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58 Comments
- TheOneGreatX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+45I would like this article more if it wasn't just an ad for this Data Recovery service.
- robotsongs, on 10/12/2007, -4/+47The article goes on and on about how great data recovers services are, but doesn't:
A) Mention how *absolutely ridiculously* expensive they are, placing the service out of the reach of 99% of people ($5000 was the lowest quote I got to recover a dead drive)
or
B) Mention the importance of backing up your data.
Lame. - supermanred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+39This is an ad not a story.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - guytoronto, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37The article doesn't really give the top 10 list. It just kinda talks about a few of them, without any details.
Full list at:
http://www.ontrack.com/special/data-disasters-2006.aspx?hp=Top10_2006
10. Helicopter Hi-jinks – Employees of a global telecommunications company dropped a laptop computer while working from a helicopter in Monaco. Ontrack successfully retrieved vital files on the laptop and sent them through an FTP server for a meeting in Hong Kong the very next day.
9. Wash the Data Away – On a flight from London to Warsaw, a passenger packed his laptop and toiletries in the same bag. Unfortunately, his shampoo leaked and flooded everything in the bag, including the laptop, causing the hard drive to fail. In order to recover all of the data, Ontrack engineers had to do some washing of their own – cleaning the hard drive and other components in order to get the drive functioning.
8. Not a Jolly Occasion – British comedian Dom Joly, presenter and co-creator of Trigger Happy TV, dropped his laptop, damaging a hard drive that held five thousand photos, six thousand songs, half a book he was writing and all of his old newspaper columns. Having read the tragic story in a newspaper column written by Mr. Joly, Ontrack contacted him and was able to recover everything.
7. Rescuing the Research – A leading UK research university suffered a catastrophic data loss after a fire broke out in the computer science department on a weekend morning, damaging computer equipment with smoke and water from the fire department’s efforts. Ontrack was called onsite to rescue thirty computers and recovered more than a terabyte of data.
6. Beware of Bananas – A customer left an old banana on the top of his external hard drive which proceeded to seep its contents into the drive, ruining the circuitry. The drive would no longer run, but Ontrack was able to clean the drive and repair the circuit board so the drive would spin long enough to recover his data. The banana, however, could not be recovered.
5. Hard Drive Speed Bump – It happens every year, but people continue to leave computers and hard drives in the path of moving vehicles. This year alone, Ontrack recovered from a laptop that was run over by a “people mover” at the airport, and several external hard drives stuffed in a backpack that was backed over by a truck.
4. Tenth Time’s the Charm – A man reformatted his hard drive not once, not twice, but ten times before he realized there was some valuable information he needed recovered. Luckily for him, it only took Ontrack one try to recover the information.
3. Finding Nemo – A customer returned from the vacation of a lifetime in Barbados to discover that he couldn’t access any of the snorkeling photos he took on his new “waterproof” digital camera. It seems the camera wasn’t as waterproof as advertised, so Ontrack had to rescue all of his prized tropical fish photos.
2. Squeaky Drive Gets the Grease – A university professor heard a squeaking noise from the drive of his new desktop computer. To solve the annoying problem, he opened the case and sprayed the inside of the drive with WD-40. Although successful in stopping the drive from squeaking, his actions also prevented the drive from booting up. Ontrack got the drive working again and recovered his data.
1. Sock it to Me – Although the circumstances of the original data loss were unremarkable, the problem was intensified when the customer shipped his drive to Ontrack in a pair of dirty socks. The old socks didn’t provide the necessary protection during shipping and the resulting damage made the recovery more challenging than normal. Next time, he’ll stick with bubble wrap, but in the meantime, Ontrack successfully recovered his data too. - aarons44, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Or having all of the drives in an array fail. I once saw all three drives in a three drive RAID5 array fail because of heat. RAID didn't help then!
- nipuL, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Amen, 3 words..
backup, backup, BACKUP!!! And if your data is worth that much, 2 more words. Off-site backup. You might have the best raid array on the planet. But it doesn't stand a change against a fire. - locnguyen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Must've been a professor in the humanities department.
- egbert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9WD-40 is not an oil, it is a solvent and is very bad for electronics.
- denatoc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9oh, sweet irony!
- kent1146, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Completely agree.
An extra hard drive costs around $200. A person earning $80,000 per year makes about $40/hour. If it takes you more than 5 hours to completely recover the data on a destroyed hard drive, then the backup drive will pay for itself. - mdshort, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8For now... WD40 works so well because it dissolves rust and dirt in cracks that cause that squeaking noise, it is not a long standing lubricant like lithium grease and therefore your 'oiled' fan will fail in the not too far future.
- Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Data recovery services are pretty expensive, you're right. I sent a laptop drive with crashed heads to them and they recovered data for ~$2800 US. Not all of it - just what was readable off the platters, about 75% of the data that was on the drive.
