R-HDD (r-hdd.narod.ru) — a Nizhny Novgorod service for software-based data recovery from hard drives and its website on the free Narod hosting service, which existed from 2003 to 2005[1][4]. The work was carried out in Nizhny Novgorod: the home page carried city telephone numbers with the 8312 area code and the e-mail address r-hdd@mail.ru[1][3].

The first version of the site, 2003

In the snapshot of 25 October 2003 the site was titled "R-HDD — Recovery of information from a hard drive after formatting, in Nizhny Novgorod" and had eight sections: "Home", "News", "About the work", "Prices", "Contact", "FAQ", "Download", "Links"[1]. The home page explained that "now in Nizhny Novgorod too" it was possible, as the page itself put it, to "quickly and cheaply recover lost information from a hard drive (HDD)"[1].

The limits of the service were stated separately: hardware repair of drives was not done here and the sealed head-and-disk assembly was not opened — "we do not even have a blowtorch", the home page reported, and so the work was called "software data recovery"[1]. The declared procedure was: the disk is read in read-only mode, not a single byte is written to it without the owner's permission, the service areas are copied beforehand, and if nothing could be recovered the drive is returned in its former state and no money is taken[1]. The page ended with the line "All is not lost yet!"; orders were accepted at r-hdd@mail.ru and by telephone at (8312) 26-49-61[1]. The footer carried "Copyright © 2003 R-HDD" and the credit of the designer — "Designed by Shurikian"[1].

Rebuilding of the site, 2004–2005

By August 2004 the site had been rebuilt: the heading of the home page read "R-HDD. Information recovery", and the footer carried the copyright "Copyright © 2003—2004 R-HDD"[2]. The menu shrank from eight items to six: "Project", "Services", "Articles", "FAQ", "Download", "Diagnostics"[2]. The home page was divided into three blocks: recovery of information from hard drives, flash cards and compact discs; protection of a hard drive by a special device, the "HDD&DATA PROTECTOR"; and articles "about hard drives, information recovery and all that"[2].

The name "R-HDD Project" took hold in the snapshots of 2005: that was how both the heading of the home page and the copyright read — "© 2003—2005 R-HDD Project"[3][4]. By that time the sections were set out in more detail. Under "hard drive protection" the sub-items "by a special device", "how it works", "photographs" and "for dealers" were listed, and beside it a third line of business had appeared — "Replacement of a burnt-out hard drive with an HDD&DATA PROTECTOR", with the items "why replace it", "terms of exchange", "how to replace it"[3].

The city telephone number changed twice over those years. In 2003 the home page carried the number (8312) 26-49-61[1]; in the snapshot of 2004 there were no telephone numbers on the page at all[2]; in the snapshot of 12 February 2005, under the line "Our telephone numbers in Nizhny Novgorod", the numbers "(8312) 75-74-47, 8-903-600-58-09" are given, and in the snapshot of 8 April of the same year "(8312) 30-92-84, 8-903-600-58-09": the mobile number stayed the same, while the city one had changed again[3][4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

R-HDD was entered into the nn.ru rubricator — "the catalogue of Nizhny Novgorod websites" — under the heading "Firms (Enterprises) : Computers and office equipment : Repair and maintenance", with the description "Recovery of information from a hard drive after formatting. Resuscitation of an HDD after deletion of a partition. Recovery of deleted files"[5]. The rating that the catalogue printed next to every line (data from the Counter.nn.ru counter) stood at 183 — in the snapshot of 28 November 2003 that was the fourth position on the page, which was sorted by rating: above it stood the company AVARD (590), the company OnLine (375) and the computer shop Tiberium (374), and immediately below it the company Unite (178)[5]. On the scale of the whole Nizhny Novgorod Internet of those years this is a middling figure: in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating R-HDD occupies the 129th line out of 591 addresses with a known rating value.

Under the name "R-HDD Project. Information recovery" the site took part in the voting of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in 2004 — under entry number 41 in the category "Most useful site"[6]. The result was three votes by e-mail and none by SMS: the 38th line in a table of 48 entrants in the category, which was headed by the site "Nizhny Novgorod Auto Forum.ннов.ру" with 212 votes by e-mail and 36 by SMS[6]. The same category also listed another Nizhny Novgorod site about hard drives — "Hard Drive Service Centre" (hddr.ru) with 15 votes by e-mail[6]. The very fact of the entry is telling: a narrow workshop on free hosting went into the same list as city portals and online shops.

How it closed

The last of the snapshots of the home page collected by us is dated 8 April 2005; in it the site is still working and gives telephone numbers that are in service[4]. There are no later snapshots in our sample, and the years of the project's life are recorded as 2003–2005[1][4]. In the dossier of our census the address is marked as dead, and no move to another domain has been recorded. Where the telephone numbers and the workshop behind them went cannot be reconstructed from the archival materials.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, February 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, April 2005 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru rubricator, "Repair and maintenance" section, 28 November 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting, 2004 (archive)