Keep those flooded disk drives wet

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 20 January 2011 08:37

Business IT - Technology

A data recovery specialist has warned that flood-affected hard drives should be kept wet to improve the chances of salvaging the data they contain.

The owners of computers submerged during the floods affecting parts of eastern Australia are now only too aware of the value of off-site backup, whether that's achieved through the use of remote backup or physically removing media to another location.

But if you really need to recover data from a submerged disk, recovery specialist Kroll Ontrack's advice is that you should keep it wet until it can be examined by an expert. This can be done by storing the drive in a sealed container or plastic bag.

"Never assume that data is unrecoverable, no matter what it has been through," said Adrian Briscoe, general manager Asia Pacific at Kroll Ontrack. "Amongst the most remarkable case histories is NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia hard drive which plunged into a lake after travelling for 39 miles through space. Kroll Ontrack engineers managed to recover 99% of the information stored on the drive."

Kroll Ontrack is offering a free hard drive consultation and evaluation to those affected by the floods, with a flat recovery fee of $850 per drive for desktop, notebook and external drives. Normal prices range up to $2400 per drive.

The company is also offering a 20% discount on recovery charges for server, SAN, VMware and tape media.

Kroll Ontrack's "flood relief hotline" is 1800 782 259.

If you weren't flooded, perhaps this is a good time to (re)consider your backup strategy. Even if flooding is practically impossible at your location, very few premises are fireproof and damaging earthquakes aren't unknown in this part of the world.