Data Recovery & Computer Forensics Blog

They say you always remember your first one.

The deceased was brought into the lab and laid out on a cold, hard table.  Instruments were laid out on the table beside them, some eerily familiar and others strange and arcane.  In a few moments, we were inside, looking at the innards that held the secrets to the end of a life cut short.  What had happened that had struck this one down in his prime?  Who was responsible? Continue Reading »

Recently, we received a hard drive for investigation as part of litigation.  This drive had come from the work computer of an employee terminated by our client six months prior, now the subject of the litigation.

When we received the drive, it was apparent that it had been tampered with.  Hard drives typically come with stickers over one or more of the case screws.  These stickers are there to allow the manufacturer to void the warranty when the drive is opened by an unauthorized person.  In this case, the sticker was punctured and the screw was exposed.  Continue Reading »

There is a tendency in the electronic evidence field to lose sight of the fact that, although the battleground is different, the way the war is fought is the same.  Electronic discovery motions are still discovery motions, destruction of electronic evidence is still spoliation and computer forensic investigations are still investigations. Continue Reading »

Many people have seen advertisements on the internet offering software that will let you monitor activity on a computer.  These ads bark “Catch a Cheating Spouse” or “Secretly Monitor Email” or “Spy on Your Computer.”  In many circumstances, this type of software is not only sneaky, it’s criminal. Continue Reading »

Technology follows a predictable path as it develops.  New technologies are developed to address a small, but specific criteria.  Over time, the user-friendliness of the technology increases, leading to adoption by a larger portion of the userbase.  Eventually, the technology is easy enough to use that nearly everyone is a user.

Email is an example of a technology that followed this path.  From its original use – communications between computer-savvy members of government and academia, on through usage in corporations and the technophiles in the public at large – to today, when it is extremely rare to encounter someone who doesn’t use email on a daily basis. Continue Reading »

Hint: R does not stand for Re-build or Re-initialize, or even Re-Format or Re-arrange. 

 All joking aside, most people in the IT field understand what a RAID array is and how it can help protect your data if used correctly, but many people do not understand what to do in the event of a system or drive failure.

 First of all, let’s start at the beginning for the non-techie folk out there who just bought a Dell XPS system with a 2TB RAID 0 array simply because they heard it was fast and redundant.  Most of these people might not have any idea they have an array, they just got it because it was a lot of storage.  Anyways, RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.  It is a hardware or software based system that uses 2 or more hard disk drives that work together to achieve one of three things: Continue Reading »

If you followed this year’s Consumer Electronic Show you might have learned that solid state drives (SSD’s) are the latest hot topic taking the data storage industry by storm.  No, hard drives aren’t going away any time soon, but the increase in production and decrease in cost in SSD’s is definitely bringing them to the forefront.  SSD’s are now creeping into the hand of consumers as notebook manufacturers are now including SSD drives as options in their top of the line notebooks. 

SSD drives are great for several reasons: Continue Reading »

Hello and welcome to our blog.  We are excited to post about new perspectives in the world of data recovery and computer forensics.  Flashback Data has been providing data recovery and computer forensic services to thousands of people – from home users to Fortune 500 companies – since we opened our doors in 2004.  We hope you enjoy our take on the data storage and legal industries.