By Dan Ilett, 16 November 2006 10:25
NEWS
Deaths at the hands of bananas, smelly socks and WD-40 are some of the unusual fates to have befallen innocent hard drives, according to a data recovery company that has released a list of the most remarkable cases of data loss witnessed this year.
One customer left a banana on top of his hard drive, which then rotted and seeped through into the device. The circuits were ruined and the drive failed to work.
The banana was also ruined.
Another customer, failing to read the warning signs, managed to reformat his hard drive not once, not twice, but ten times before he realised there was some valuable information he needed.
Another customer decided his broken hard drive could be packaged and sent to the company in a pair of dirty socks. The data recovery company - OnTrack - said the smelly clothing failed to provide the necessary protection during shipping, which resulted in more damage to the drive.
British comedian Dom Joly, presenter of Trigger Happy TV, thought the joke was on him when he dropped his laptop, damaging a hard drive containing 5,000 photos, 6,000 songs, a book he was writing and all of his newspaper columns.
Security from A to Z
Click on the links below to find out more...
A is for Antivirus
B is for Botnets
C is for CMA
D is for DDoS
E is for Extradition
F is for Federated identity
G is for Google
H is for Hackers
I is for IM
J is for Jaschan (Sven)
K is for Kids
L is for Love Bug
M is for Microsoft
N is for Neologisms
O is for Orange
P is for Passwords
Q is for Questions
R is for Rootkits
S is for Spyware
T is for Two-factor authentication
U is for USB sticks/devices
V is for Virus variants
W is for Wi-fi
X is for OS X
Y is for You
Z is for Zero-day
And a university professor appeared not-so-clever when he heard a squeaking noise from the drive of his new desktop and decided to open the case and spray in some WD-40. Although successful in stopping the drive from squeaking, this was largely because he had also stopped the drive from working.
Employees of a global telecommunications company had a tall tale to tell their bosses after they dropped a laptop computer while working from a helicopter in Monaco.
Also, OnTrack says it happens every year, but people continue to leave computers and hard drives in the path of moving vehicles. This year alone, the company recovered data from a laptop that was run over by a people-carrier at the airport, and several external hard drives stuffed in a backpack that was backed over by a truck.
After returning from the airport from his dream diving holiday in Barbados, one man discovered 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.
OnTrack claims it rescued the data in all cases. Jim Reinert, senior director of software and services for the company, said it pays to have your damaged hard drive or storage device evaluated because the chances of recovery are good.
Comments
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1. james wilmington
Haha! Despite continued stupidity from our own hand, one wonders at the prospect that third parties are more applicable to the failing of hard drives. you need only look at the quality of 'throwers' at airports to see how stuff can get trashed.
Would solid state hard drives absolve us of these problems? A hybrid drive could take some of the heat out of that problem. Perhaps.
2. Jean-Michel
But when I send them my hard drive that became unworking, they said they could do nothing. Finaly I repaired the hard drive myself by changing the electronic board from a similar model I found on ebay.
It looks they did not made much efforts.
3. Tom Wagner
This 'news story' stinks of advertisement. OnTrack may be high-profile but they're no more capable than any of the other large recovery companies. These are some of the silliest anecdotes I've ever read. Surely they can submit more captivating success stories than these.
4. Full Name
That was a very long advertisment.
5. Who needs a Car?
Funny,
I managed to stump the good people at Ontrack's data recovery software, simply by hitting the "Disk Clean up" button on my Windows XP desktop. The system hung for an entire evening (started it before going home), then when I hard reset the box to regain control, (holding power button) it had lost my OS completely. Got our (mostly competent) IT guys to come have a look, they "repaired XP" with the install disk and *Ta Da*, large swathes of my data were gone. Not even Ontrack's Easy Recovery Pro could retrieve it! Lets see your SUV do that! (Thanks M$, i've always loved your work!)
6. Amy
One thing you should always do with your data is encrypt it. This article makes it sound like if your data will be safe from prying eyes if only you leave a banana on it or manage to drop the laptop before losing it or it gets stolen. Sadly there's not usually a banana handy when there's a thief about....
7. Clinton
Personally, I'd always back up data before doing anything else - encrypting, disk cleanup, turning off system. Or is that too obvious (typed smugly while rubbing halo)?
8. Clinton
Oh, and don't forget to always test your backups...
9. Smart Alec
Hey, I heard of this bloke who always backed up the data on his hard drive.
It is funny how foolish some people are eh?
After all it is obvious to me now that not doing so is much more fun?