Short story, can coffee on an HDD cause a head crash? Or did I just get screwed?
Long story.
My son sloshed some coffee on my husbands army computer. No, I wasn't watching him, I was folding laundry. Yes, I take full responsibilty. And yes, my husband is irate.
I immediately unplugged the computer, removed the battery, and took it to a tech and he said there were 2 drops of coffee on the logic board of the HDD. He cleaned the HDD and the computer. The computer works fine and the HDD would power up and spin, but shut down after 20 seconds. After researching data recovery places, I sent it to Nationwide data recovery. The reviews were pretty good. Only later did I see in some forums that they are pretty shady.
Of course it went exactly as the forums said it would. They charged a non-refundable $130 fee for new platters and donor parts. He said he gave it an 80% chance of recovery.
He later wrote that a small strip of coffee made its way into the power area? But he cleaned it, and the drive was powering up and spinning.
I get another email:
"The stack assembly exchange was completed a couple of days ago and the hard drive has been going through a bit by bit image copy of the whole drive. So far my techs are having no success with either the raw image scan or the 3 layered image scan. considering the heads are holding up I will attempt to fill the empty pockets of bad areas on the image collected so far with as many rouge digital fragments as possible and then try to decipher the results. Although I wish it was doing better, I'm an optimist. I will let you know right away with any changes in the results."
Today I get this:
Unfortunately after many attempts to create a complete bit by bit image of the hard drive the decipherment of the image collected has not produced any results.
My technicians have been unable to recover data from the drive you sent us for data recovery
because of the damage created on the platters from the previous head crash. For the last couple of days I've been trying to create as close to complete an image as possible without any positive results. I know how important this was to you and I wish I could have come through for you on this recovery. A lot was riding on this recovery. Maybe the future looks hopeful as technology improves. Don't throw away the hard drive. The future is bright for drives with platter damage.
Below are some issues encountered on this recovery.
1. It appears that the damage on the platters was too extensive (physical and magnetic) for a decipherable image..
2. The original read write heads at some point made contact with the platters damaging the surface of the platters and the read write heads.
I have no idea what this means. I did a google search for "head crash", and everything I read is saying a head crash is due to a fall. Can liquid cause a head crash? Should I even bother paying for the return, and should I pay for a second opinion?
Thank you so much for your help. I feel horrible about what happened and am trying everything to get the data back. This could severely impact my husbands job. He did do a back up 2 weeks prior to the crash. But we still need some very important files that he didn't get a chance to back up.
Long story.
My son sloshed some coffee on my husbands army computer. No, I wasn't watching him, I was folding laundry. Yes, I take full responsibilty. And yes, my husband is irate.
I immediately unplugged the computer, removed the battery, and took it to a tech and he said there were 2 drops of coffee on the logic board of the HDD. He cleaned the HDD and the computer. The computer works fine and the HDD would power up and spin, but shut down after 20 seconds. After researching data recovery places, I sent it to Nationwide data recovery. The reviews were pretty good. Only later did I see in some forums that they are pretty shady.
Of course it went exactly as the forums said it would. They charged a non-refundable $130 fee for new platters and donor parts. He said he gave it an 80% chance of recovery.
He later wrote that a small strip of coffee made its way into the power area? But he cleaned it, and the drive was powering up and spinning.
I get another email:
"The stack assembly exchange was completed a couple of days ago and the hard drive has been going through a bit by bit image copy of the whole drive. So far my techs are having no success with either the raw image scan or the 3 layered image scan. considering the heads are holding up I will attempt to fill the empty pockets of bad areas on the image collected so far with as many rouge digital fragments as possible and then try to decipher the results. Although I wish it was doing better, I'm an optimist. I will let you know right away with any changes in the results."
Today I get this:
Unfortunately after many attempts to create a complete bit by bit image of the hard drive the decipherment of the image collected has not produced any results.
My technicians have been unable to recover data from the drive you sent us for data recovery
because of the damage created on the platters from the previous head crash. For the last couple of days I've been trying to create as close to complete an image as possible without any positive results. I know how important this was to you and I wish I could have come through for you on this recovery. A lot was riding on this recovery. Maybe the future looks hopeful as technology improves. Don't throw away the hard drive. The future is bright for drives with platter damage.
Below are some issues encountered on this recovery.
1. It appears that the damage on the platters was too extensive (physical and magnetic) for a decipherable image..
2. The original read write heads at some point made contact with the platters damaging the surface of the platters and the read write heads.
I have no idea what this means. I did a google search for "head crash", and everything I read is saying a head crash is due to a fall. Can liquid cause a head crash? Should I even bother paying for the return, and should I pay for a second opinion?
Thank you so much for your help. I feel horrible about what happened and am trying everything to get the data back. This could severely impact my husbands job. He did do a back up 2 weeks prior to the crash. But we still need some very important files that he didn't get a chance to back up.
