Check out this interesting video of silk-worms creating a dome. Researchers at MIT have found a way to control the worm's spinning patterns by changing the environment of the worms. They created a scaffold for the worms and then used a computer program to manipulate heat and light to control the spinning patterns of the worms. 


http://vimeo.com/67177328

Today we are going to be talking about data recovery and hardrive repair. First, lets go through some techniques for data recovery from a non-damaged drive. The quickest technique for data recovery from a non-damaged drive is to clone your old disk to your new disk. This will often be done is you are upgrading the size of your hard drive. For example, if you are moving up from a 320GB Hard Disk Drive to a 1TB Hard Disk Drive you can clone your old drive to your new drive and still have approx 680GB space left over. 

To clone a drive you use special cloning software (that we have hehe) to clone your drive. You set your old drive as the source and the new drive as the destination. Assuming neither of your hard drives are damaged, your clone will most likely be successful. 

If you have a damaged hard drive there are a few techniques that are used to get get your data back. First, we can attempt a clone from the damaged drive. Even though you might not be able to access your files in your operating system (such as Windows) often drives with minor damage can still be clones and your files will be accessible on your new drive. If the clone fails, you should try cloning with numerous cloning programs to see if one does the trick. If no cloning program is working it is time to use a pre-installation environment to try a manual drag and drop copy from your damaged drive to the new drive. Often the problem with your old drive will be contained to a small number of directories, allowing for most of your data to be recovered. Sometimes, however, all directories will be corrupted or the hard disk will not be readable even in a pre-installation environment. 

IF this is the case, you require physical hard drive repair. This is a highly expensive procedure that requires specialist equipment and generally costs thousands of dollars. There is no guarantee that you will get your files back in this case and we do not recommend this for home users. 

Moral of the story is remember to back up your important files. Nerd out!!!!!!!!!!

With the proliferation of increasingly simplistic devices I predict the computer repair industry will move in the opposite direction. Many homes today have as many devices on their network as the average small business had five years ago. The simplicity of these devices has meant people can end up with massive home networks without even trying. As a nerd this my dream come true. However this also comes at a price making repairs more complicated. This post explains how simplicity of technology is going to force the home computer repair industry to increase its skill base.

Five years ago a lot of home computer repair companies moved into a middle zone where they moved away from the low value market and pitched themselves a higher end that required slightly move technical advice. At the time this created a niche away from low cost providers that were popping up. The problem for them was that their skills were not dramatically different to than those they were positioning themselves against. With the simplification of technology these geeks and nerds will find themselves in a difficult position. Either they accept that technology changes means that they are now no better than the low cost computer repair companies or they up their skills again and create a fresh niche. 

For a middle zone computer repair accepting that they are no better than low cost repair business will be unsustainable as these business have become accustomed to higher margins on the basis for better service. The customer will not pay a premium for nothing and the repairers be able to sustain decreased margins. Thus as to compete medium sized home computer repairers are going to have to increase their skills. For many this will mean learning specific high value skills such as expert data recovery or advanced network security. The essential point is that mere computer repair services are no longer going to cut it. At least not in Sydney.