Definitely back up. Definitely. If you're not up to doing offsite backup, at least, please, for the love of god, go to an office supply store and buy a waterproof firesafe box, and keep your tapes in it. If there's a fire - or if the fire control system goes off - that cardboard box of backup tapes sitting on top of the server case isn't going to do you any good. I've seen a zillion places that store tapes this way, and the looks on their faces when I tell them to buy a firesafe is priceless. " .... OHHHHHH, yeah." - Bob042, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8The lesson from this really should be "always backup data that is of even a little significance to you" not "always pay OnTrack to recover your lost data", but I guess that's what you get from a recovery company.
- BaadPete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6#7 = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/4390048.stm
- Methodius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5But paper can be lost, misplaced, stained, gotten wet, written over, or shredded to hide corporate unscrupulousness.
- UrlorJkron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The first darn paragraph: "In one case, a university professor needed help after he tried to fix a squeaky desktop computer by squirting it with WD-40 oil."
Since it got sent to a data recovery center I think it is safe to presume that he sprayed the HDD. - rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5WD40 will just wash all grease out of the bearing leaving your fan louder than before.
I use motor oil (15W40) which seems to work best. It's thick enough to stay inside the bearing, thin enough to seep into the pores of the bearing and it doesn't evaporate like most light oils. I first tried this a year ago on the rattling fan in my battery charger and it became very quiet and has remained so to this day.
Of course this works only for sleeve bearings. When a ball bearing is dead, it's dead. - klang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sometimes, data recovery is not the most important thing in the world. Sometimes, fast data destruction is quite important. It's nice to know, that a spray of WD40 can 'clean' a harddrive.
- UrlorJkron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I was going to, but now you've made this post, and I don't feel like it anymore.
- Bwah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Robotsongs
I guess I cant blame you for missing it or anyone else. But I think Im the only one that actually read this becuase it clearly says " Importance of back up" in big black letters.
Then it even says at the very bottom.
"Individuals and companies can avoid the hassle and stress this can cause by backing up data on a regular basis," said Mr Bridge.
and why has NO ONE mentioned SPIN RITE!!!!!!!! - Lyanto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I wonder what kind of college professor would do that. Even if he doesn't teach something remotely close to computer science, it's just common sense that SPRAYING HARD DRIVE WITH LIQUID = BAD.
I just RAR my My Documents folder and burn it to a DVD and also place it in my WD MyBook. Saved me when SP2 made a program mess up my file system. - CanadianAviator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Backup backup, backup. All my data is backed up on at least 2 or 3 other drives. (except movies, they take up too much space and I can just re-download them.) Overkill? Probably. But I learned the hard way after losing some very important files years ago.
Plus, I've had 2 drives fail on me in the last 3 months. - TheCardinal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It will eat the plastic parts of your fan. It is doomed.
- mitrovarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It can't be deleted, but paper burns great, and you can't copy a filing cabinet to a DVD in ten minutes and put it in a bank safe deposit box.
- mikedpirone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I work for a fairly large computer repair company and we deal with OnTrack for our level 3 data recovery. (level 1 being a simple data recovery using software, level 2 being an in-office data recovery, and level 3 we send the harddrive out to OnTrack). OnTrack has excellent service and can manage to get alot of data off some pretty badly destroyed harddrives, but their prices are a bit too steep to allow any normal joe computer user to be able to afford to recover his data. Most of our OnTrack recoveries are from large business's where the data is worth alot more than what OnTrack costs (typically in the range of $3,000-5,000 USD depending on how damaged the drive is). This is why I tell every customer always remember to backup your important data on a cd,dvd, or whatever they can put it on so they always have a backup copy.
- InvisionUK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2To be fair, if all this was was advertising, then the BBC have broken one of the major rules that provide them with funding in the first place. They're not allowed to advertise. Ever.
- fogster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2According to the can on my desk, it contains "Petroleum Distillates."
- culbeda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I used to work for a university in their academic computing services group. There was one occasion where the business lab 'techs' decided that the keyboards could work a little better and WD40'd all of them. Needless to say, the WD40 acted as a dust magnet and clogged the keyboards up until they were inoperable. Ever more distressing is that this was in the era where keyboards cost $100-200 apiece. They had to open up and clean every single all 50+ of them.
- drilldown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Lessee:
Running laptop on top of a comforter: Blocks fan, overheats laptops.
Hello Lightning. Direct hits will smash through the best surge protector.
Waterbed/pipes/roofs breaking. Water kills.
Open case; spill anything on top of it. Arcs and sparks.
Irrational/complete loss of temper. Out the window/kicked in half.
Hooking laptop cord with foot. Off the desk it flies.
Executable e-mail attachments and wallpapers off the web. Virus, take my pc, please.
