home.social

#datarecovery — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #datarecovery, aggregated by home.social.

  1. The Verge: This image shut down a US accident database.. “The National Transportation Safety Board disabled its public docket today after realizing an image it released in connection with a 2025 UPS airline crash could be used to reconstruct audio from a cockpit voice recorder — something it’s prohibited by law from doing.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/22/the-verge-this-image-shut-down-a-us-accident-database/
  2. The Verge: This image shut down a US accident database.. “The National Transportation Safety Board disabled its public docket today after realizing an image it released in connection with a 2025 UPS airline crash could be used to reconstruct audio from a cockpit voice recorder — something it’s prohibited by law from doing.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/22/the-verge-this-image-shut-down-a-us-accident-database/
  3. The Verge: This image shut down a US accident database.. “The National Transportation Safety Board disabled its public docket today after realizing an image it released in connection with a 2025 UPS airline crash could be used to reconstruct audio from a cockpit voice recorder — something it’s prohibited by law from doing.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/22/the-verge-this-image-shut-down-a-us-accident-database/
  4. The Verge: This image shut down a US accident database.. “The National Transportation Safety Board disabled its public docket today after realizing an image it released in connection with a 2025 UPS airline crash could be used to reconstruct audio from a cockpit voice recorder — something it’s prohibited by law from doing.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/22/the-verge-this-image-shut-down-a-us-accident-database/
  5. The Verge: This image shut down a US accident database.. “The National Transportation Safety Board disabled its public docket today after realizing an image it released in connection with a 2025 UPS airline crash could be used to reconstruct audio from a cockpit voice recorder — something it’s prohibited by law from doing.”

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/22/the-verge-this-image-shut-down-a-us-accident-database/
  6. How to Recover Deleted Photos on Android

    Learn how to recover deleted photos on Android using proven methods like cloud backup, recycle bin, and recovery tools. Protect your memories today.

    #AndroidSupport #DataRecovery #PhotoBackup #TechSolutions #GooglePhotos #SmartTips

    i2notes.com/2026/05/17/how-to-

  7. Another long shot, but anyone know anything about HDD repair, or anyone that would?

    I've been spending some time trying to do archaeology on my 20+ year old hard disk drives to find out some of the old stuff I've made. This one drive from ~2001 seems to be a mostly dead, and I'm trying to figure out if I can make an image out of it before it's all dead.

    I managed to get the read head off the plate to get a drive unstuck, and managed to read partition table before returning to the "nothing seems to work" again. I managed to `dd` 8k off the drive to read at least the partition table, which seems to be intact.

    Now the disk spins but the read head seems to be just moving back and forth and clanking into the "idle tray" (I don't know what it's called) without touching the disk when it spins now. Is there something I can do with this?

    #datarecovery

  8. CW: Me: I just want to find one photo from my old phone backup. Big Tech: Sure! Just buy a new $1000 phone, restore the 200GB backup for 5 hours, and pray. 🤡 Me: Or... I can just use #Keepita and open it on my PC in seconds. Big Tech:
  9. CW: Me: I just want to find one photo from my old phone backup. Big Tech: Sure! Just buy a new $1000 phone, restore the 200GB backup for 5 hours, and pray. 🤡 Me: Or... I can just use #Keepita and open it on my PC in seconds. Big Tech:
  10. CW: Me: I just want to find one photo from my old phone backup. Big Tech: Sure! Just buy a new $1000 phone, restore the 200GB backup for 5 hours, and pray. 🤡 Me: Or... I can just use #Keepita and open it on my PC in seconds. Big Tech:
  11. CW: Me: I just want to find one photo from my old phone backup. Big Tech: Sure! Just buy a new $1000 phone, restore the 200GB backup for 5 hours, and pray. 🤡 Me: Or... I can just use #Keepita and open it on my PC in seconds. Big Tech:
  12. Ever wondered what’s actually hidden inside your phone backups?

    We’re diving deep into mobile forensics, data recovery, and tech tips on our blog. Whether you're on Team Samsung or Team iPhone, there's something for you.

    Read more here: blog.keepita.com/

    #Keepita #TechBlog #Samsung #iPhone #iOS #Android #MobileForensics #DataRecovery #Apple #SamsungGalaxy #TechTips #Privacy #CyberSecurity #SmartPhone #GooglePixel

  13. Ever wondered what’s actually hidden inside your phone backups?

    We’re diving deep into mobile forensics, data recovery, and tech tips on our blog. Whether you're on Team Samsung or Team iPhone, there's something for you.

