I am sorry for the blog hiatus, but I follow a method of historical research a bit akin to method acting! I am absolutely immersed in the world of Burnes. I am in Bhuj at tne moment, and yesterday was at Mandivi looking at the shipyards and harbours where Burnes procured his boats to sail up the Indus – they are still made today. Much larger than I had realised. In Mumbai I identified a “lost”, uncatalogued portrait of Alexander Burnes which I think is the finest of him anywhere. The owners did not know who it was. It is by Brockendon like the one in the royal geographical society but is quite different, with him in military uniform. It is by Brockendon, not a copy.
Today disaster. I have lost ten days worth of notes. I noticed this morning that I had two versions of the identical document of my notes open – an .ODT on open office. One was a much older version. Paradoxically they had the identical file name but both showed as saved – the save icon was blanked on each.
Having checked that the content was all there on the version on which I was working, and that it was saved, I decided the best thing was to close off the extraneous version. Disaster!! An error message came up saying open office would now close. On restart, document recovery brought up only the old version, minus ten days work. I had a moment of hope when I right clicked on the document icon and saw “restore earlier versions of the document” but clicking on that just brought up a ,essage that there are no earlier versions available.
I am heartbroken- these aren’t just notes that can be recovered from memory, but also painstaking transcripts of old manuscripts, some of which I probably can’t access again even if I had the time and money.
I can think of a dozen things I might have done to avoid this situation. Comments on how to avoid such happenings are not welcome in the current trying circumstance. The real question is, can anyone think of anything at all that might help? I am running Open Office on Windows 7.
I really cannot express how much in despair I feel. This trip has cost all my available cash and I have to come back soon as money is out.
[If any mods have hung around while the blog is quiet, I am getting an extremely small typeface, only on this site. Do we have a problem, or is it another computer glitch personal to me?]
Meanwhile, back im the ‘ConDemocracy’… Planned for inclusion in the queen’s speech so it must be true.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123512/New-snooping-law-allow-Government-access-everybodys-emails-texts-internet-browsing.html
Also on the BBC website, so definitely a true story!!
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The prediction of the arrival of a fascist state gets ever nearer. Or is it here already?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17576745
Craig, daft question probably, but you mentioned that you’d tried two of OpenOffice’s recovery options, but did you try just opening the file as normal?
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Craig’s description of two files with the same names suggests that different versions may have got saved in two different folders. A simple search on the filename might locate the newer version. But I’d recommend trying these options from a LiveCD session so as not to disturb the contents of the hard disk.
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Crab, I’ve had pretty good results with undelete utilities. When a hard disk is big and mostly empty, deleted files can remain undisturbed for a long time. I once recovered about sixty files from a Windows drive that had been formatted and over-written with Ubuntu.
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I hope Craig reports back with good news.
Just to endorse Clark’s solution: it’s sound.
DO NOT RUN WINDOWS AGAIN.
Run a Linux distro FROM THE CD or THUMBDRIVE and recover files using that, saving the recovered files TO A THUMBDRIVE NOT THE HARD DISC.
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You may even find you like Ubuntu better than Windows, I do, it’s what I’m using.
However if you’re not too sure about Linux, bring it back with you and let Clark have a go. Sounds like he knows what he’s about. Borrow another box to complete your researches?
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I suspect that the mains supply in Mumbai/wherever is less than perfect, and the small typeface is another symptom of data corruption due to this. When you’ve got the files off it, and backed-up the remains, you would be well advised to do a complete reinstall of W7. You would be even better advised to install Ubuntu instead….
You might find it kicking around in a Temp folder, too. Amazing how long Windows can store stuff in there if you don’t clear it out, but that depends on the installation. As it’s in Something/Temp (not Windows/Temp, as it’s OO? Clark?) and OO’s probably looking at My Docs/Something, this is not immediately obvious.
People on medialens are asking if the internet spying stuff and this about Cherie Blair are April Fool pieces!
