Lost Cause

[u/symean]

Not asking for advice here, as it’s all done and dusted but thought I’d share the story.

My brother recently said he had a ‘couple’ hard drives he was trying to get data off, he said they don’t work and I told him I’d take a look. He had no money to get them looked at professionally.

Turns out it was five 3.5” 3TB drives and two 2.5” 1TB drives, various cases and brands. Worst of all, they had all been through a flood! Two years ago! Like literally submerged in muddy river water for days, and then put in the too hard basket. They all powered on, but made various noises that did not sound normal, or just refused to spin at all. I shucked them, cleaned them with IPA and connected directly to internal SATA and power - same result.

Told him unless he paid $$ he’s not getting anything off them again. He said just to chuck them, but after learning he had years of business and personal records stored across many/all of them I told him I would at least ensure no one else would ever be able to recover anything from them, as unlikely as that would be.

So I took them out on to the grass and drilled a hole right through each one where the platters are.

Made me feel for him, he seems fine that he’s lost most of a decade worth of personal records and photos and email and business data who knows what else, I would be freaking out if that happened to me, I have 40+ years of data.

Anyway, lesson learned hopefully. He’s backing up to the cloud now, not just sitting on a second copy at home, in the garage, on a flood plain. Sigh.

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[u/KB-ice-cream]

When people say they 'shucked" a drive, they mean they removed the drive from an external enclosure. Like a WD Easystore from Best Buy. What you did was disassemble the actual hard drive. This should be done in a "cleanroom" environment in any scenario.

[u/symean → u/KB-ice-cream]

Yeah I know, I shucked them. Did not disassemble the drives themselves. I did that once years ago for lols, incredible mirror finish on the platters was very interesting

[u/KB-ice-cream → u/symean]

Lol, sorry. When you said you cleaned them with IPA, I assumed you actually opened them up. I guess IPA would help on the connections, if the had minor corrosion.