    Read more here: blog.keepita.com/

    #Keepita #TechBlog #Samsung #iPhone #iOS #Android #MobileForensics #DataRecovery #Apple #SamsungGalaxy #TechTips #Privacy #CyberSecurity #SmartPhone #GooglePixel

  14. Ever wondered what’s actually hidden inside your phone backups?

    We’re diving deep into mobile forensics, data recovery, and tech tips on our blog. Whether you're on Team Samsung or Team iPhone, there's something for you.

    Read more here: blog.keepita.com/

    #Keepita #TechBlog #Samsung #iPhone #iOS #Android #MobileForensics #DataRecovery #Apple #SamsungGalaxy #TechTips #Privacy #CyberSecurity #SmartPhone #GooglePixel

  15. Ever wondered what’s actually hidden inside your phone backups?

    We’re diving deep into mobile forensics, data recovery, and tech tips on our blog. Whether you're on Team Samsung or Team iPhone, there's something for you.

    Read more here: blog.keepita.com/

    #Keepita #TechBlog #Samsung #iPhone #iOS #Android #MobileForensics #DataRecovery #Apple #SamsungGalaxy #TechTips #Privacy #CyberSecurity #SmartPhone #GooglePixel

  16. Hey fedizens :FediverseSymbol:

    We had a bit of a mare yesterday, as wife's brand new laptop (an Acer Aspire A16-61M (NX.JP0EK.005)), which she got as a gift from family during recent sales, decided to suddenly crash in an awful manner after only a month of usage.

    The laptop crashed in Windows (Win 11 Home, 25H2 with all AI tools removed) with an error message of some kind, rebooted, and then reported "no bootable device".

    We spent a huge chunk of the day researching the issue, trying various supposed fixes, and failing miserably :Sighing_Face:

    Our failure led to us having a neurospicy meltdown in the evening 😔 As such, we're asking for your advice on attempting to fix it ASAP for wife :PleadingFace:

    Wife has raised a ticket with Acer in case they're able to help, but we're hoping folks here will suggest something other than wiping the drive and reinstalling an OS.

    Things we tried included:

    • Verifying that the SSD itself still showed in the UEFI/BIOS.
    • Resetting the UEFI to default.
      • We cannot change to the boot mode to Legacy then back to UEFI, as some generic-advice-giving folks have suggested in Acer forums and elsewhere.
    • Using Windows PE to access the command line tools, as well as variants based on it, like:
      • Aomei Partition Assistant's bootable media.
      • Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8).
    • Using Windows 11 installation media (from their latest media creation tool) to access the troubleshooting repair tools.

    The efforts thus far have only changed the error from not "no bootable device" to immediate blue screen messages showing a failure a load and presenting options (function key options like startup repair etc.) which all fail to work.

    The main C: partition appears to be borked, and shows as unallocated.

    We've tried to recover the partitions and the data, as well as clone the drive sector by sector, without success. As far as we know, Bitlocker hadn't been enabled, but one attempt to recover files under a tool within Hiren's BootCD PE asked for a pin when trying to recover files from the lost partition showing as unallocated space, so it may well be hindering any recovery efforts.

    Due to life struggles, neither wife nor us had had the time to set up any backup services yet, and whilst most things are cloud saved and can be recovered, some files and all the custom settings and tools would be lost if we cannot recover the drive fully 😔

    Apologies in advance if we advise we've tried something already, and please be kind and detailed with any comments or queries.

    For context, we've 20+ years of troubleshooting Windows and hardware issues, but we're neither a programmer nor IT specialist of any kind, and have never had an IT-type job.

    Any thoughtful ideas, suggestions, and recommendations will be most welcome 🩷

    #AskFedi #TechSupport #Windows #Windows11 #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #troubleshooting #DataRecovery #DriveRecovery #Acer #NoBootableDevice

    Update: After further troubleshooting, the issue appears to be that some crash broke the drive's partition table, and software couldn't recover all the partitions because BitLocker was enabled by default 🤦‍♀️ Fortunately wife was using her Microsoft account and the recovery key auto-synced to her account. Now just trying to find a bit of software other than DiskGenius (which is bleeping expensive) which can accept the BitLocker recovery key and rebuild the drive without having to back it up and restore it.