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dff5c3a0-7a63-11e1-839f-00144feab49a.html
March 30, 2012 6:23 pm
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Cherie Blair moves into private healthcare
By Anousha Sakoui, Andrea Felsted and Sarah Neville
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Cherie Blair will venture into the health market on Saturday with the launch of a private healthcare centre in a branch of J Sainsbury – the supermarket chain.
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This is part of a debut venture by the private equity fund she co-founded, which plans to open 100 private health centres across the UK, at a time when government reforms are triggering enormous upheavals in the cash-strapped National Health Service.
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But in her first interview on the topic, Mrs Blair, who is married to former prime minister Tony Blair, rebuffed any suggestion that the venture sought to take advantage of difficulties in the NHS.
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“While this venture is a commercial one, it is not about replacing the NHS or profiteering, but complementing the services it already offers,” Mrs Blair told the Financial Times. “Our aim is to simplify access to basic healthcare and improve medical outcomes through earlier detection and more timely referrals to GPs.”
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The venture highlights a trend in the retail sector for putting extra customer services into superstores – from health centres to hairdressers – to put excess space to use. Sainsbury’s will receive a percentage of the turnover from the service, which is being launched in Leeds, as well as rent and the health centres will run on a partnership model similar to that operated by John Lewis, the UK retailer. They will provide health, optical, hearing and dental care, and are expected to employ GPs and dentists.
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However, the role of the private sector in healthcare delivery has come under scrutiny as the government’s NHS reform legislation endured a difficult passage through parliament.
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Critics, including some within the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, argued that plans to promote competition in the provision of NHS-funded services paved the way for privatisation.
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The reform blueprint was watered down to secure the support of Lib Dem dissenters. Some in the private healthcare industry fear its share of the NHS-funded market could fall below levels it reached under Mr Blair’s premiership.
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Mrs Blair founded the Allele Fund in 2008 with Gail Lese, a doctor and fund manager, with the aim of investing in healthcare and technology companies internationally.
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They have lined up Cavendish, an advisory firm, to help raise $100m to finance the venture, called Mee Healthcare and which is expected to become profitable within the next five years.
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“The outlook for the [health] sector couldn’t be stronger; driven by an ageing demographic in the UK, greater demand from consumers towards convenience and accessibility, combined with an increasing emphasis on health and wellbeing,” said Dr Lese. There is also growing demand for pre-screening and preventative care, she added.
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No not April Fools. Both true and completely revolting.
I trust that the special advice to Craig, to ‘Not start your computer up again’ has had him reaching for pencils by now, good luck with it and see you back soon.
Thanks for that snippet Abdul, a great account of many volunteers who’d ‘won it for George’ and also a good lesson to anyone wanting to stand as an Independent. I should write up my experiences, working for Bushra in Blackburn, but it would mean stressing myself with bad vibes from the past, and its gardening time!
To stand in an election, in your own locality, where you might or might not beknown, one must use the time before elections to do stuff, writing lots of letters on topical issues helps to keep your name alive, active work.
When the time comes, you first need a galvanising issue, volunteers that are willing to help long hours, an electoral agent, unless you want to do it yourself, a good healthy constitution, because you are up from 8am till midnight.
People have to be pursuaded, they have to know you care, your face has to be seen at as many opportunities as you can fit in. Never run away from a debate with other candidates, indeed demand you are included in panel debates. Press release your activities as best as you can, ideally at 6am in the morning, i.e your daily itinary, where you gonna be, etc., but do not rely on the media,they are fickle and thats a nice word for their bipartisan coverage. Rely on your campaigns/election agent and your team, alone, and ensure that your volunteers keep happy and healthy, have some time out with them.
The replies you have received in terms of looking for the file via the file system are good. It should be there.
During the writing of my PhD way back in the days of 3.5″ floppies I had a main set in the office, a set that lived in my bag and was updated every day and another set that lived at home and was brought in once a week for updating (no home computer). That is not as anal as some I have known, it is a minimum. Back up everything, preferably to another drive. This can be done automatically now. Once you have resolved this, and I’m sure you can, learn from it so it can never happen again.
