1. Data Defrost – One man brought in a hard drive in a wet plastic bag. He said he had read on the Internet that if you place a broken drive in the freezer it would fix it. So he tried that method and asked the recovery engineers not to laugh.
2. Reckless Recycling – One man tidied up his computer folders and inadvertently deleted the ones he meant to keep. He then cleaned up his system, emptied the recycle bin and defragged the hard drive before realizing his error. He now triple-checks files before deleting them for good.
3. Rowdy Relatives – A man suddenly found his laptop would only boot up to the ‘blue screen of death,’ putting his data at risk. A week later, his nephew admitted that he used its screen as a punching bag to relieve his frustrations with the slow computer. The man sent his nephew back to live with his parents.
4. Digital Disaster at 19,000 Feet – The Polish explorer, Krystof Wielicki, dropped his digital camera when climbing the Himalayas on his latest expedition, smashing it to smithereens and damaging the memory card in the process.
5. Gone in a Flash – One medical company worker completed 1,200 customer billing entries – a process that took several days – when lightning struck the transformer outside the building. Everything was gone, including all the bills she had just prepared.
6. Baby Blues – One couple had hundreds of pictures of their baby’s first three months on their computer. When a virus struck their PC, the computer manufacturer advised them to reload the operating system but they forgot to save the data.
7. Construction Calamity – During the construction of a large office building, a steal beam fell on a laptop computer containing the building plans, crushing the laptop.
8. Toilet Trauma – One man became so mad with his malfunctioning laptop computer, he threw it into the toilet and flushed a couple of times.
9. Road Kill – A woman placed her laptop on top of her car while she got in. She forgot about the laptop, which slid off the back of her car, and she then reversed straight over it and reported hearing a ‘crunch’.
And finally…
10. Runway Wreckage – A laptop computer was run over by an airplane. Even Ontrack’s recovery engineers don’t understand how it happened, but that was the customer’s explanation.
About Ontrack Data Recovery
Ontrack Data Recovery is the largest, most experienced and technologically advanced provider of data recovery products and services worldwide. Ontrack is able to recover lost or corrupted data from virtually all operating systems and types of storage devices through its do-it-yourself, remote and in-lab capabilities, using its hundreds of proprietary tools and techniques. Ontrack Data Recovery is a brand name of Kroll Ontrack Inc., the technology services subsidiary of Kroll Inc., the global risk consulting company.