    Further update: After a few days of working on this whenever we could around other things, and learning more about WindowsPE, WindowsRE, device encryption being enabled by default, bcdedit, manage-bcd, repair-bcd, bcdboot, various shite recovery tools that everybody claims are great but aren't at all, we finally ended up getting the device back into a semi-working state and told it to hold off on updates for the next 20 years. In the meantime, wife can use laptop again at least and we can fix the many other bugs again manually, via an in-place install, or properly backing up, nuking everything, and starting from scratch. On the plus side, we discovered that Rufus (the formatting tool) has options to download and customise Windows installations, including automatic disabling device encryption. Also had to play around a little with Linux Mint. We could get used to that, but we'd to find equivalents for WIndows mods and functions we're used to. Oh, and having to decrypt an encrypted unallocated (raw) partition, even where you have the recovery key, is one of the most cursed problems we've ever come across! Windows will allow you to assign a drive letter without formatting, but you can only decrypt it to elsewhere then: not in-place. Most recovery tools simply lack the simple ability to let you enter a recovery key or password and restore it in place.

  17. Hey fedizens :FediverseSymbol:

    We had a bit of a mare yesterday, as wife's brand new laptop (an Acer Aspire A16-61M (NX.JP0EK.005)), which she got as a gift from family during recent sales, decided to suddenly crash in an awful manner after only a month of usage.

    The laptop crashed in Windows (Win 11 Home, 25H2 with all AI tools removed) with an error message of some kind, rebooted, and then reported "no bootable device".

    We spent a huge chunk of the day researching the issue, trying various supposed fixes, and failing miserably :Sighing_Face:

    Our failure led to us having a neurospicy meltdown in the evening 😔 As such, we're asking for your advice on attempting to fix it ASAP for wife :PleadingFace:

    Wife has raised a ticket with Acer in case they're able to help, but we're hoping folks here will suggest something other than wiping the drive and reinstalling an OS.

    Things we tried included:

    • Verifying that the SSD itself still showed in the UEFI/BIOS.
    • Resetting the UEFI to default.
      • We cannot change to the boot mode to Legacy then back to UEFI, as some generic-advice-giving folks have suggested in Acer forums and elsewhere.
    • Using Windows PE to access the command line tools, as well as variants based on it, like:
      • Aomei Partition Assistant's bootable media.
      • Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8).
    • Using Windows 11 installation media (from their latest media creation tool) to access the troubleshooting repair tools.

    The efforts thus far have only changed the error from not "no bootable device" to immediate blue screen messages showing a failure a load and presenting options (function key options like startup repair etc.) which all fail to work.

    The main C: partition appears to be borked, and shows as unallocated.

    We've tried to recover the partitions and the data, as well as clone the drive sector by sector, without success. As far as we know, Bitlocker hadn't been enabled, but one attempt to recover files under a tool within Hiren's BootCD PE asked for a pin when trying to recover files from the lost partition showing as unallocated space, so it may well be hindering any recovery efforts.

    Due to life struggles, neither wife nor us had had the time to set up any backup services yet, and whilst most things are cloud saved and can be recovered, some files and all the custom settings and tools would be lost if we cannot recover the drive fully 😔

    Apologies in advance if we advise we've tried something already, and please be kind and detailed with any comments or queries.

    For context, we've 20+ years of troubleshooting Windows and hardware issues, but we're neither a programmer nor IT specialist of any kind, and have never had an IT-type job.

    Any thoughtful ideas, suggestions, and recommendations will be most welcome 🩷

    #AskFedi #TechSupport #Windows #Windows11 #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #troubleshooting #DataRecovery #DriveRecovery #Acer #NoBootableDevice

    Update: After further troubleshooting, the issue appears to be that some crash broke the drive's partition table, and software couldn't recover all the partitions because BitLocker was enabled by default 🤦‍♀️ Fortunately wife was using her Microsoft account and the recovery key auto-synced to her account. Now just trying to find a bit of software other than DiskGenius (which is bleeping expensive) which can accept the BitLocker recovery key and rebuild the drive without having to back it up and restore it.