Hey, Windows 7 users, where would OpenOffice default to storing Craig’s file? This is Windows 7, so I’m guessing something like:
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C:\Users\Craig\My Documents
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In XP, would it have been(?):
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C:\Documents and Settings\Craig\My Documents
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In Windows 7, is “Documents and Settings” a shortcut pointing at “Users”, or is “Documents and Settings” a folder in its own right?
Komodo, I know some of the folder paths for XP, but not for 7. Windows stores “Temporary” folders all over the place. In XP it was:
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C:\Documents and Settings\{account name}\Local Settings\Application Data\{application name}\… etc. Or something like that. There are also
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C:\Temp
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C:\Windows\Temp
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and maybe others called “tmp” instead of “Temp”, though a user’s file should only be somewhere in that user’s folder, not in “C:\” or “C:\Windows”. I’ve never bothered learning all the paths; I just go fishing as needed.
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And yes, I’d be willing to visit Craig to attempt file recovery when he gets home.
…fishing as needed…Me too. I have one box at work running XP in a W7 VM and that is as near as I want to get to W7. I’ve seen Windows likened to a car with the bonnet welded shut, but the little of W7 I’ve seen suggests a car with the bonnet welded shut and concreted over, with a spy phoning home in the driving seat. Even XP has too many temp files for comfort…
Hope Craig has found an inet cafe and is able to read your good advice!
On Win 7, LibreOffice, which is probably close enough Open Office to give the path, has these default paths:
backups: C:\Users\[Craig’s User Account Name]\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\3\user\backup
documents: C:\Users\[Craig’s User Account Name]\Documents
temp files: C:\Users\[First 6 letters of Craig’s User Account Name]~1\AppData\Local\Temp
However, when you save a file using ‘save as’ then the program opens the folder last saved to. You have to browse to a different folder. Any further saves of the same file will default to the folder the file was last saved to. So if Craig has been saving his work to a special folder somewhere, then that’s where it is.
Also, when I ran a test with Recuva to give the instructions above, I saw that the files showed up with alphanumeric names. Recuva will sort on file type, so it would be easy to save all the .odt files to an external drive, and then to open them one by one. Since there are a whole pile of saves Craig should be picking up not only the last saved file but all kinds of slightly older files.
If Craig or someone in Delhi removes the Hard Disk from the Computer, puts it into a box and then opens it as an external disk drive on ANOTHER computer under Recuva (following the wizard but pointing it to the now-external drive) there is no danger of data degradation since the now-external drive doesn’t boot; it is just an external hard disk drive. Of course you will see all your system files as mere data files.
…the W7 VM – XP box is because some proprietory software does not run on W7 because W7 is not backwards-compatible. What does the software do? It opens an ASCII terminal on an RS232 link. Thank you, our Windows-indoctrinated IT people…
The RGS portrait of Alexander Burnes by William Brockedon. Also some images of charts given to Burnes.
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http://tinyurl.com/cr49xuo
The painter William Brockedon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brockedon
Confused, thanks for the paths. The technique of connecting the hard disk to another computer to prevent the disk from being written to is essentially the same as booting from a LiveCD or a USB stick. The former requires a second machine, and the removal of Craig’s hard disk and its installation into a USB external hard disk box. The latter requires a LiveCD, an Internet connection, and a USB memory stick to save the recovered files on.
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Komodo, I think Windows 7 and Vista are not backwards-compatible with some Windows XP software because that software won’t work with Vista and 7’s improved security arrangements.
Of poss interest to prospective Parliamentary candidates—even if in lands afar, & buggered by malfunctioning hard disks. A rare Tory voice of truth on Bradford’s electoral riot:
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http://t.co/YBoCb4Co
One bit of good news at least, Craig, amid the tech glitches. YouTube now available on DVD:
http://www.youtube.com/theyoutubecollection
Craig, I am so sorry to read what has happened to your document.
I know advice given *after* things happened is not worth much – but I having once lost several folders due to a bug in Windows XP I now feel a bit wiser.
