Lightning strike !

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martyyn

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#171558 22-Apr-2015 17:03

A friends house was struck by lightning last week and as expected half his office are now paperweights.

He gave me his old PC to see if there was anything I could do with it. It's a 10 year old Dell so he's not worried about the PC itself but of course there are years of photos on the hard drives.

The PC itself doesn't boot although there appears to be power from the PSU and using a known working one gives the same result. I cant see any physical damage on the motherboard but a couple of capacitors do look a little more rounded than I would expect. I took the two hard drives out (really old seagates) and put them in an external enclosure but when attached to my PC they both say 'drive needs to be formatted before use'.

I've tried the basic's on them (windows scans) and have tried Seatools as well but no dice.

Can we assume they are both fried too ?

Otherwise are there any recommended data recovery places we could try ? I've warned him it will not be cheap but we have to try.

networkn

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#1289626 22-Apr-2015 17:49

Datalab. They are excellent. Inexpensive relatively as well.

Sorry I just realized my offer of a quote might be a breach of the FUG.

GoodSync

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gzt

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#1289643 22-Apr-2015 18:16

I have had external enclosures give misleading results. Can you connect direct?

In either case best not to use tools which may change data on the drive itself at this early stage.

Edit: I would be surprised if data cannot be recovered by a professional service. Its a good option and usually cost effective. Most cases are relatively simple imho.

Rikkitic

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#1289727 22-Apr-2015 19:58

I once read a DVR drive as an experiment. First step is to connect it directly to the interface (not usb) then use a suitable hex editor to mount it (I used a very old version of Winhex). After that you can see a hex dump of the actual contents. I selected everything on the drive (80 gigs) and wrote it all out to a spare drive in a usb enclosure. This took a few hours. Once I had a copy of the data, it was just a matter of figuring out what was what and peeling it off to individual files. There is a utility that works brilliantly for that. Can't remember the name at the moment but could look it up for you. The main thing is to know the signature of the file types you want so you know where they begin. You can then write them to new files and photos, etc. magically appear. It is likely that your drives have scrambled data which is why Windows can't read them but if anything is still on them the technique described above will let you retrieve whatever is still intact.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

1101

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#1290007 23-Apr-2015 10:23

If you are SERIOUS about data recovery, take it to Datalab.....stop fiddling with it.
Ive come across many drives ruined & no longer recoverable simply because the owners kept attempting to get them to somehow work.

If however, you arnt going to spend the $500++ , then by all means keep trying yourself as you have nothing to loose.
Dont waste your time with USB enclosures, it needs direct connection to a working PC via sata cable.
Sometimes (its quite rare), PC will have non standard HD translation in the bios & that can make HD's unreadable in other PC's
Also find out if there was any bios level passwords, the HD may be pass protected (again quite rare)

Linux is alot less fussy than windows & lin can sometimes easily read HD's than Win simply wont. Lin will usually ignore any permissions issues on directories
as well.
:-)

gzt

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#1290085 23-Apr-2015 12:19

In this case the drive appears accessible so many services are likely to complete well under 500.

Eg; https://www.payam.co.nz/about-us/

Not used them personally. Just call the 0800 for an idea.

Yeah never use an external usb enc for real recovery purposes just too many variables.

richms

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#1290100 23-Apr-2015 12:28

If the stuff is important, then pay a pro to recover. If its not important then why are you bothering?

Richard rich.ms

martyyn

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#1290121 23-Apr-2015 12:53

Thanks everyone, he will put a call into Datalab later today.

In answer to Richms question....why are we bothering? Because I can. If the data was unimportant (or mine) I would definitely have a crack myself. Who knows what I could learn.

As it's not mine and it is important we will send it away.

SepticSceptic

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#1290131 23-Apr-2015 13:06

I'd say the HDD electronics have died, but the actual data on the platter should be recoverable.

Can you hear the drive spin up ?

Backups, backups, backups ...

Rinse n repeat ....

jpoc

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#1291533 25-Apr-2015 22:05

martyyn: A friends house was struck by lightning last week and as expected half his office are now paperweights.

...

My house in England was struck by lightning once.

I was sitting in my study, at my desk, in front of the main computer.

I had one of those wristband earthing straps attached to the PC chassis.

I was sitting on an office chair - isolated from everything.

I saw a spark erupt from the strap, it jumped out at me and hit me bang on in the chest.

Burned a hole in my shirt and sent all of the muscles in my front upper torso into spasms for the next couple of minutes. Felt like getting whacked by a bad dude with a baseball bat.

Figured that I was lucky that my heart kept on beating.

The computer and all of the other electronics in the house were utterly unaffected. Didn't even get a blue screen.