Darwinian Survival of Data Fittest
Darwinian Survival of Data Fittest
December 12, 2007: Ontrack Data Recovery have released their annual top ten of data recovery requests inclusive of some of the stranger forms of behaviour leading the pack, including ant infestations and parachutes.
Based on their experiences in offering data recovery services over the course of the year, Ontrack did their usual reflect back on the year that was, and the torture some people put their electronic storage devices through.
In most of these cases 2007 saw the usual suspects for accidental stupidity around storage devices – including the common whirl of the USB in the washing machine, and a few dopey attempts to ‘oil’ drives to prevent them from squeaking. Ontrack admits, sadly for the sake of all our IQs, that these forms of drive abuse are all too common.
But this year, leading the list not so much for it’s stupidity but rather an adverse reaction to an unlucky sequence of events. When a photographer in Thailand was surprised to learn ants had take up residence in his external hard drive, he took the instinctive response to exterminate: Ripping off the cover and spraying the interior of the drive with insect repellent, the ants never made it to the Ontrack engineers, but the data did.
Coming in second but still just as worthy of a mention is a case of what Ontrack likes to refer to as the ‘Pointless parachute.’ When a parachute failed during testing, testers probably felt relieved they’d used a camera attached to a chute to test it’s functionality rather than a human. However with the camera smashed to pieces on impact, it was not good news for the camera’s memory stick – until the data was recovered.
In third place on Ontrack’s list but first for IDM’s ‘Data Darwin Awards’ is a hard drive owned by a British scientist. When the drive kept making an irritating noise the scientist drilled a hole through it’s casing to pour oil into the mechanics. The squeaking stopped, as did the hard drive.
Other notables included a woman who claimed to have ‘washed all her data,’ away after throwing a USB in with the laundry, a scientist spilling acid over his external hard drive and a fisherman who, thinking was a good idea to play games on his laptop while out on his boat, thought again when the computer went overboard.
Adrian Briscoe, general manager at Ontrack says every year; they’re amazed by some of extraordinary things people put their data through. “Our advice is that if you lose data, do not try to recover it yourself and risk further damage,” he says. “Talk to an expert.