the very least the connectors. Bit worried about doing it though since this uses a lot of very tiny components; soldering on the base of one of these is going to ruin it because there's just no way I'm not gonna end up bridging over connectors, which will either make it just completely fail or just plain not even start up, I would imagine. The connectors at least are harder to mess up. That's a worry for later either way, since I don't have a soldering iron right now anyway, or the money to spend on one. I'll probably do a bit of research on my own into the different drive connector types, IDE/SATA/SAS/FC etc. I mean, the hardware has to be very different on the boards I'd assume since they're going to buffer and read/write and cache in different ways. But that's an assumption on my part. Not terribly relevant to my dissertation, but something I'd like to know more about anyway.
Not the greatest of photos that, you can't get any sense of depth. But that's the metal casing removed from it, exposing the platters and the heads. There were I think 3 platters in the drive (going from memory here since I've put it back together now). For the record, there are 3 screws on the disk on top of the platters there that hold the platters in. Those screws were pretty tight, and bloody hard to get any purchase on because every time I tried to turn the screwdriver, it just spun the platters. In the end I had to physically press on that metal disc to get it to keep still, which put a bit too much pressure on it. There are metal discs like that one at the top between each platter, since the heads need to fit between the platters. The noise of the platters spinning while the metal disc grinded into the top two platters was absolutely horrific. Anyway. There's a small circuit board-esque thing (technical, I know) at the top left of the drive there. That has pins on the back through the metal to the main circuit board, which looks to be the only way the drive actually communicates. I'd imagine that has to be a fairly common point of failure for drives really, particularly with the amount of movement that the drive heads are gonna see, and they're connected to that component by one of those awful thin plastic-y cables. Although to be fair, those cables are generally bloody resilient in my experience, so who knows.
That's the back of the main circuit board. As you can see from that, it's intricate and soldering is going to be pretty delicate work. The row of connections down the left side is where the connectors from that component connected to the drive heads connects. My god, I used too many variants of 'connect' in that sentence. Someone get me a thesaurus. But anyway, the board is just screwed down to the drive chassis. The only other point of connection between the circuit and the actual drive is those four parallel lines at the top left. No idea what they do, I would have to assume it's something to do with power, but I have no clue at all. It's actually quite surprising how uncomplex a hard drive is, at a hardware level anyway. I mean, the electronics behind it are really quite bloody impressive when you consider what this lump of metal actually is, but there's not an awful lot going on.
So this is the internals again. I took the top platter off - those two metal rings above it are the blocks that go between the platters to keep them apart. I apologise for the disgustingness of that top platter, I ended up having to put my fingers on it to unscrew it, and as with all these things, the second you touch them they get horrendously dirty, even if your hands are reasonably clean. The head itself has a single screw on it, on the right side of it (you can't see it in the photo). I unscrewed it and it did sod all; I have no idea how to disassemble that part of the chassis without trying to force it. Clearly there is a way, but a lot of it uses those awful metal studs which are entirely not designed to ever be removed, so I don't know if a random person can actually do much to that. As it stands though, the head obviously only moves as far as the platters go, which means it's impossible to get the 2nd platter out the drive without snapping the heads off. Not that I would really imagine there's anything interesting below there. I'd quite like to see what's at the base of it, if there's any electronics underneath the platters. The one thing that I'm curious about that I've not identified is just what controls the motor for the drive, but that's going to be one of the components on the main circuit board, and I don't know anything about that kind of thing nowadays - last time I played about with components, it was just resistors, capacitors, gates and LEDs.
