News for Friday, 5 November 2004

We thought it was impossible, but Indif did it! He repaired his 2.5" hard drive, and got his data back:

A short time ago, the drive of my laptop started his requiem. One day, it made painful "crack and crisp" noises, and the computer froze. I rushed to shut it down, waited for a while until the mechanics cooled off, but it was useless, it didn't boot any more. R.I.P. Hard drive :(
I decided to have a closer look at the drive, remove it from the laptop, shook it, and metallic sounds eventually convinced me that I could start digging a grave for my beloved peripheral, and also for the data I hadn't backed up yet... Ouch!

With resignation, i bought another bigger drive. but I still had in mind to find a way to get my work back. I install the "said-to-be-dead" drive in a USB case, and vainly tried with Disk Utility, that cannot detect anything, while the poor drive is suffering the hell, trying to spin with an awful noise.
This weekend, I decided to perform a highly dangerous "last chance" operation: dissecting the drive... With a Torx screwdriver, I open the metal panel and check out the mechanics. The left picture presents how it looks like, "inside the box".

Shaking the drive once more, I localized where the noise was coming from: the part highlighted in yellow on the right picture. I removed it, and re-assembled it with the black part in plastic, and carefully re-installed them where they should be. I screwed everything together, back in the case, tried to boot and... hurrah !! Silence !
And I even managed to get my work back. Well, most of it, because some data was corrupted during the breakdown. Plus I nowadays have an additional drive that might serve again once set up in a specific "Firewire is better" case.

Beware, however, because the atmosphere within a hard drive is a bit pressurized and absolutely dust-free. We strongly advise you not to use the repaired drive for any other purpose than just a device "in case of...". The risk for the data to be corrupted is ten times higher. But at least, with this nice bidouille, the data supposed to be lost was recovered.

One of our reader went to the SATIS 2004 (Audio Technologies and Solutions Meeting) in Paris and hereafter is his report.

While visiting the SATIS, I could see that Apple Solution Expert was massively present.
All key softwares were presented and demoed: Final Cut Pro HD, Motion, Shake, DVD Studio Pro, etc.
Avid was also present at the SATIS, but nothing compare to Apple...
Adobe was there, demoing After Effects and Indesign CS on PC.
Nice PMG5 coupled to 30' displays were installed in many booth, as well as iMacG5 and PowerBooks demoing different solutions for audio, video, image, animation, compositing applications from different companies.

Thanks to Stephan to report that ATI ahs released a new version of its ATI Display utility. OEM graphic cards are now officially and effectively supported.
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/macosx-ati-displays-4-4-1-readme.html