The hard disk in Julie's PC died last night, without much warning. (She mentioned she'd had the odd crash in usually reliable applications; I ran a thorough scan disk which froze whilst checking the disk surface for errors; the machine stopped finding the hard disk on boot up shortly thereafter.) We also have a second very old machine, and swapping stuff around confirms the disk itself is dead (new machine finds old disk; old machine doesn't find new disk.)

I guess that means we need to employ the services of some data recovery professionals, because there are plenty of bit patterns on the dead disk that are pretty important to Julie, and a lot of them aren't backed up anywhere. If anyone has any advice as to who to use, or guesses as to the likely cost or chance of success. I'd love to hear from them.


At work today, as well as last minute crises over our current imminent release, we had an audit visit to ensure our processes are in line with ISO standards. To the extent that you believe processes in the business environment are valuable (for me: well... some) it's valuable as motivation to check things are working as they should be. But the visit itself is always a bit nerve-wracking since in principle these people can effectively shut you down on the spot.

Fortunately I escaped being one of the victims who got interviewed, etc. This meant I could instead have much fun failing to fix more problems in the software we're due to ship; much like on Tuesday only this time they were more depressing ones. Part two of the audit and bug-hunt is tomorrow, along with the first meeting where the development team gets to insanity-check what we're being asked to put into the next iteration of product for the end of the year.

Current Mood: anxious