Computer Is On, But The Screen Is Black: Troubleshooting and Data Recovery

One of the most common computer failure scenarios is also one of the most difficult to diagnose: The computer turns on, but the screen is black (or otherwise not responsive).  The core issue is simple: The monitor isn’t receiving a...
July 18, 2024

Miss Defragmenting Your Hard Drive? This Website Is For You.

Back in the 1990s, hard drive defragmentation was an essential part of weekly computer maintenance — and for some people, it was the best part. Windows 95 and 98 provides a graphical disk defragmenter with a grid that gradually changed...
July 17, 2024

What Are Cryptocurrency “Address-Poisoning” Attacks?

Address poisoning, also known as address spoofing, is a type of cryptocurrency attack in which an attacker sends a small amount of worthless tokens to a victim. The attacker’s wallet has an address that resembles a wallet used by a...
July 9, 2024

How Does Block Erase Work on a Solid-State Drive? 

Block erase (also referred to as “secure erase” and by other names, depending on the implementation) is an ATA command that tells the SSD’s controller to apply an erase voltage. The voltage is applied to all NAND cells of the...
July 3, 2024

Sacramento Credit Union Announces Outage Due to Ransomware Attack

Patelco Credit Union, a Sacramento-based credit union with 37 local branches, has confirmed that its recent security breach occurred due to a ransomware attack.  In an email sent to the members of the credit union, Patelco CEO Erin Mendez said...
July 2, 2024

The IBM 350: Weird Facts About the First Commercial Hard Drive

We’re approaching the 70th anniversary of the hard disk drive (and despite a  popular misconception, hard drive sales are still going strong). Without HDDs, modern computing wouldn’t be possible, and when the IBM 350 was introduced in 1956, it jump-started...
July 2, 2024

Lockbit Ransomware Group Announces Breach of U.S. Federal Reserve

The Lockbit 3.0 ransomware group claims to have breached the United States Federal Reserve, exfiltrating about 33 terabytes of potentially sensitive data.  The group claims that the stolen data includes “Americans’ banking secrets,” though they have not yet published any...
June 24, 2024

Ransomware Attack Causes Blood Shortages at London Hospitals 

A ransomware attack targeting Synnovis, a U.K. healthcare partnership, has significantly disrupted medical procedures in several of London’s largest hospitals.  The incident has prevented hospitals from matching patients’ blood types at a normal frequency. Surgeries and other procedures that require...
June 12, 2024

Data Recovery Myths: Can You Move Hard Drive Platters to Another Drive?

Frequently, our clients will ask us about how the data recovery process works — and providing a quick answer can be difficult, because every case presents a different set of challenges.In some situations, we’re able to restore files by...
June 11, 2024

Recovering Data From a Previous Version of an Excel Spreadsheet

You’ve accidentally made changes to an Excel spreadsheet, and you want to roll them back. Good news: It’s not an especially difficult task.  Newer versions of Microsoft’s Excel software include a Version History feature, which you can use to restore...
May 29, 2024