[conspire] (forw) Re: Recovering Files After Disk Crash

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:08:42 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: "Robert S. Johnstone" <rsjohnst at idiom.com>
Cc: jubilada at sbcglobal.net, kgranath at clickaway.com
Subject: Re: Recovering Files After Disk Crash
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Hi, Bob.  Now that the coffee's kicking in, I believe I understand
your situation a bit better:

ClickAway helped you do data recovery on the HD using services from
Gillware, got that.   And you're trying to read Gilware's 
'[something]_Data.gfd'.  Yes, I'll take it as given that the data
format is proprietary.  It's highly unlikely anything but
GillwareFileViewer_1.0.2.exe and its MacOS equivalent will be 
able to interpret that.

I see that Gillware File Viewer lets you decide what recoverable files
you want to pay Gillware to get back from (I would guess) the recovered
image they've already made of your failed hard drive.  Or, at least,
they've made an image of the disk metadata such as the superblock
contents.
http://www.gillware.com/fileviewer.php


Quoting Robert S. Johnstone (rsjohnst at idiom.com):

> Q1.  Is there any Linux program which can interpret a
>      .gfd file?  (which is probably a proprietary format)

I can almost guarantee that the answer's 'no'.

Since Gillware, Inc. says it specifically 'service Linux operating
systems' (see http://www.gillware.com/), you might want to telephone
Gilware technical support at (877) 624-7206 to see if they have a
Linux/i386 binary version of their proprietary viewer application.
That could be the case.  If not:  You can either run the MS-Windows
version on MS-Windows, or on x86 Linux using one of the variety of 
methods for running Win32 binaries.

The most low-tech of those is WINE, http://www.winehq.org/ .

Ubuntu provides a package of WINE in its 'Universe' package collection:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/otherosfs/wine1.2
If 'Universe' package access isn't available yet on your system, see:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-enable-the-universe-and-multiverse-repositories-in-ubuntu-804-hardy.html

WINE runs many Win32 binaries on x86 Linux, by providing a large subset
of MS-Window's Win32 API services.  Inevitably, it doesn't support all
programs, and some programs will run fine if you can coax their
installers into working on WINE, but there may be some tricks to doing
so.  You might want to try the Win32 Gillware File Viewer on WINE and
see if it Just Works<tm>.

There are other, higher-tech ways of making Win32 stuff work on Linux,
including Crossover for Linux
(http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/) and full-blown virtual
machine environments such as Virtualbox, VMware, etc. that create a
graphical window that emulates a physical machine, into which you can
install an OS (such as WinXP), which in turn can run basically any Win32
thing.

Of course, you might prefer to just run Gillware File Viewer on an
MS-Windows box, if you have one.


> Q2.  If I run the viewer on a Windows system, will I later
>      have problems transferring the recovered files from
>      Windows to Linux?

I'm guessing they ship the data back on optical media (CDR or DVD-R),
so you just insert that disc into your Linux system and copy the 
desired files off.  Should be no problems.

> Q3.  Do I get to tell Gillware to send the selected files
>      in a Linux format?  (I will pursue Gillware)

No need.  They'll just restore and ship them back verbatim.

> Q3.  Are there any local Linux specialists who deal with
>      recovery problems?  (i.e., for a fee)

Sorry, I really don't know.

> I would like to meet and talk with anyone who has dealt with
> this situation.  I will come to Rick Moen's CABAL Intrigue
> on Saturday 14 August.

You're more than welcome to attend with or without a data-recovery 
problem.


----- End forwarded message -----