August 27

Heat can cook your chances for recovery. Throwback to this pair of fire-burned drives spotted in the lab whose not-so hot fate was pretty easily determined early into the data recovery project.

Spotted In The Lab: Two hard drives opened to reveal their read/write heads, platters, and circuit boards removed.

Here we have two fire-burned hard disk drives on a lab bench at CBL. The damage is pretty evident even though they aren’t terribly burnt. Charred metal lids and some melted components.

Unfortunately even a brief visual evaluation is telling about the not-so hot fate of these drives. How?

Closer Look: The reflection in the platter surface is smooth/grey colour of the ceiling until the edge of the circle, where it suddenly appear hazy, almost glowing white. Light is being bent by the warping of the surface of the platter. Not a good sign for a successful recovery.

Beyond the melted circuit board components, the way the light bends on the edge of the platters indicates damage and warping caused by intense heat. That kind of physical damage to the magnetic coating and structure of the platters is no good for their ability to store data effectively. Definitely not a good sign for data integrity or a successful data recovery. This project would be deemed unrecoverable on arrival by the lab techs. Caught in a hot data mess? Don’t despair. Data could still be there. Never hurts to have an expert take a look!

Category: data recovery

Tags: burnt, burnt hard drive, fire-damaged, hard disk, hard drive, hard drive platters, hard drive recovery, photo

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