adrenalinepcs Posted January 18, 2004 Posted January 18, 2004 and here's the hard drive i also burnt in the bonfire: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special_K Posted January 18, 2004 Posted January 18, 2004 awesome Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iggy Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 WOAH DANG! Now THAT's a fried hard drive. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ziggy54354 Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 check if it still works Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost2520 Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 (edited) Do any of you guys live in Washington? There is a magazine called Computer Source Magazine. AWESOME. They had a HDD destruction test... let me see if I can find the article online. Just checked and their website is down... since I have nothing to do I'll go find the magazine. (somewhere in a box of 40+magazines) and type it up. Its pretty interesting. EDIT: Found it... this will be my longest post ever. Computer Source Magazine You know you should back up your critical data on a regular basis. Everybody knows that, right? If your hard drive seizes up or your operating system suddenly decides to go rogue and corrupt all of your precious spreadsheets, X-Files fanfic and personalized Jenna Jamieson pics, where are you without backups? Washing dishes at Denny's, thats where. Actually, if you lose data that you haven't backed up, you're not entirely screwed. You could always talk to the kind folks at a data recovery house. The best of them can rescue data from extreme situations. To see what that entails, we called a dude named Chris at OnTrack (www.ontrack.com), the undiscovered world in data recovery. These guys are serious. They work in clean rooms to piece together any meaninful streams of 1's and 0's they can find in drives or on the magnetic platters themselves. They've recovered data from drives damaged by drops, fires, floods-you name it. According to Chris the most difficult data to rescue lies on drives exposed to strong magnets or to extreme physical torment. Also, he says it's not always a good idea to open up a failed drive and handle the platters-dust, scratches and head misalignment can cause irreparable damage. This is music to our ears! We happened to have two identical pairs of old IDE hard drives ripe for testing: one set of 1GB Maxtor drives, and a pair of really old Western Digital 540mb drives. Just for fun, we decided to see what data we, right here in the Savage Gear Laboratory, could recover from physically abused hard drives. We formatted one of each pair with a minimal installation of Windows 98SE, and created as elaborate a file system as we could, given the limited space with which we had to work. To simulate critical data, we copied over a bunch of unfinished fiction, embarrassing pictures from a Halloween party and an MP3 of one of our infant daughters farting. In our attempt to break a drive, we dropped the estern Digital drive into the laundry tub and poured bleach on it. After letting it dry, we were disgusted to discover it still booted without a problem. To simulate more sever liquid damage, we plopped it back into the laundry tub and covered it in a solution of water and acidic lime remover. Meanwhile, we went outside with the Maxtor and tied it to the car's bumper. The postal carrier gave us a really funny look as we drove around Savage Gear's International Headquarters. When we got back, the drive was in pretty bad shape; it was scuffed on all sides, and two of its corners were dented. When we took it inside and plugged it in, it didn't boot. In fact, it didn't even spin up or give us any sign that it had power coming into its circuitry. We recoveredthe Western Digital after a good soak and let it dry. Although this doesn't seem posssible, the crap thing spun up and booted. The internal organs of hard drives are protected by a gasket, and this one really did its job. There was only one thing to do, and it could result in burning doen our facility. We took an old AT power supply and plugged it into an AC outlet, and attacked the hard drive. Then we dropped the drive into a nonconductive glass bwl of water. For extra protection, we situated the drive and the power supply on a dry rubber pad. PLEASE don't try this at home. We turned on the power supply. That seemed to do something: A circuit breaker tripped, causeing all the lights around us to turn off. There was also a very loud crackle from the power supply followed by the unmistakable smell of electrical fire. The PSU was forever hosed, bu what about the drive? We dropped it into our test chassis, and sure enough it was completely unresponsive. Now comes the trick. Could we, without the facilities or the expertise of data recovery profesionals, recover the data? Going by something we read on the Usenet a few years ago, we extracted the platters from the damaged drives. Then, we did our best to install the platters from the dead drives of their untouched twins (discarding, in the process, the working platters). We inadvertently beat the crap out of the heads on the Maxtor drive while inserting water and the electrically damaged victim, but the Western Digital operation seemed to go smoothly. We plugged each of the reconstructed drives into our test bed. The Western Digital drive spun up and sounded okay, but the BIOS couldn't find an operatiog system. However, when we booted with a DOS-based floppy we could recover all of the Halloween pics and some of the short stories without a problem! The Windows directory was completely unreadable, as was the folder containing the fart sounds. Similarly, the Maxtor drive spun up and failed to boot. After booting with a floppy, our test PC refused to recognize that a hard drive was installed. We don't know whether it was the electrical damage or the horribly sloppy job we did in inserting the platters, but the data was forever gone. Mission accomplished! crap that took a long time to type. Edited January 19, 2004 by Ghost2520 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Special_K Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 lol nice article, but dont tell me you actually wrote all that? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Some_Guy_ Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 You could have donated that drive to Bishop to get a folding machine up! Otherwise, that's a cool pic. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bishop245 Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 You could have donated that drive to Bishop to get a folding machine up! Otherwise, that's a cool pic. sure pick on the broke moderator lol Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Some_Guy_ Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 You could have donated that drive to Bishop to get a folding machine up! Otherwise, that's a cool pic. sure pick on the broke moderator lol I'm not picking on you, I just want to see as many folding machines running as possible. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrenalinepcs Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 You could have donated that drive to Bishop to get a folding machine up! Otherwise, that's a cool pic. it was already dead thats why i burnt it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost2520 Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 lol nice article, but dont tell me you actually wrote all that? Well I'm telling you, yes I actually took the time to type that out. Shows you how much extra time I have on my hands. Did I get an OCC record on that one? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrenalinepcs Posted January 19, 2004 Posted January 19, 2004 here are the insides of the fried hard drive. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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