Laboratory
What hard drive firmware is, and why it cannot be replaced
A damaged board can be replaced; a drive's calibration memory cannot. An analogy to understand why.
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Laboratory
How low-level cloning works (and why it is always the first step)
Before touching a single file, we clone the device bit by bit. This is the technical reason that order never changes.
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Laboratory
Clean room: why a hard drive should only be opened in a controlled environment
The head flies nanometres above the platter: a speck of dust can scratch it. What a clean room is, and how we open a drive.
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