ADR – Recovery of Data from a Water / Flood Damaged Hard Disk Drive

Location:
Southern Italy

Drive: Quantum CX

Outcome: The data from this drive was successfully recovered.

Background:
We received this hard drive from a firm of accountants in Italy whose offices had suffered damage due to flooding. The computer that housed this hard drive was underwater for approximately 8 hours. In that time, contaminated flood water had penetrated the drive to a severe extent. The hard drive contained extremely valuable client data and there was no working backup of the data contained on the drive.

Recovery:
In cases of water damage, conventional data recovery methods are not applicable as the drive will have sustained severe damage such that attempting any recovery using conventional methods will render the data unrecoverable. In these instances, use of Data Clinic”s ADR service is appropriate as there are many critical phases in successfully recovering the data. Correct storage and handling of the media is very important as oxidisation of the hard disk will begin to occur. As a result of this, recovery is time consuming as components must be treated with extreme care.

The recovery process involved

• Fresh flow water treatment and cleaning
• Platter dismounting & surface treatment
• Chemical drying in a controlled sealed environment for several days
• Platter surface re-lubrication
• Mounting and recalibration

We can often recover data from drives that other companies can not. Find out more about our Advanced Data Recovery here or call us on 0871 977 2525.