Dumbest ways to lose your data
By Peter Rojas 
posted Nov 15th 2004 7:50AM
posted Nov 15th 2004 7:50AM
When it comes down to it these "reports" are just their way of getting some free PR to drum up business, but Ontrack Data Recovery just released a list of the top ten dumbest ways that people have lost all of their files, including someone who put their hard drive in the freezer because they read on the Internet that this would fix the problem they were having, a laptop with all the blueprints for building on it that was destroyed when a steel beam in that very same building fell on top of it, and a woman who left her laptop on top of her car, and then inadvertantly backed up over it after it had slid off.
i've done the frozen hard drive trick.... sometimes you'll try anything if the data is important enough, and you don't want to ship out the hd to somebody that will charge you $$$$$$$$ to get the data back.
i mistakenly left my hard drive out in my car... at -50F for 8 hours... when some girl drove me to her house. at the time it seemed like a better place to leave it. or maybe i forgot it was even there.
though at the time... vodka was more involved in the decision making process.
worse yet... the machine wasn't 'off' but in sleep mode... and i opened the lid before it was fully thawed. wow. never seen a laptop that upset.
needless to say... i lost the data. if the same situation happened today i would probably have been able to salvage the data... but at that time i was less experienced in the ways of data recovery and gave up and reformatted.
the actual physical drive surprisingly lasted another 2-3 years just fine and without incident.
The freezer trick DOES work - I've used it to recover data from otherwise dead disks.
You've gotta be quick getting the data off though.
The freezer trick does work, but its only good as a last resort. After that you only have about 15 minutes to recover and its gone forever.
Yes, freezer should work, except I've recovered data from a overheating HD a little differently: I've put the HD in a ziplock, with wires hanging out of it, then surround that bag with blue ice (one of those refreezable ice packs). This worked extremely well, giving me time to back up and even check for data integrity.
I too have had the freezer trick work when nothing else would. Maybe Ontrack should have done a little more research!!
..and techTV had a thing about a year ago about how that really does work. If techTV said it, you know it's true.
:-)
P.S. That wasn't meant to be sarcastic
I have used freezer trick on probably around 20 occasions. Wondering though if you left it in freezer for a day or so, then you might find condesation forming in it and that might kill it. Normally a fridge is enough.
I'm actually interested in the black laptop shown next to the article
Can anyone brief me on the maker/model?
Thanks!
#9 its the wallmart super laptop , only 699$
and you'll be sorry ..