[BC] x-rays and hard drives

[Lewis Munn]

Norton at one time had a neat disk-reading utility.  I used it to recover a student's term paper corrupted by a virus.  Recovered about 95% of the paper, but it was a very powerful routine with very few protections, so was withdrawn in the next issue.
   
  I also used it to change parameters in some of the simple games...could read a lot of the SW, and see how to "cheat" the game and change the data base entries for the characters, etc.  Make your guy a super-klingon, so to speak, and you'd whiz thru the game with little damage!!
   
  I have many times wished they still had it available for the more advanced systems.
   
  On X-ray machines, I have heard, and maybe someone already mentioned it, that the problem with magnetic media is not the X-ray radiation, but the strong magnetic fields associated with the high pulse voltage and currents to drive the X-ray tube.
   
  Photographic film, conversely, is affected by the ionization and any induced light from the X-rays.  Causes a general fogging.
   
  It is too bad that "security" has to use these powerful tools that can cause damge.
   
  I did find it interesting on a recent trip that the US takes about 3X as long in the searches as any other county, and one country didn't even have an incomming customs check.
   
  Also, the other countries have little hesitation about taking cameras and films around the X-ray; the US tries to claim it is "camera safe".  And the US folks always seem angry about their work; other countries seem very polite and careful.
   
  Looey Munn
  Roundup, MT

Cowboy <curt at spam-o-matic.net> wrote:
  . Let's hear it, just how do you recover data
>via x-ray? 
Never said it would be practical, and didn't mean to imply that it's
something in common use.

		
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