    Further update: After a few days of working on this whenever we could around other things, and learning more about WindowsPE, WindowsRE, device encryption being enabled by default, bcdedit, manage-bcd, repair-bcd, bcdboot, various shite recovery tools that everybody claims are great but aren't at all, we finally ended up getting the device back into a semi-working state and told it to hold off on updates for the next 20 years. In the meantime, wife can use laptop again at least and we can fix the many other bugs again manually, via an in-place install, or properly backing up, nuking everything, and starting from scratch. On the plus side, we discovered that Rufus (the formatting tool) has options to download and customise Windows installations, including automatic disabling device encryption. Also had to play around a little with Linux Mint. We could get used to that, but we'd to find equivalents for WIndows mods and functions we're used to. Oh, and having to decrypt an encrypted unallocated (raw) partition, even where you have the recovery key, is one of the most cursed problems we've ever come across! Windows will allow you to assign a drive letter without formatting, but you can only decrypt it to elsewhere then: not in-place. Most recovery tools simply lack the simple ability to let you enter a recovery key or password and restore it in place.

  18. Hey fedizens :FediverseSymbol:

    We had a bit of a mare yesterday, as wife's brand new laptop (an Acer Aspire A16-61M (NX.JP0EK.005)), which she got as a gift from family during recent sales, decided to suddenly crash in an awful manner after only a month of usage.

    The laptop crashed in Windows (Win 11 Home, 25H2 with all AI tools removed) with an error message of some kind, rebooted, and then reported "no bootable device".

    We spent a huge chunk of the day researching the issue, trying various supposed fixes, and failing miserably :Sighing_Face:

    Our failure led to us having a neurospicy meltdown in the evening 😔 As such, we're asking for your advice on attempting to fix it ASAP for wife :PleadingFace:

    Wife has raised a ticket with Acer in case they're able to help, but we're hoping folks here will suggest something other than wiping the drive and reinstalling an OS.

    Things we tried included:

    • Verifying that the SSD itself still showed in the UEFI/BIOS.
    • Resetting the UEFI to default.
      • We cannot change to the boot mode to Legacy then back to UEFI, as some generic-advice-giving folks have suggested in Acer forums and elsewhere.
    • Using Windows PE to access the command line tools, as well as variants based on it, like:
      • Aomei Partition Assistant's bootable media.
      • Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8).
    • Using Windows 11 installation media (from their latest media creation tool) to access the troubleshooting repair tools.

    The efforts thus far have only changed the error from not "no bootable device" to immediate blue screen messages showing a failure a load and presenting options (function key options like startup repair etc.) which all fail to work.

    The main C: partition appears to be borked, and shows as unallocated.

    We've tried to recover the partitions and the data, as well as clone the drive sector by sector, without success. As far as we know, Bitlocker hadn't been enabled, but one attempt to recover files under a tool within Hiren's BootCD PE asked for a pin when trying to recover files from the lost partition showing as unallocated space, so it may well be hindering any recovery efforts.

    Due to life struggles, neither wife nor us had had the time to set up any backup services yet, and whilst most things are cloud saved and can be recovered, some files and all the custom settings and tools would be lost if we cannot recover the drive fully 😔

    Apologies in advance if we advise we've tried something already, and please be kind and detailed with any comments or queries.

    For context, we've 20+ years of troubleshooting Windows and hardware issues, but we're neither a programmer nor IT specialist of any kind, and have never had an IT-type job.

    Any thoughtful ideas, suggestions, and recommendations will be most welcome 🩷

    #AskFedi #TechSupport #Windows #Windows11 #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #troubleshooting #DataRecovery #DriveRecovery #Acer #NoBootableDevice

    Update: After further troubleshooting, the issue appears to be that some crash broke the drive's partition table, and software couldn't recover all the partitions because BitLocker was enabled by default 🤦‍♀️ Fortunately wife was using her Microsoft account and the recovery key auto-synced to her account. Now just trying to find a bit of software other than DiskGenius (which is bleeping expensive) which can accept the BitLocker recovery key and rebuild the drive without having to back it up and restore it.

