Computer ?

[tristan22]

My new Dell Computer's hard drive crashed; the only option is a new hard drive.

Will my fried hard drive retain any information or is it gone forever? ex: mp3's, internet history, mcafee history, etc? Can dell find out what exactly happened to my hard drive?

What exactly does a ruined hard drive actually mean?


Thanks in advance!

 

[Joe The Homophobe]

Im no expert but from what I heard you have to do some serious damage to a hard drive for an expert not to be able to recover the info, so your chances of recovering the info are good.

 

[Cbaoth]

Depends really. If it is the pcb on the harddisk.... That can just be swapped over. If it is actually a mechanical part in the hardisk inner, the platters will need to be swapped out to another harddisk, if that is the case it can get VERY expensive, as the platters have to be swapped out in pretty much a completely dustfree environement, so you will be most likely looking at big $.

 

[tristan22]

My computer is under warranty! Dell is sending out a technician to install a new hard drive in my computer on monday.

I guess i'm a little confused; i thought all hard drive information can be restored and saved?

 

[check_mate_kid_uk]

if the hardrive crashes i do not think you will be able to fix it so it can br ead normaly, how ever the data can be retrived, that i am sure of, if you where to get the hard disc itself and try to make the data unreadable by causing physical damage to it you would find it extermly difficult to do so. You would litraly have to shred it, and the metal is quite strong, even after that if the pieces are found some of the data can be retrived, you could expose it to 1000 degrees C and nothing, the only way to get rid of dats through high temperture is to melt it which would be servral thousand degrees C!! i think you get the picture that its not easy to loose the data how ever expensive ot retrive it so not worth it unless its somthing you really really need.

ps isnt it funny you have to go to such legnths to physicaly destroy the data but you can get softwares that in binray will just write 1's and 0's over the original data making it imposible to read the old data.

 

[earthshyne]

Originally posted by tristan22
My computer is under warranty! Dell is sending out a technician to install a new hard drive in my computer on monday.

I guess i'm a little confused; i thought all hard drive information can be restored and saved?

Cboath has got it right. The problem may be with a mechanism in the assembly that isn't actually the data surface area itself. If that's the case, then the chances of data recovery are pretty good.

However, if the data surface has been damaged by, say, a faulty reader head that's dug into the surface, then you may be out of luck.

How often did you back up your drive?