So, that's a hard drive! Quite interesting really, or at least in my opinion. You may disagree, but you're wrong to do so. One of the main reasons I did this was because I wanted to identify, or I should say try to identify, hardware points on the drive that look like they'd be most at risk if the drive were to fail. From this, the only two obvious ones would be the heads (because they're bloody delicate), and that component by the heads. Of course, if the drive isn't obviously physically damaged, these are two components that are next to impossible to replace, so it'd be hard to really know what to do there anyway. One thing that I am very curious about now though is physical damage by stamping on a drive. The metal plate at the top is fairly thin, so if you bent that in you'd probably destroy the top platter and the heads, but the lower platters would be absolutely fine, and you'd have recoverable data to a degree. Additionally, if you stamp on a drive/throw it about/whatever, cause physical damage that only affects the main circuit board - that's clearly incredibly easy to replace, so I'd not be surprised at all to find that in quite a few cases, a drive chucked out a window or whacked a couple of times with a hammer will be fully recoverable. Partly because I'd assume a lot of people who want to destroy it will not understand the workings of a hard drive, they won't think to open it and wreck the heads and the platters; they'll see a circuit board on the back of it, and try to wreck that instead. Although it obviously depends on the severity of the damage to whether anything is recoverable anyway, but I'm quite looking forward to experimenting with this.
I spoke to the Systems Support guys at my uni, and they've told me they'll try to pull a stack of drives together for me, since they refurbish at least one lab every summer and they're not allowed to just throw out the drives anyway, so apparently they have boxes of old ones just sitting there anyway. They've told me that they'll have to run DBAN or whatever on them themselves since they might have sensitive information on them, which saves me from doing it myself anyway (I had planned on fully wiping every drive I use anyway, then a clean install of an OS and some files and applications, just so I know precisely what's on the disk and what I can expect to recover). So I'm hoping to have at least 15-20 drives to play with, probably 8 or 10 of which will get physically destroyed.
I officially have my dissertation topic for my Masters degee now. I shall be doing a forensic investigation into data recovery of failed hard drives. Which, in my opinion, sounds just awesome.
I had hoped to get this topic, I've already planned quite extensively what I wanted to do for it, perhaps a bit overzealously; the prospect of breaking hard drives is just a bit too fun. Although I have had to rein myself in a little bit from my original plan - initially, I had simply wanted to take a bunch of hard drives, smash them in fun ways (from being stamped on to some more impractical methods: using a high powered laser in the Physics department to burn the hell out of one, seeing if I could find a firing range and shooting one, and dousing one in some fairly caustic chemicals) and then see if you can still read anything off them.
In reality, while I will still do a bit of this - frankly I'm not going to give up a free opportunity to set a hard drive on fire and just see what happens - I'm shifting my focus away from physical failure to logical failure. Primarily because, well, if a hard drive is physically damaged, it is destroyed. If the platters are smashed to pieces, then...well. I amn't getting information out of that. Although I am very much looking forward to one aspect which this has brought forward that I hadn't thought of until earlier today; I'm going to destroy the circuit board from one, and then try to remove the platters and the head, and reattach them to a known working drive. If only I'd done a EEE degree, I'd actually be qualified for shit like that, it's been many years since I last played with a soldering iron and a circuit board, but I'm certainly going to give it a go. If nothing else, I ought to know hard drives inside and out after this.
Background research will even be quite fun. I need to disassemble a hard drive (not physically), I need to know the components and the weak spots, the most common causes of physical and logical failure, and how professional data recovery companies do it. Can't wait to get stuck into this, to be honest.
I spoke to Systems Support at my uni today, and they're going to blank between 15 and 20 drives for me if they can, which I'll be able to do what I like to. Certainly some are going to suffer physical damage. For the sake of good, scientific research, I need to repeat these failures more than once so I know my results aren't flukes/unrepeatable, so in the end I do imagine I'm going to need closer to 30 drives. But certainly a few plans for destroying them are on the cards: stamping/taking a hammer to them, sticking them through the dishwasher, setting them on fire, taking a dirty big magnet to them, and anything else that seems amusing and fun. I feel like a menacing little boy who's just been given a hammer and let loose in a greenhouse, but it's in the name of science, ergo it's totally acceptable.
Of course, I expect (I'd say I know, but I really don't I suppose) that every one of the hard drives that I damage physically is just going to be absolutely destroyed. The circuit board is replacable or repairable, as are individual components, but as soon as you damage the platters, that's gonna be it. Of course, that's a total assumption on my part, but I honestly can't see any concievable way for a hard drive to get smacked in the face with a hammer and still have readable data, when you consider that dust on the platters can ruin them. We're talking analogue electronics that, in order to work, have to deal with accurate distances in microns, and have to be serviced in proper clean rooms. Obviously I can't replicate the correct environment at uni or at home, but I'll enjoy trying.
