This is a more informal personal post about my the wiki, here is the academic version in the form of my undergrad dissertation.
So the last entry for my blog was a fair amount of time ago (18 months), but I have been busy with my degree, life's surprises, and creating the datarecoverywiki.com, a completely free and open-source wiki covering data recovery, tools, and storage/file formats.
I don’t have a plan for this post; it’s more a look at what I did and why. The more technical stuff will be in my dissertation paper, hosted here once marked.
Chapter one: the good, the bad, and why I did this to myself
Going into this project in September, my knowledge of data recovery was minimal...
The good
- Spent 9 months hyper-fixating on data recovery and sharing it online.
- Created a force for good to teach others about data recovery.
- Gained an excuse to buy new tools, especially the laminar flow hood.
The bad
- The expense: could have easily spent £1000–1500, luckily most items were already available.
The holy shit, why did I do this?
- The enormity hit me after seeing roughly 100,000 words in the wiki, with 25,000 more needed to be comprehensive.
Chapter two: Vibes-based academia
Writing my dissertation was extremely difficult as I had to explain the project to professionals. Motivation was partly spite-driven but also a learning process.
It amazes me what can be done through sheer determination.
Chapter three: Next steps
- Plan to update and improve the project regardless of engagement.
- Exploring silicon-level repair for future posts.
- Taking a temporary break after investing many hours.
That is all.
edit(25/aug/25): from less burn out me the project is starting again slowly behind the scenes but it maybe a while untill anything is actively published as research takes time :)