Ontrack Data Recovery

Top 10 List of Data Disasters 2006

 

Ontrack Data Recovery™ has unveiled its annual Top Ten list of remarkable data loss disasters in 2006.

Taken from a global poll of Ontrack Data Recovery data recovery experts, this year’s list of data disasters is even more incredible when you consider that in every case cited, Ontrack Data Recovery successfully recovered the data.

Remember, no matter how catastrophic the situation may seem, it pays to have your hard drive or storage device evaluated by a professional service like Ontrack Data Recovery.

Chances are good that we’ll be successful in recovering critical data regardless of how it was lost in the first place.

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The Ontrack Data Recovery 2006 Top Ten List of Data Disasters and Remarkable Recoveries



Ontrack recovers laptop dropped from helicopter!

10.  Helicopter Hi-jinks – Employees of a global telecommunications company dropped a laptop computer while working from a helicopter in Monaco. Ontrack Data Recovery successfully retrieved vital files on the laptop and sent them through an FTP server for a meeting in Hong Kong the very next day.


Wash the Data Away

9.  Wash the Data Away – On a flight from London to Warsaw, a passenger packed his laptop and toiletries in the same bag. Unfortunately, his shampoo leaked and flooded everything in the bag, including the laptop, causing the hard drive to fail. In order to recover all of the data, Ontrack Data Recovery engineers had to do some washing of their own – cleaning the hard drive and other components in order to get the drive functioning.


Not a Jolly Occasion 8.  Not a Jolly Occasion – British comedian Dom Joly, presenter and co-creator of Trigger Happy TV, dropped his laptop, damaging a hard drive that held five thousand photos, six thousand songs, half a book he was writing and all of  his old newspaper columns. Having read the tragic story in a newspaper column written by Mr. Joly, Ontrack Data Recovery contacted him and was able to recover everything.

Rescuing the Research 7.  Rescuing the Research – A leading UK research university suffered a catastrophic data loss after a fire broke out in the computer science department on a weekend morning, damaging computer equipment with smoke and water from the fire department’s efforts. Ontrack Data Recovery was called onsite to rescue thirty computers and recovered more than a terabyte of data.

Beware of Bananas 6.  Beware of Bananas – A customer left an old banana on the top of his external hard drive which proceeded to seep its contents into the drive, ruining the circuitry. The drive would no longer run, but Ontrack Data Recovery was able to clean the drive and repair the circuit board so the drive would spin long enough to recover his data. The banana, however, could not be recovered.

Hard Drive Speed Bump

5.  Hard Drive Speed Bump – It happens every year, but people continue to leave computers and hard drives in the path of moving vehicles. This year alone, Ontrack Data Recovery recovered from a laptop that was run over by a “people mover” at the airport, and several external hard drives stuffed in a backpack that was backed over by a truck.


Tenth Time’s the Charm 4.  Tenth Time’s the Charm – A man reformatted his hard drive not once, not twice, but ten times before he realized there was some valuable information he needed recovered. Luckily for him, it only took Ontrack Data Recovery one try to recover the information.

Finding Nemo 3. Finding Nemo – A customer returned from the vacation of a lifetime in Barbados to discover that 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, so Ontrack Data Recovery had to rescue all of his prized tropical fish photos.

Squeaky Drive Gets the Grease 2. Squeaky Drive Gets the Grease – A university professor heard a squeaking noise from the drive of his new desktop computer. To solve the annoying problem, he opened the case and sprayed the inside of the drive with WD-40. Although successful in stopping the drive from squeaking, his actions also prevented the drive from booting up. Ontrack Data Recovery got the drive working again and recovered his data.

And finally, the number one most remarkable data disaster of 2006…
Sock it to Me 1.  Sock it to Me – Although the circumstances of the original data loss were unremarkable, the problem was intensified when the customer shipped his drive to Ontrack Data Recovery in a pair of dirty socks. The old socks didn’t provide the necessary protection during shipping and the resulting damage made the recovery more challenging than normal. Next time, he’ll stick with bubble wrap, but in the meantime, Ontrack Data Recovery successfully recovered his data too.