I think just the research behind the project is going to be interesting though. I'm well aware that hard drives can fail, obviously. I've suffered through many a failed drive in the past, and in fact we've just seen a [suspected] failed drive at uni just yesterday. I've got absolutely no idea what the primary cause of failure for a hard drive is, or even really just what it is that can go wrong with it. I just know they can randomly break, and if they do I've always just assumed that they're dead, but I'd love to know if I can actually repair one.
I've got a few old computers floating around in the house, including an ancient 10gb drive. I reckon I'll take that properly apart if I can and have a prod about in it. Not easy to do, I seem to remember trying to take a hard drive apart when I worked for Sun and it needed a few special screwdrivers and the like. But no harm in trying. I'm fairly sure I'm not going to be able to get accurate failure rates or faults from the hard drive manufacturers themselves, but there are bound to be some studies and statistics around somewhere.
Anyway, enough of that. I shall probably give updates about this sporadically as I work on it, if I think anything is particularly interesting. And obviously I'll post photos of a hard drive on fire at some stage.
I'm going to my first gig o' the year on Sunday night, Assemblage 23. A bit worried about it, I'm not sure what it'll be like. Venue I've never been to, a type of music that I've not been to a gig for in a very long time, artist that yeah I do really like, but I've not even listened to his new album all the way through yet because I've not really felt like listening to that sort of stuff for a while. It should be fun though, plus it gets me out for a bit. I'm far more excited about seeing Lostprophets on the 19th through in Edinburgh. Their new album has really grown on me, the setlist for the tour looks pretty decent (although I would have loved 4:AM Forever and ...And She Told Me To Leave to be in it), and I've been listening to not much else other than them lately. But A23 ought to be decent at least.
Finally, if you're ever walking around in Glasgow, you always see and hear some weird stuff. For example, there was a slightly unusual busker on Buchanan St today; she was playing a full sized harp. But I was walking to uni this morning, and I walked past a pair of fairly smart, professional looking guys, and overheard one of them say to the other, "So what? It's Glasgow. No one here gives a fuck.". I have no idea what they were talking about, but I laughed out loud at that. It's rather true.
Windows Deleted File Recovery - Part 1.5, plus whinging :: 9/02/10 ~02:25 :: Comments: 0 category: tech stuff/random
Not the full update as promised, since I've not got round to that yet, that's for another day. This is just a quick note on a tool for users of Vista or Win7 called ShadowExplorer. We had a guest lecturer in one of our classes last week who brought up this tool. To be brief, there's an in-built function in Win7 and Vista (all versions of both, apparently), called Volume Shadow Copy Service. Basically, this service is enabled by default on systems, and what it does is to periodically take snapshots of the hard drive. It takes up roughly 10% of the disk space available on the system, and it keeps the snapshots until it runs out of space; it works on a first-in-first-out basis, so it deletes the oldest to make room for the newest. There's no default tool in Windows to actually use this service, unless you're using one of the high end versions of the OS. However, ShadowExplorer is free, and an excellent little program.
I'm not 100% sure on what each snapshot actually shows. The guy who talked to us kind of implied that all they stored was the changed filed from the previous snapshot, which would make sense as there are about 35/40 snapshots there, and a full image of the OS each time is going to be a spectacular waste of disk space. However, each snapshot does appear to contain the complete directory structure for the drive. I have no idea where these snapshots are actually saved, I don't have the slightest clue how the whole thing works either. The closest I can come to a guess would be that it works in the same way as mounting a logical drive, and that these snapshots are each a file held in a directory somewhere buried deep in System32. If anyone knows any more info about it, let me know! You can have a poke about in the command prompt, although it has to be run as an admin.
That's the output from running vssadmin list shadows. Clearly the location is there, but I have no idea what that actually translates to in the Windows directory heirarchy. Could be anywhere as far as I'm concerned.