    Further update: After a few days of working on this whenever we could around other things, and learning more about WindowsPE, WindowsRE, device encryption being enabled by default, bcdedit, manage-bcd, repair-bcd, bcdboot, various shite recovery tools that everybody claims are great but aren't at all, we finally ended up getting the device back into a semi-working state and told it to hold off on updates for the next 20 years. In the meantime, wife can use laptop again at least and we can fix the many other bugs again manually, via an in-place install, or properly backing up, nuking everything, and starting from scratch. On the plus side, we discovered that Rufus (the formatting tool) has options to download and customise Windows installations, including automatic disabling device encryption. Also had to play around a little with Linux Mint. We could get used to that, but we'd to find equivalents for WIndows mods and functions we're used to. Oh, and having to decrypt an encrypted unallocated (raw) partition, even where you have the recovery key, is one of the most cursed problems we've ever come across! Windows will allow you to assign a drive letter without formatting, but you can only decrypt it to elsewhere then: not in-place. Most recovery tools simply lack the simple ability to let you enter a recovery key or password and restore it in place.

  19. Hey fedizens :FediverseSymbol:

    We had a bit of a mare yesterday, as wife's brand new laptop (an Acer Aspire A16-61M (NX.JP0EK.005)), which she got as a gift from family during recent sales, decided to suddenly crash in an awful manner after only a month of usage.

    The laptop crashed in Windows (Win 11 Home, 25H2 with all AI tools removed) with an error message of some kind, rebooted, and then reported "no bootable device".

    We spent a huge chunk of the day researching the issue, trying various supposed fixes, and failing miserably :Sighing_Face:

    Our failure led to us having a neurospicy meltdown in the evening 😔 As such, we're asking for your advice on attempting to fix it ASAP for wife :PleadingFace:

    Wife has raised a ticket with Acer in case they're able to help, but we're hoping folks here will suggest something other than wiping the drive and reinstalling an OS.

    Things we tried included:

    • Verifying that the SSD itself still showed in the UEFI/BIOS.
    • Resetting the UEFI to default.
      • We cannot change to the boot mode to Legacy then back to UEFI, as some generic-advice-giving folks have suggested in Acer forums and elsewhere.
    • Using Windows PE to access the command line tools, as well as variants based on it, like:
      • Aomei Partition Assistant's bootable media.
      • Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8).
    • Using Windows 11 installation media (from their latest media creation tool) to access the troubleshooting repair tools.

    The efforts thus far have only changed the error from not "no bootable device" to immediate blue screen messages showing a failure a load and presenting options (function key options like startup repair etc.) which all fail to work.

    The main C: partition appears to be borked, and shows as unallocated.

    We've tried to recover the partitions and the data, as well as clone the drive sector by sector, without success. As far as we know, Bitlocker hadn't been enabled, but one attempt to recover files under a tool within Hiren's BootCD PE asked for a pin when trying to recover files from the lost partition showing as unallocated space, so it may well be hindering any recovery efforts.

    Due to life struggles, neither wife nor us had had the time to set up any backup services yet, and whilst most things are cloud saved and can be recovered, some files and all the custom settings and tools would be lost if we cannot recover the drive fully 😔

    Apologies in advance if we advise we've tried something already, and please be kind and detailed with any comments or queries.

    For context, we've 20+ years of troubleshooting Windows and hardware issues, but we're neither a programmer nor IT specialist of any kind, and have never had an IT-type job.

    Any thoughtful ideas, suggestions, and recommendations will be most welcome 🩷

    #AskFedi #TechSupport #Windows #Windows11 #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #troubleshooting #DataRecovery #DriveRecovery #Acer #NoBootableDevice

    Update: After further troubleshooting, the issue appears to be that some crash broke the drive's partition table, and software couldn't recover all the partitions because BitLocker was enabled by default 🤦‍♀️ Fortunately wife was using her Microsoft account and the recovery key auto-synced to her account. Now just trying to find a bit of software other than DiskGenius (which is bleeping expensive) which can accept the BitLocker recovery key and rebuild the drive without having to back it up and restore it.

    Further update: After a few days of working on this whenever we could around other things, and learning more about WindowsPE, WindowsRE, device encryption being enabled by default, bcdedit, manage-bcd, repair-bcd, bcdboot, various shite recovery tools that everybody claims are great but aren't at all, we finally ended up getting the device back into a semi-working state and told it to hold off on updates for the next 20 years. In the meantime, wife can use laptop again at least and we can fix the many other bugs again manually, via an in-place install, or properly backing up, nuking everything, and starting from scratch. On the plus side, we discovered that Rufus (the formatting tool) has options to download and customise Windows installations, including automatic disabling device encryption. Also had to play around a little with Linux Mint. We could get used to that, but we'd to find equivalents for WIndows mods and functions we're used to. Oh, and having to decrypt an encrypted unallocated (raw) partition, even where you have the recovery key, is one of the most cursed problems we've ever come across! Windows will allow you to assign a drive letter without formatting, but you can only decrypt it to elsewhere then: not in-place. Most recovery tools simply lack the simple ability to let you enter a recovery key or password and restore it in place.