Allowing any newbie teen allowed to use internet unsupervised for more than 20min.
I'm sure I've missed a few... Seen/fixed/rebuilt all of the above. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not electronics, but everything else. Then again I suppose some of us know nothing but electronics. Okay, fair enough, fixes nothing.
- trparky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I know, you guys don't like the Geek Squad, but they have made data recovery a lot more affordable. They have partnered with OnTrack for data recovery and the fee to have the drive taken into a "clean room" environment costs about $1500. Yes, still expensive but a lot cheaper than I have seen elsewhere.
- GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Or having all of the drives in an array fail. I once saw all three drives in a three drive RAID5 array fail because of heat. RAID didn't help then!"
I clocked in 22 hours of disaster recovery at a dentist's office because of a RAID5 failure. Although all the members didn't fail at the same time, 1 of 3 had failed and he was running on two for a while before finally he lost another one. Someone had neglected to install the proper controller and server management software so they had no idea they were running degraded. - VegaObscura3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Its giving me a 404... looks like someone needs data recovery.
- nigel502, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2wd-40 never fixes anything. :-(
- nottidredd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2it made my fan a lot quieter, and so far no problems
- Sakumi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6I work for a PC repair shop, and we had bad luck with OnTrack. We now use DriveSavers and are very happy (plus we get chocolates every Christmas ;) mm double truffle).
Not dugg due to the fact this is an ad =^.^= - JB449, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used to work as a computer tech...We used Ontrack several times, the most expensive recovery was $1600...
But these were drives that died of natural causes...
Perhaps it's more expensive if you need data recovered from a half melted drive... - pigonthewing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Which solution is easier?...
Photocopying every document in a company's records room, which can easily reach millions of individual pieces of paper. Rent an offsite storage facility to house the copies, and hire personnel to continuously update and categorize the backup copies in storage. Remember, paper burns.
Buy 2 external hard drives (for the truly paranoid; wouldn't want the backup and the active drive to crash at the same time). Drag and drop once a day. - michaelpe2051, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1on the subject of data recovery and archival data. since 1997 i have created backups on burnable compact discs of music and photographs. now fast forword to 2006. those disks are barely readable. my question is what media are you supposed to use that will last more than 10 years. wd-40 good on my rhumetizm bad for hard drives. i can understand him in a way putting wd-40 on it allthough i wouldnt do it. its a lot cheaper to spend the money on a spare hd than it is spend the money on a data recovery service but what do i know i am still using a pentium ii with a 2 mb drive made in 1995.
- kunalthakar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Jeremy Zawodny had written about the cost effectiveness of Amazon S3 backup services. Seems worth a shot. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007624.html
- josegutz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2WD40 sprayed on a HDD? Hmmmph thats nothing...I was working on my biology professor's home computer and when I opened the case out gushed a mixture of styrofoam peanuts, and cotton that had been packed pretty well into the box. I phoned the proffessor after the discovery and much to my suprise explained that he stuffed his computer case full of cotton balls because the HDD was clicking too loud and he could not concentrate on his research. I wanted to laugh but instead I cried as he tried to console me and tried to cheer me up. I just couldn't bare to tell him so I hung up and fell over to the ground laughing I almost died of suffucation from laughing so hard.
- vladiator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This guy knows how to fix a squeaky hard drive
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2004/05/bbspot_labs_whining_hard_drive.html - rolotomasi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1TheCardinal, what are you referring to? WD40 doesn't attack most plastics. Motor oil attacks some plastics, but computer fans are made of fiberglass reinforced polyamide, which is resistant to virtually all solvents, including gasoline and motor oil.
- dinobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Boo fake story!
Hooray Beer! - Informativo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I can't read this article because appears like is an error not found !!
- cquinnd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1>> and why has NO ONE mentioned SPIN RITE
1. because spinrite is one word, not two.
2. because despite the hype on grc.com, spinrite is not a data disaster recovery utility, it is a drive conditioning and data refresh utility. It can help with files that the operating system is having trouble reading on a failing drive, but it is really not helpful against damage severe enough to impact access to the drive or loss of partitions/file table information.
- davy2002a, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2May or May Not be my opinion: I have been told by a good technical friend of mine who owns a database host provider that NTFS is next to impossible to recover data from (just might wanna let u all know ;))
- Ratsy99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0SPAM? It's just a news story on the BBC...
- bliz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I know I will probably be dugg down for this as many comments before me have said it before...but I'll just say it anyway (myself guilty of not doing so):
backup your data. - algorythm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2how come they can recover all of that and our company has sent at least 15 drives over a period of time to various recovery companies including Ontrack and none were able to be recovered.
These companies are worthless and can only do what you can do at home with software recovery. They make you think they have dust free labs where people wearing white gowns are taking platters apart to recover your data. -
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