Fire damage data recovery
Hard disk drives SSDs RAID systems Memory cards Legacy storage
0800 072 3282
Recovering data after a fire.
We provide our clients with a specialised service for recovering data from fire and smoke damaged computer storage media, such as hard drives, SSDs, memory cards, and servers. Very often, not only have these drives been burnt to a point where they are barely recognisable, they can also get dowsed with water from fire hoses.
In most cases, the drives are protected by the computer casing or, if they are in external caddies, the enclosure they are in reduces the amount of damage. It all depends on the temperature the drive is subjected to. The biggest factor in determining recoverability of a fire damaged hard drive, is if the drive has reached the Curie point. This is the temperature at which the hard drive platters lose their magnetic properties. The Curie point is named after Pierre Curie, who showed that magnetism is lost at a specific temperature, and varies for different magnetic materials.
Example of a badly burnt hard drive
The fire this drive was in required 20 fire appliances to quell the fire. There were several other hard drives that been damaged, but this particular drive contained the data that the company needed.
The drive had suffered considerable heat damage, some parts of the PCB had melted along with the connection area, the drive turned black with smoke and soot damage that had developed during the inferno.
After delicate cleaning of the drive, we could see that the seal had not melted. This is a promising sign, as it indicates the drive has not reached a temperature where damaged seals may have allowed smoke and soot to enter the drive.
After opening the lid, there was some minor internal damage to the head ramp, which had melted, so the heads could not park on the ramp properly and were on the platter surfaces. As a matter of course, we replaced the heads and the head ramp and then reassembled into the drive. We also replaced the lid with a new clean one, to avoid the risk of contamination during lid attachment.
Once the main drive components were reassembled, we started work on the electronics/PCB. With Western Digital™ drives. It was cleaned using a special PCB cleaning solution and gently rubbing with a small anti-static brush. Because there is unique information stored in a ROM chip soldered to the PCB, we need to remove it, clean it, then read the content using a ROM programmer. It is then written to another ROM chip and soldered to the new PCB. This was tested and then attached to the drive and was tested to make sure it was reading OK. It was, and so we cloned the drive using a PC3000, which gives us absolute control over the cloning process.
In the end, we were able to fully recover the data on the drive, and another very happy customer.