A little bit of further poking about with vssadmin gives a fairly scary bit of info:
I have a 1 terrabyte hard drive as my primary drive in this box. So 10%, give or take, should be ~100gb. My system has actually allocated a total of almost 140gb of available disk space to this service. Pretty terrifying waste of space, when you consider that if you don't have a high end version of Windows, there's actually very little you can do with these snapshots, at least not without third part software. In fact, the fact that this service is so hidden away it a bit ridiculous when it's using such a formidable chunk of disk space.
Either way though, it's a bloody powerful tool, and if you want to recover old files, well, then it's absolutely perfect. I've just used it for that specific purpose. I'm not sure what precisely causes it to create a new snapshot; the oldest one on my system is from January 14th, but I have a good 7 or 8 different snapshots from January 16th. I do have several created from January 31st, which is the day I ran Memtest on my system as well as installing new graphics drivers, so I assume hardware and driver changes must trigger something. The constant stream dated January 16th are all from late at night, which coincides with the first post I made on this topic; perhaps the hardware change of inserting a USB device caused the system to create a snapshot. Can't say for sure, because I can't be bothered to test that right now (it's late), but I'd reckon that's a fair guess.
But yes. Deleted file recovery on Vista or Win7? Download ShadowExplorer.
I shall end this on a note of irritable complaining. I plugged my iPod touch into my PC this evening (I don't think I bothered to mention that I got it fixed a while back now, at the start of January), and iTunes kindly informed me that there's a new software update for the iPod available, v 3.1.3. I hadn't updated iTunes to the latest version of that which came out I think last week, but ignoring that, I spent an hour (rubbish internet connection, the file is barely over 250mb) downloading the update and then about 25 minutes installing, only for it to bail out right at the last minute with an error. Thankfully I backed up my iPod before installing the update, so I still have all my email and network settings on there, but I have lost all my apps and all my music from it. What a gigantic pain in the arse. Up yours, Steve Jobs.
Job-hunting :: 3/02/10 ~18:30 :: Comments: 0 category: random
Hourly Comics has drawn to a close again for another undetermined length of time. I find it bloody strange that I read it; I mean, it's a comic strip of someone's life for a short period of time where really not much happens. I think it's more of a reflection of how bored I can be online rather than the content of the comic though.
I've started to apply for jobs, at long last. I've been meaning to do it for quite a while now, but with uni work and whatever else, I've not got round to it until the start of last week or so. Initially I was planning to be somewhat picky about what I applied for; I have no real intention of being stuck doing a crap job for ages. But when it comes down to it, with the limited number of opportunities available at present, I don't think I can afford the luxury of being picky. Even if it means just taking whatever I can get for a couple of years til I find something more interesting/suitable. Still, I don't graduate until November, my dissertation isn't due til September, so I do have a good few months yet before I really need to be starting work. Not going to let that become a reason to put it off though, as is my general contrivance. I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing really, all my previous work experience aside from one job has been part time or full time retail work in the city centre, which in all fairness is not an occupation that needs a massive amount of effort to get into. I've never had to have a properly solid CV ready, or had to write proper, expansive cover letters, but now I do and I'm somewhat concerned that I'm just making an arse of myself. I've never been a fan of writing lists of why I'm so excellent that I deserve a job (I'm far more keen on self-detriment), so it doesn't really come naturally. Although I do interview well, or at least I like to think so. So we'll see what happens.
The hardest part is where to actually look for jobs. I've been looking at company websites for vacancies and graudate schemes, then the usual job websites like Monster etc. I don't know what other avenues are really available. The university does have a careers department for helping students, but from my experience of it, it is absolutely useless. And most of the jobs I find on websites aren't entry level positions, they're looking for 5+ years of experience, which rules me out rather quickly. Shame there are so few decent graduate schemes on the go, unless I want to work for a merchant bank or BT.