  20. Hey fedizens :FediverseSymbol:

    We had a bit of a mare yesterday, as wife's brand new laptop (an Acer Aspire A16-61M (NX.JP0EK.005)), which she got as a gift from family during recent sales, decided to suddenly crash in an awful manner after only a month of usage.

    The laptop crashed in Windows (Win 11 Home, 25H2 with all AI tools removed) with an error message of some kind, rebooted, and then reported "no bootable device".

    We spent a huge chunk of the day researching the issue, trying various supposed fixes, and failing miserably :Sighing_Face:

    Our failure led to us having a neurospicy meltdown in the evening 😔 As such, we're asking for your advice on attempting to fix it ASAP for wife :PleadingFace:

    Wife has raised a ticket with Acer in case they're able to help, but we're hoping folks here will suggest something other than wiping the drive and reinstalling an OS.

    Things we tried included:

    • Verifying that the SSD itself still showed in the UEFI/BIOS.
    • Resetting the UEFI to default.
      • We cannot change to the boot mode to Legacy then back to UEFI, as some generic-advice-giving folks have suggested in Acer forums and elsewhere.
    • Using Windows PE to access the command line tools, as well as variants based on it, like:
      • Aomei Partition Assistant's bootable media.
      • Hiren's BootCD PE x64 (v1.0.8).
    • Using Windows 11 installation media (from their latest media creation tool) to access the troubleshooting repair tools.

    The efforts thus far have only changed the error from not "no bootable device" to immediate blue screen messages showing a failure a load and presenting options (function key options like startup repair etc.) which all fail to work.

    The main C: partition appears to be borked, and shows as unallocated.

    We've tried to recover the partitions and the data, as well as clone the drive sector by sector, without success. As far as we know, Bitlocker hadn't been enabled, but one attempt to recover files under a tool within Hiren's BootCD PE asked for a pin when trying to recover files from the lost partition showing as unallocated space, so it may well be hindering any recovery efforts.

    Due to life struggles, neither wife nor us had had the time to set up any backup services yet, and whilst most things are cloud saved and can be recovered, some files and all the custom settings and tools would be lost if we cannot recover the drive fully 😔

    Apologies in advance if we advise we've tried something already, and please be kind and detailed with any comments or queries.

    For context, we've 20+ years of troubleshooting Windows and hardware issues, but we're neither a programmer nor IT specialist of any kind, and have never had an IT-type job.

    Any thoughtful ideas, suggestions, and recommendations will be most welcome 🩷

    #AskFedi #TechSupport #Windows #Windows11 #GenuinelyAsking #NoReplyGuysPlease #troubleshooting #DataRecovery #DriveRecovery #Acer #NoBootableDevice

    Update: After further troubleshooting, the issue appears to be that some crash broke the drive's partition table, and software couldn't recover all the partitions because BitLocker was enabled by default 🤦‍♀️ Fortunately wife was using her Microsoft account and the recovery key auto-synced to her account. Now just trying to find a bit of software other than DiskGenius (which is bleeping expensive) which can accept the BitLocker recovery key and rebuild the drive without having to back it up and restore it.

    Further update: After a few days of working on this whenever we could around other things, and learning more about WindowsPE, WindowsRE, device encryption being enabled by default, bcdedit, manage-bcd, repair-bcd, bcdboot, various shite recovery tools that everybody claims are great but aren't at all, we finally ended up getting the device back into a semi-working state and told it to hold off on updates for the next 20 years. In the meantime, wife can use laptop again at least and we can fix the many other bugs again manually, via an in-place install, or properly backing up, nuking everything, and starting from scratch. On the plus side, we discovered that Rufus (the formatting tool) has options to download and customise Windows installations, including automatic disabling device encryption. Also had to play around a little with Linux Mint. We could get used to that, but we'd to find equivalents for WIndows mods and functions we're used to. Oh, and having to decrypt an encrypted unallocated (raw) partition, even where you have the recovery key, is one of the most cursed problems we've ever come across! Windows will allow you to assign a drive letter without formatting, but you can only decrypt it to elsewhere then: not in-place. Most recovery tools simply lack the simple ability to let you enter a recovery key or password and restore it in place.

