Linux on a CD
As I complained to Dave about my hard drive woes, he mentioned a Linux variant called Knoppix. Its claim to fame is that it can fit on a CD or other similarly sized storage device. Its other claim to fame is its ability to read NTFS volumes (that’s the disk format used by modern flavours of Windows, for you non-technical folk). So, I burned it onto a CD and popped it into the Dell… alas, no joy. It can’t read the drive either.
Hope is not totally lost, though. One of my IT buddies at work has some data recovery software that might just help. We’ll try tomorrow. If that doesn’t work, I know some local companies that are more than willing to take $500 from me to poke around with the drive. I really hope it doesn’t come to that, but it’s hard to put a price on months of lost baby photos.