Dissertationing :: 12/02/10 ~19:10 :: Comments: 0
category: uni/tech
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.
Lostprophets - ...And She Told Me To Leave