OTish: Hard Drive recovery after 8 years

Why not OOI? Assuming he hadn't actually wiped the drive pre throwing it away, the drive *could* easily sitting there intact, as good as the day it was dumped.

I saw something on TV the other day where they had excavated a 1cu m of landfill and everything in it was exactly as dumped, including a newspaper, some clothes and babies nappy.

The only think that might have killed it if the bulldozer flattening and leveling it off happened to catch the drive directly under one of it's track / wheel spikes / teeth or it had been physically damaged etc. If it was on a soft surface it could easily have sunk in.

Cheers, T i m

GOGI?!

I have to say it sounds like a 'tall story', the sort of thing that one hears in an 'A told B who told me' down the pub sort of thing.

You'd be wrong. There is no reason why recovery would be any harder just because it was in landfill for 8 years.

That?s wrong too.

There are two processes that rubbish goes through.

First, it goes into a rubbish compactor truck, where it gets heavily compacted.

Second, at the dump, they drive gigantic machines over the rubbish down, to compact it.

That is silly. Not the same bloke who cannot remember his password for his bitcoins then? Now if he had used a password manager he could have got it from the cloud. Brian

Yes, there would. Its's likely to be waterlogged, a disk drive with electronics full of water isn't going to be easy to read.

Wrong in what sense? If the files are there and the disk drive is functional then, obviously, one can read the files. However I'm not convinced that a laptop buried for 8 years is going to be functional.

If (and it's a *big* if) the disk drive itself is basically sound then there might be a reasonable chance of recovering data but it isn't going to be easy.

The electronics can be replaced, but I would have thought the platters would have oxidised if they got wet?

That's assuming he can remember the password of course

As to the council tip chap, without claiming any special expertise my experience with old floppies suggests that magnetic media start to degrade over time; possibly as a result of weakening or leakage of the magnetic fields. Whether this is any less of a problem with rigid media - assuming it actuality exists is maybe another matter.

michael adams

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If it's physically in one bit, then there is a fair chance of recovery. It's sealed against the elements and made from non rusting materials. If even the electronics / motor are knackered a data recovery company could stick the platter(s) into a donor mechanism.

Nothing is perfectly sealed.

You might think so, but the last one I took apart had no gaskets or anything suggest it might be sealed.

I take that back. On re-examining the shell there is a clear gasket formed onto onto one surface.

Should be straight forward if the drive runs.

Most have a breather hole with a felt filter.

Nowadays some of them contain Helium, which is obviously somewhat harder to keep in than air or water vapour is to keep out.

Which will probably suck water in and out if it's buried.

Weirdly, when I started looking into BTC for R&D back in 2010, the vry first thing I noted was the need to keep the keys safe.

I spent £20 buying some as an experiment. As of last week I had £1,000 left having spent about £1,000 over the past 9 years.

I wish I hadn't followed my own advice not to invest in them. As I noted at the time "while the underlying technology is sound, the lack of controls for the exchange rate, plus the flaws in the algorithm do not make for a traditional investment vehicle ..." although I also noed the blockchain was far more of interest in commercial circles.

Assuming it's wet in there?

The landfill sites I've have seen being constructed were lined and capped with clay and so fairly water and gas tight (and why they have vent pipes to vent off any gas buildup).

As mentioned, they dug a sample out of one that had been there for ~30 years (from memory) and a newspaper was clean, dry and readable and some clothing still dry, clean and wearable as was.

No reason therefore why a hard drive wouldn't still be perfectly useable.

Cheers, T i m

It's made of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE).

"Efficiency >99.99 - 99.999% on 0.1 µm particles @ 5.3 cm/s (10.5 ft/min)"

It's similar to a HEPA filter but they don't use that term in the datasheet. The datasheet I have, is from this company, and was downloaded years ago.