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After a fire, flood or explosion, recovery of data from a computer hard drive or storage tape can be critical. Many of the techniques used to recover data from damaged or seemingly destroyed data is similar to data recovery from failed hard drives and tapes in less severe conditions.
Rebuilding File
In many cases companies and other entities that experience a disaster are faced with a double or more failure. Even those companies who back up their data on a regular basis are at risk unless they store the backup data in a remote location. Rebuilding customer files, financial records, inventory records, can be impossible. Many companies and other entities face going out of business when experiencing a flood, fire or explosion.
Architecture of a Hard Drive
The lost data can be recovered from many drives even if all plastic components are melted, and otherwise the hard drive looks like blackened mess. The architecture of a hard drive has two main components - the electronic board and the head assembly. The head assembly houses the rotating platters which contain the data along with read/write heads that do just that -- read and write data to the rotating platters.
Virus Attack
There is a pin size small hole in the head assembly. Its role is to compensate for atmospheric changes. The amount of air that enters this pin hole is negligible over time.
Challenge in Recovering
Another risk to the head assembly is that the heat was so intense that the platters experienced melting. In this case there is no hope of recovering data. Our experience is, however, that even blackened drives have undamaged head assemblies. The challenge in recovering data is to rebuild the electronics to access the data.
Recovering Data
If the hard drive has been under water for only a short time, the probability is that the head assembly has not been penetrated by the water. While the data recovery remains difficult, it can be done. If water has penetrated the head assembly, it is important that the drive be kept wet. In requesting data recovery it is important to seal the drive, as well as other media, in a container with a minimum of a damp sponge. We have been successful in recovering data when we have received drive shipped (delivered) in distilled water.
Standard Technique
A standard technique used by companies specializing in restoring damaged computer equipment is to bake components for a time to dry them out. This technique has worked quite well for computer boards, but can be disastrous for computer hard drives.
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