  21. New Yorker: When Your Digital Life Vanishes. “DriveSavers receives some twenty thousand inquiries each month. It has saved data for government agencies, multinational corporations, and more than a few celebrities, whose autographed portraits beamed from the lobby walls. Sidney Poitier recovered a draft of his memoir through the company’s good offices; Khloé Kardashian, a phone that fell into […]

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/29/new-yorker-when-your-digital-life-vanishes/
  22. New Yorker: When Your Digital Life Vanishes. “DriveSavers receives some twenty thousand inquiries each month. It has saved data for government agencies, multinational corporations, and more than a few celebrities, whose autographed portraits beamed from the lobby walls. Sidney Poitier recovered a draft of his memoir through the company’s good offices; Khloé Kardashian, a phone that fell into […]

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/29/new-yorker-when-your-digital-life-vanishes/
  23. New Yorker: When Your Digital Life Vanishes. “DriveSavers receives some twenty thousand inquiries each month. It has saved data for government agencies, multinational corporations, and more than a few celebrities, whose autographed portraits beamed from the lobby walls. Sidney Poitier recovered a draft of his memoir through the company’s good offices; Khloé Kardashian, a phone that fell into […]

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/29/new-yorker-when-your-digital-life-vanishes/
  24. New Yorker: When Your Digital Life Vanishes. “DriveSavers receives some twenty thousand inquiries each month. It has saved data for government agencies, multinational corporations, and more than a few celebrities, whose autographed portraits beamed from the lobby walls. Sidney Poitier recovered a draft of his memoir through the company’s good offices; Khloé Kardashian, a phone that fell into […]

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/29/new-yorker-when-your-digital-life-vanishes/
  25. New Yorker: When Your Digital Life Vanishes. “DriveSavers receives some twenty thousand inquiries each month. It has saved data for government agencies, multinational corporations, and more than a few celebrities, whose autographed portraits beamed from the lobby walls. Sidney Poitier recovered a draft of his memoir through the company’s good offices; Khloé Kardashian, a phone that fell into […]

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/04/29/new-yorker-when-your-digital-life-vanishes/
  26. Ok, this is probably a long shot, but I found an old HDD disk drive I had when I was kid (the date 13.1.96 is written on the disk), and while USB to IDE adapter did manage to spin up the disk, it didn't manage to allow me to `dd` data out of the disk (it fails with no medium found).

    Anyone have any idea how I could access whatever is on that disk?

    #datarecovery

  27. Oh joy, another panic piece about digital doom 😱. Apparently, if you drop your phone in the toilet, it's like losing the Ark of the Covenant 💾. But fear not, data wizards are here to rescue your all-important cat memes and blurry concert photos 🧙‍♂️📱.
    newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04 #digitaldoom #toiletphone #datarecovery #catmemes #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated

  28. Oh joy, another panic piece about digital doom 😱. Apparently, if you drop your phone in the toilet, it's like losing the Ark of the Covenant 💾. But fear not, data wizards are here to rescue your all-important cat memes and blurry concert photos 🧙‍♂️📱.
    newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04 #digitaldoom #toiletphone #datarecovery #catmemes #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated

  29. Oh joy, another panic piece about digital doom 😱. Apparently, if you drop your phone in the toilet, it's like losing the Ark of the Covenant 💾. But fear not, data wizards are here to rescue your all-important cat memes and blurry concert photos 🧙‍♂️📱.
    newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04 #digitaldoom #toiletphone #datarecovery #catmemes #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated

  30. Oh joy, another panic piece about digital doom 😱. Apparently, if you drop your phone in the toilet, it's like losing the Ark of the Covenant 💾. But fear not, data wizards are here to rescue your all-important cat memes and blurry concert photos 🧙‍♂️📱.
    newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04 #digitaldoom #toiletphone #datarecovery #catmemes #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated

  31. Oh joy, another panic piece about digital doom 😱. Apparently, if you drop your phone in the toilet, it's like losing the Ark of the Covenant 💾. But fear not, data wizards are here to rescue your all-important cat memes and blurry concert photos 🧙‍♂️📱.
    newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04 #digitaldoom #toiletphone #datarecovery #catmemes #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated