The WaPo artcle that
@DrHoops linked had a couple passages that made me go WTF??? It seems to me the computer tech that had the laptop to begin with was an idiot.
According to Mac Isaac’s attorney, Brian Della Rocca, recovering the data was challenging for Mac Isaac.
“He would boot the computer and transfer as much as he could before the computer shut down. Then, he would boot up the computer again, verify what was copied, and then transfer more data until the computer shut down again. This process repeated several times,” Della Rocca said in a prepared statement.
That's not how any competent tech would approach backing up all the data from a failing machine. One would access the drive with live media and transfer the contents, or even better would be to physically remove the drive and clone it. Even with my relatively pedestrian skilz, that's how I've handled similar situations in the past. It's a trivial exercise for anyone who claims to know what they're doing.
But then you have this:
He added that Mac Isaac, before turning over the computer, made a copy of its hard drive “in case he was ever thrown under the bus as a result of what he knew.”
Why would he do that after the fact, rather than from the get go? He was hired to back up all the data on the machine. Once it became obvious the machine wouldn't reliably run, cloning/copying the drive would have been the easiest way to back up and secure everything that was on it.
@Marvin the Martian , what's your take?
Link to WaPo article originally posted by
@DrHoops :