While we would never wish this on anyone, it can happen. A fire is devastating in many ways and in particular from the standpoint of the loss of property and data that can result.
Data recovery from hard drives that have been damaged due to fire is not an easy task. In fact, it is far more accurate to say that in many cases data is not recoverable. This is also true if the inside of the HDD in question looks perfectly fine. I’ll explain more on that in a little bit.
Assuming you have had a hard drive damaged by fire, let me explain what you should NOT do under any circumstances.
Do Not Power It On
Even if the hard drive looks perfectly fine, just don’t do it. The reason for this warning is that you are risking damaging the platters which could result in additional damage beyond repair. This is of great importance to note especially if the heads were stuck over the platters.
Do Not Open The Hard Drive Casing
Under no circumstances should you attempt to do this to see if there is any internal damage. In most cases, the inside will look fine, unless the fire happened to burn for an extended period of time. The rubber that typically seals the hard drive will likely be burnt dust and when you open the casing that dust is going to float around inside the confined space and contaminate the platters.
Here’s what fire can actually do to your hard drive: While the fire itself won’t have much of an impact on the platters, the heat generated from the fire is what you should really fear. The heat will demagnetize the magnets inside of the hard drive once the temperature crosses a certain threshold. That is 176-degrees F (80-degrees C). When this temperature is reached, magnets quickly lose their magnetic properties. I’m speaking specifically about regular magnets. The magnets in your hard drive can take a little more heat but the actual temperature that puts them in the danger zone is unknown. Regardless, heat is the culprit here.
This means that high temperatures are your worst enemy when it comes down to recovering data from fire damaged hard drives.
There have been some cases we have seen the inside of a hard drive casing that looked just fine. However, when we attempt to contact the magnets that are part of the HSA, they had absolutely no magnetism whatsoever. They had completely lost their magnetic properties. If this should happen, it also means that the platters will be demagnetized as well and that renders data recovery to a pointless exercise.
As I have said, some magnets are a little more heat tolerant than others. There have been some cases we have seen where a completely burned hard drive exterior along with a melted PCB and a severely damaged HSA still yielded magnets that were still magnetized. The platters were also still intact although they appeared to be covered in grease and fire dust.
Now the most important question:
What should you do when you have a hard drive that survived a serious fire incident?
The simple answer is to take it to a professional data recovery specialist. But when you do, you will want to know a few things about their skill set first.
Ask if they have had any experience working with fire damaged drives. Also, request references and do the follow up by contacting them. Trust me, if you give your hard drive to a guy who has not had very much experience working with this kind of damage, he will most likely render your drive unrecoverable.
What about the cost of this type of data recovery process? Well, like most any other type of data recovery there are many factors. The factors will determine the amount of time required to attempt a recovery and that will impact the cost.
Your best bet is to request a quote in advance to get a better idea of what you may need to spend to save your data – if it can be recovered at all.
If you have a fire-damaged hard drive and require a price quote, you can ask us for assistance. All you need to do is send us a message and include as much detail as possible. This helps us to determine roughly what will be required before we see your hard drive in our lab. Some of the details we request include the make and model of the hard drive. We will also need to know roughly how long it was in a fire, what kind of fire it was and if there is also water damage.
Telling us if there had been any previous recovery attempts and anything else you can think of will be helpful. That way we can provide you with a better price range quote for your recovery.
All images used in the blog post attribute to Reddit