Reminder: Acid Is Bad For Hard Drives


We always enjoy data recovery service Kroll Ontrack’s annual roundup of the most notable disasters amongst its customers. Two of the entries on this year’s list have an Australian flavour.

The weirdest case involved a robbery in a pool supplies shop:

When an Australian pool and spa shop was being robbed, the burglars decided to hide all the evidence by pouring the large stock of hydrochloric acid on the shop floor and counters, consequently damaging the shop’s computer and point of sale terminal. The shop owner was able to get a very smelly drive to the local Kroll Ontrack lab, and although the computer was very badly damaged, all the data was recovered from the affected computer.

Less dramatic but equally challenging was this case:

Imagine working in one of the most challenging and remote environments of the world and being confronted with a serious data loss. This is what happened to a resources company in the Gobi Desert. They accidentally deleted a VMware machine and several snapshots. Luckily, IT got in touch with Kroll Ontrack, and via a satellite link, a remote data recovery session was quickly established. The link enabled Kroll Ontrack engineers to work around-the-clock, and data was recovered in a much shorter time than originally anticipated.

In both cases the data was recovered, but not without (I imagine) and effort (and a huge satellite data bill).


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


10 responses to “Reminder: Acid Is Bad For Hard Drives”

Leave a Reply