“They Did What ??!!” is an irregular feature documenting some of the funny, strange and sometimes ludicrous things people have tried in order to get data back from faulty hard disks…
Episode 1 – The PC Repair Man…
Several years ago we had a call from a PC repair man. He’d been to visit a distressed client who could no longer access their data. When onsite he quickly concluded that the hard drive had developed a fault, and that it would need to be repaired, or as he termed it… “cleaned”.
He then described how the knocking noise made by the hard drive was an indication that it’s heads were dirty and probably contained grit…
We asked him what he did next…
He told us that fortunately in his van he had some liquid cleaner and a brush, and he was able to remove the cover of the hard drive and clean the components, thus removing the grit. When he’d finished the cleaning he dried the hard disk and then put the top back on but he was puzzled why the drive still wasn’t working…
The PC repair man obviously had no idea what he was doing, but he did it anyway, even though the data belonged to somebody else.