Now my laptop runs remote backup software all the time (four at the sime time: Syncplicity, Dropbox, Live Mesh and Insync). Just to be on the safe side. In India, mobile internet is available (albeit terribly slow) pretty much all over the country – a GSM dongle plugged in your laptop could have saved your work.
Take care, come back home safely.
First thing to do is to TURN OFF the computer and stop using it until you are able to scan it using data recovery software. This is to prevent Windows overwriting the sectors of the drive where lost data is recorded. Windows keep writing to the hard drive all the time, even if no applications are open, so computer the system should be switched off!
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Then, using another computer, google up for a “Recovery CD”, or other recovery programs that can be can run off a pendrive. There are dozens of such solutions, also free ones, up there on the internet. I have never used any of them – but if you google up “data recovery boot CD”, etc., you are sure to get plenty of results. The trick is to either record them to a CD and then boot your computer of the CD, or format a pendrive to emulate a CD drive and then run the recovery CD image off it.
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Let me know if you need more details, I can try to google up all the information.
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The software is a skeletal GUI to allow the user to configure a COM port, open it, and translate a remote device’s I/O for a terminal window. It’s the sort of thing you have to physically prevent ‘Nix systems from doing when you’re not paying attention, and rumour has it that even MSDOS could manage something similar. Vista? Bloatware. I once bought a box with Vista preloaded. I wiped it the same day in disgust, and replaced it with Mandriva*.
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(Advertisement) Stop buying stuff. Load Linux….
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*later replaced, but it was a good choice at the time.
‘Confused’ is right; if autosave is ticked then voila:
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Go to folder titled AppData, opening a subfolder titled Local, opening a subfolder to Local titled Temp, opening a subfolder to Temp titled [craig username letters].tmp, then change the .tmp file extention to .odt.
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Else go here:
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http://www.diskanalyzerpro.com/
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Download – install – run – look for file.
@ Craig,
I assumed that your next post would be on the Bradford West victory ( defeat – of course, if you were on the opposite side of George Galloway).
I do declare that I like George Galloway.
His enemies say that he is egotistical, narcissistic, and a bloody loud mouth. Well for my part, his ego has its equivalent in Muhammad Ali and Usain Bolt – both accomplished athletes, likeable, humane and principled people, as best I know. But, in Galloway we find a showman, not in the boxing ring or on the running track, but in the fight and run of representative politics, and a bloody good fighter and a damn good runner in Bradford West was he. The loud mouth part of it is so true, and as a debater and an orator he actually is very talented.
Galloway is one of the few, unlike so many balless and unprincipled Members of Parliament ( gutless if one is a woman elected to represent – but doesn’t stand up against wrongs) – who has consistently spoken truth to power about the Palestinians’ plight and the criminality of the West in its blind and mindless support for Israel, and likewise his opposition to the war criminals Blair and Bush, and the savagery unleashed in Afghanistan and on Iraq.
Agreed, that Galloway is not perfect and he has erred in some of his political judgments. The “indefatigable” Saddam ( Saddam’s “indefatigability” was naïve and a political mis – step; it was a wrong political stance by Galloway). He failed to understand the brutality of Saddam when the US sold him the chemical weapons used against the Iranians. Galloway was thus, partially correct on that occasion, because the “oil war” has been a huge waste of Western money and has bled over a million Iraqi lives. It was and remains a violation of International law when Blair and Bush lied, and then more than a million have died. Galloway, has consistently spoken out and he is right.
More importantly, if one wants a democracy, then voices representative of the minorities, have to have parliamentary space, and Galloway appeals and makes room for that in Westminster. He is not quite credible when he supports Middle East dictators – but he does so in the context of the West fawning to the other Middle Eastern dictators who are supplicants, clients and compliant, while brutally demitting from office those who dare oppose Western hegemony ( cf. Gadaffi and the British non-response to Saudi Arabian and Bahranian dictatorships). Galloway does indeed have flaws – and which human being doesn’t ? He appeals to the idealistic young, the left, the Muslims and he has cultivated his own cult of personality. So what?
