[ale] Engineering Archaeology

[Jim Kinney]

I once had to do a drive recovery on the laptop of a cfo who swore up and
down he was handling his own backups. They were getting audited by the IRS
when it went down.

Backups? You know the answer.

I managed to recover almost all of the drive and crucially the data needed
for the audit.

Cfo got backup religion and did a full image every day at lunchtime from
then on. He also did not flinch when I was handed a very large check for my
time.

-- 
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain


*http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
<http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/>*

On Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 3:43 PM Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> Crayons are basically wax too, and suffer the same fate if the writing
> gets too hot.
>
> You really can't win...back to "rm -rf"
>
> I did that one time and it was going along fine until the "rmdir" command
> was deleted.....things went downhill from there.😂
>
>
>
> md
>
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 11:22 AM lollipopman691 via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote:
>
>> OTOH, wax and stylus still works. At least until it gets too hot.
>>
>>
>> https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/newly-discovered-ancient-roman-writing-tablets-provide-snapshots-roman-era-020857
>>
>>
>>    - CHS
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 at 10:42 PM, Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale <
>> ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>
>> Sorry, but as an archivist I can vouch for the fact that the simple use
>> of crayons alone is not good enough. You need archival quality paper, or
>> better yet, crayon on some type of stable stone. Modern day acid-washed
>> paper falls apart after only a few decades.
>>
>> On the other hand, have you ever taken a good look at ancient stone
>> tablets? Some are really hard to read....
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 8:00 PM Jim Kinney via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>
>>> You just nailed it.
>>>
>>> Crayon
>>> THE backup tool
>>>
>>> Hahahaha!!!
>>>
>>> --
>>> James P. Kinney III
>>>
>>> Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
>>> gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own
>>> tail. It won't fatten the dog.
>>> - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
>>>
>>>
>>> *http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>>> <http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/>*
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 6:42 PM Steve Litt via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:39:21 -0500 (EST)
>>>> "jon.maddog.hall--- via Ale" <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > One of my fears about e-books, the web and documentation that can
>>>> > disappear as easy as "rm -r *", is that we will lose a LOT of this
>>>> > information and not know where we came from and how we got here.
>>>>
>>>> Good backups allay that fear. What I fear is that over time current
>>>> physical and software formats are replaced and disappear. I can't read
>>>> my QIC tape backups anymore. I can no longer read my cptools floppy
>>>> backups: Hell, I don't currently have a floppy drive installed. With
>>>> cases no longer accommodating CD/DVD/BluRay, how long will it be until
>>>> those become very difficult to get. I have nothing to read my old VHS
>>>> video tapes. I have no way to recover any files from my ancient Kaypro
>>>> 2x, even if I did have a floppy drive.
>>>>
>>>> It's very important to take old backups and convert some of them to
>>>> newer formats every once in a while.
>>>>
>>>> LOL, I still have a crayon picture I drew in 1955 of my trip to the zoo.
>>>>
>>>> SteveT
>>>>
>>>> Steve Litt
>>>> Featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
>>>> Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Ale mailing list
>>>> Ale at ale.org
>>>> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20260114/aa346e67/attachment.htm>