[ILUG] [OT] Data recovery from a damaged hard drive

[Niall Walsh]

On Friday 08 July 2005 10:42, Niall O Broin wrote:
> On 8 Jul 2005, at 10:06, Sarunas Vancevicius wrote:
> > I opened it up and the hard
> > drive is damaged. The cover is smashed to the inside.
> >
> > Any one know places where they might attempt to recover something?
>
>The good
> ones are very expensive, but what's the data worth? However, if the
> drive is physically damaged to the extent that the platters have been
> touched, I'd say you're on a hiding to nothing.

My undestanding of these things, mainly from reading information about the 
reverse scenario of where you want to destroy the data , is that it takes an 
awful lot of work to make all data on a drive unrecoverable (afair US 
military emergency destruction involves acid while regular destruction 
obliterates the drives by explosion).   The exact amount of damage done would 
determine what sort of recovery techniques might work (like simply swapping 
the platters to a new chassis) and hence the cost so as Niall O B said you 
have to determine just what the data is worth and how much you are willing to 
gamble on trying to get it back (the data you really want could be the one 
thing you might not be able to recover, or all you may lose is a few 
programs).

To everyone still reading remember ... backup, Backup, BACKUP!!!  And don't 
forget to get a backup off-site in case the next visitors torch the place on 
the way out.

Good Luck,

Niall