Tips from Tom Page
I will be adding tips here from time to time. If you have any good tips please share them.

This page is just a list of random suggestions about things I have found helpful.

1)A good tool is to put a copy of cathy.exe into the root folder of hard drives. Then you can catalog the drive and search it much faster than with the windows search command. Recatalog when changes are made to the drive. It makes finding files much faster.
Cathy is a very small program and a complete stand alone program. It is wonderful for cataloging CDs and DVDs
(If you need cathy.exe download it here.) - http://www.mtg.sk/rva/

2)Do you need to erase sensitive data from a cd or dvd? The best and easiest way to erase forever data on a cd or dvd is to just put it in a microwave for a second. It blows the reflective foil all to pieces with the arc burn. It only takes a second and I don't think even the CIA could recover any of the data. Even the dye is burned so that recoating the cd still would not restore the data.

Microwaved dvd - you can see arc paths.

3) Nick-Sander used to clean electrical contacts

While the nick-sander is a very good tool for smoothing scratches in paint it is also the most incredible tool to clean corroded electrical contacts. It can reach into bulb sockets to remove corrosion very efficiently and does not overly abrade the contacts. Absolutely the best tool for anyone who ever works on electrical systems. It's ability to follow the surface of a contact is so much better than a screwdriver blade or knife. Patient burnishing will take off even heavy corrosion.
Give it a try.

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4) Do you have a damaged DVD or CD? An excellent file recover program written in javascript is "JFILERECOVERY". It will run on any OS that supports java including Linux versions. It will copy the damaged file ignoring crc errors. For example it will recover a damaged video file so that it can be transferred and have only a few glitches tha may not even be noticeable. Audio files also can be recovered with perhaps only a few pops here and there. It should never be used to recover executable files as they could cause problems when they run.

The program is a java script and must have java enabled.  To install java in linux use software Center and search 'java' then install 'openjdk java runtime' - now when you right click a .jar file it will open in java.

The best file protection of course is redundancy. Have a good backup system of anything important.
You can google the name and get the jfilerecovery deluxe from the authors website and many download sites. The older free version is here and has similar features. This is areally well done program and if you use the free version please consider buying or donating to the author.

Download Jfilerecover.jar jfile recovery