Robin England

Hardware Research & Development Team Lead at Ontrack @KLDiscovery

I am technical lead for KLDiscovery Ontrack\'s cleanroom (hardware) R&D team. The team is highly skilled and has many years\' experience in the low-level technical design and operation of computer data storage technology with emphasis on the recovery of data from failed storage devices. I work closely with the team to help define the scope and direction of our projects. The team provides daily support, internal research notes and hardware and software tools that are used by our cleanroom engineers worldwide to recover client data from failed computer data storage devices including tape, hard drive (HDD), solid-state drive (SSD) and other flash-memory based devices such as removable media, mobile phones and tablet computers.From an early age I have had a passion and a fascination for electronics and computers. As a radio and television engineer, my father gave me a thorough introduction and exposure to fault-finding and repairing consumer electronics using technologies ranging from thermionic valves to the \"latest\" digital ICs during the 1970s and 1980s and I have never looked back!I enjoy being hands-on and take the opportunity to work directly on projects wherever possible. I take sole responsibility for all stages of electronic product design from concept to production; including multi-layer PCB layout and routing, writing firmware, basic mechanical design, producing manufacturing data and writing end-user instruction manuals.I have experience in software and firmware development and disassembly and have written code in machine language, assembly language, C, C++, Visual BASIC, PowerBASIC and Java for various microprocessors, microcontrollers and operating systems including Windows, Linux and Android.An aspect of my current role I particularly enjoy is reverse engineering; examining hardware and software to find out how it is designed, how it works and using that understanding to build new solutions or product enhancements.