Anyway. In irrelevant news, I'm currently reading What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver. It is a fairly highly acclaimed book of short stories. I have read 11 of the 17 stories in it so far, not reached the title one yet though. My current opinion on this book is that it's shit. It's really quite rare that I find a book to be crap, primarily cause I tend to be more discerning when I actually pick the book, rather than just read anything and see if it's any good. But this, urgh. The stories are just so pointless. They lead to nowhere, the characters are irrelevant people who I just couldn't care less about, and at least 2 of the stories I've read and just thought 'What the fuck even happened there?'. To take an example, one story begins with a bit of background about 2 guys who have been best friends since they were kids. Now they're adults, one of them gets married, then the other finds someone too. The one who is married suddenly changes into some sort of brooding, silent character, and then the two guys go out for a drive. On their way home, they come across two girls cycling, and try to chat them up from their car (I think). The girls laugh them off, so the guys drive ahead and get out the car to meet up with them later. The girls come along and go away up a hill, accusing the guys of following them. The guys then follow them up the hill, and the married one apparently kills the two girls with a rock.
End of story.
What the fuck is that. Really, what the hell. There's no explanation for why he did it, there's no explanation for why the guy suddenly goes from happy married man to psychopath, there's no implication that the other guy, who's been his best friend for years, doesn't try to stop this. I am utterly bemused by what people see in this.
Of course, I'm not a literary critic. I'm fairly sure there's all kinds of subtle metaphors and social commentaries flowing through this which I'm clearly entirely oblivious to. But the fact is that I'm sure 95% of people who read do so, like me, for pleasure. And I'd have preferred a decent story with decent characters to this art-house shite.
New Term! :: 25/01/10 ~18:30 :: Comments: 1 category: random
I shall begin this with a single word review of Motion City Soundtrack's latest album, My Dinosaur Life:
Mediocre.
Started back at uni today, for what is looking set to be a thrilling term. Actually I'm probably prejudging this a bit. I've got classes from 2 lecturers who I've never had before: one is a continuation of Research Methods, which last year was just a statistics class, but this semester looks like it might actually be useful. The second is a class called Information Policy & Law, taught by a very angry man, but he at least gives the impression that he knows what he's talking about. Although I now have two 3,000 word essays due in for mid March, which I am intent to actually get through for once with minimal procrastination. One of them I can't really do much about until I get my dissertation topic though, which will hopefully be this week, or next week at the latest. I do have a couple of classes this semester which I'm told are a bit rubbish, but I'll see what happens. But it does look possible, perhaps even likely, that I'm actually only in uni 3 days a week, with tuesdays and fridays off. So, can't complain. Being a student, good times.
In other news, following on from my visit to Woodilee Mental Asylum, I'm planning a trip to the nearby Broomhill Hospital to have a wander through there. Tentative date for that is next Tuesday, but it's dependent on how uni stuff goes over the next week. I certainly want to go sometime quite soon, before the coursework really starts to pile up. I could hold off til summer (or at least til better weather), but I fancy being impulsive. Or as impulsive as this can be, given that I'm planning it. So I'm not being impulsive at all, I'm being impatient. Same thing!
Sarah mentioned today that she's noticed a couple of other places between Glasgow and Edinburgh that could be worth having a look at.
I can see myself getting really quite into this kind of thing. I'm a bit wary about some of it though; Woodilee was different, part of because of what it was, the ruins themselves, there was something just very attractive about the whole place, and the atmosphere of the place. Broomhill doesn't have the same qualities, not least because it's not really a ruin, it's just a derelict building; the hospital was abandoned and put out of use, rather than being knocked down. I don't actually know why either, but most likely guess from recent years would be lack of funding. Broomhill hospital has a certain appeal though, being a hospital it ought to have something of a decent atmosphere about it, and if it's in a similar backdrop to Woodilee then it should still be impressive. One of the things that I don't think I really picked up on that made Woodilee quite so cool has to be how totally isolated it is. Yeah, it's only a 5 minute or so walk from a road, it's barely a mile from Lenzie's train station, it's hardly miles out of the way. But it is still very, very isolated, it's surrounded by trees so you can't see pretty much anything else from the site except for the occasional passing train in the distance. That and it was so still and serene; there was not a noise except the multitude of birds. Til that fucking ice cream van, anyway. Broomhill hospital might be quite similar, but like I say, it's simply an abandoned building. I can't help feeling that one abandoned place must be much like all the rest; sadly I doubt I'll come across many, if any, other places with quite the same appeal as Woodilee. I'll definitely go back there though.
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