Individual Computers has started a research project with a German university to restore data from disks that were unreadable previously.
Individual Computers is funding a 4-month research project with the
university of applied sciences of Cologne under the supervision of
Prof.
Dr. H. Koch and Prof.
Dr. E. Ehses. New algorithms for interpretation of magnetically
recorded data that compensate for physical effects of media ageing are being
developed.
The goal of the development is a software for the
Catweasel Controller, which allows accessing disks at the lowest level.
The open-source software, which is developed on Windows,
allows combining low-level codecs with filesystems on a graphical
basis. This makes the software easy to use for beginners, and gives
a wide variety of combinations and data manipulation possibilities for
the experienced user. The fully documented plugin-system can be
extended dynamically.
Plugins can be inserted at any stage of the signalling pathway.
On the lowest level, errors of the media can be detected and corrected.
On the highest level, files of operating systems and programs that are
no longer supported can be converted to standard formats that allow easy
import into popular office solutions.
Areas of application include forensic data recovery (securing evidence),
archiving and restoring data to new, durable media, but also reading
and writing disks of home computers, even if they have non-standard
characteristics.
The software will be free. The first version will presumably be
available for download in october 2003. The first screenshots can be
seen here.
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