I suspect, and think that I know that you –Craig, would not be as approving of Galloway as I am. But, Craig are you not a middle class trained diplomat, and person of conscience? I suspect, if I ever met you, I might find you urbane, courteous, considerate and gracious to a fault. Galloway, by contrast is…..you fill in the blanks ( not quite like a Craig Murray).
So – we sit smugly by, and disapprove of the braggadocio and flamboyant style of the man, but at the risk of ignoring the substance of his message.
I would sooner have Galloway in Westminster any day of the week than some of the spineless ones and wankers elected to represent.
To Galloway’s credit, I say – Audentes fortuna juvat (“fortune favours the bold”) – and for my part, I salute him.
P.S. Murray – my sympathy – and I do respect you as an honourable man of courage.
This is a software freedom issue. Windows does not give Craig the freedom to start his computer except from the installed Windows system, which risks corruption of the deleted file.
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At present, Craig could get around this by starting his computer with a GNU/Linux “LiveCD”, or a bootable USB stick (GNU/Linux again). Microsoft will not offer such tools because such an operating system would not be tied to the hardware of your machine, and Microsoft sell 99% of their Windows systems by having them pre-installed on new machines.
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But Microsoft are currently applying their market dominance to the hardware manufacturers. Microsoft are advocating a system called “Secure Boot”. This would be built into computers, and would make it impossible to boot any system but Windows. Of course, they’re calling this a “security feature”, having created the security panic with their insecure software in the first place.
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If you wish to preserve our freedom to run software of our choice on our own machines, please sign this petition:
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http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement
Apparently words like dinasoar are being taken out of school tests in New York for not being Pc.
Its a form of new world order liberal Faschism to dumb us down.
I am so glad we havent got a Television here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrpQqIrU0Cs&feature=player_embedded#!
Good luck with your Retrieval Craig.
Alexander Burnes seems an interesting fella.
If the machine in question has already been partitioned into having a C: and D: ‘drive’ (but which are, in fact, both on the single internal disk), then recovery s/w may be installed on the other partition to that which holds your documents. Such an installation will not endanger the data because the recovery program is written to free blocks which would never be used by the Office document.
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I’m not that familiar with M$ OS’s, but it’s surely worth performing a full search on the drive with the documents, for anything containing the original document filename. Make sure to include ‘hidden files’ in the search.
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Locking stable doors and all that, but my advice on important working documents is to backup important documents to your own hotmail or gmail account regularly, encrypted first if necessary, as an attachment. Saves messing about with zip drives, and doesn’t depend on anything remaining in your personal possession. One poor acquaintance has her entire PhD thesis on a floppy back in the day that was continually being used. Just one. That eventually failed, she was heartbroken.
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There are plenty of data recovery firms about – it would be most surprising if this data were completely irretrievable.
http://www.datarecoverycompanies.com/harddrives.html
Glenn, C:\ and D:\ partitions only help a bit, unfortunately. The file is on C:\. Windows is nearly always installed on C:\, and Windows itself constantly writes to the partition it’s installed on, even if the recovery software is on another partition. The only way to ensure that the unindexed file is not over-written is to not write to the partition it’s on, so that means not starting Windows at all.
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I agree that a filename search could find an old or a backup version, but it’s safer to do it without starting the Windows system which is installed on C:\.
Possums get ready for the front door crashing and hoards of goons making their way into your homes;
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UK government preparing email and internet surveillance legislation
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Under legislation expected in next month’s Queen’s Speech, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ – the government’s electronic “listening” agency – to examine “on demand” any phone call made, text message and e-mail sent, and website accessed in “real time”, it was reported yesterday.
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Donuchyou love the smell of freedoms?
“Comments on how to avoid such happenings are not welcome in the current trying circumstance.”
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An understandable request. It seems a bit of a din in here tho.
Craig, we’ve all been all barking up the wrong tree here. Send a silly text in an airport or write a controversial poem. Then let the authorities pull you in; they’ll confiscate your laptop and extract every bit of data they possibly can. Then recover the lost data via a Freedom of Information Act request, and recover the laptop when an MP tries to dispose of it in a public litter bin.