Recover Data From Hard Drive
The more we spoke to our customers, the more we began to realise that most people believe that they can destroy a hard drive by simply erasing it through the operating system. In our last blog, we talked about the best way to destroy a hard drive BUT just in case any of you thought our method was a little too extreme, we’ve decided to go the other way and see what it took to actually recover data from a hard drive (that has been seemingly deleted or damaged).
Having never ever done this before, I took to the holy grail of all information, Google. I don’t know why, but I thought I’d have to scour through pages and pages of information to find out how specifically I could retrieve data from a deleted hard drive. And to make things more interesting, I pulled out an old hard drive that I’d had. It was from a few years ago and had been bought as a backup. There was nothing on there other than some marketing material. And even that, at that time, the person in charge believed he had deleted all the data from the hard drive, and kept it aside as backup.
Google spat out the results. I knew the answer would be hidden in some forum on page 17 and me and my cup of hot chocolate were ready for the long haul. Mrs Shred was asleep and yes, it’s never fun to say to your wife – ‘you go to sleep hun, I need to fiddle about with my hard drive’. But shock horror, Google gave me my results and there were pages and pages of information filled with how to retrieve data from damaged or deleted hard drives. I had to test it out!!!
Free Data Recovery Software
I began following the steps ever so closely. For some reason, I was still hugely sceptical. Despite the YouTube videos I had seen, and the many articles all saying the same thing, I still somehow wasn’t quite convinced. As the blog post I most liked said, I plugged in my hard drive to a new computer I was using at the time, downloaded some data retrieval software, and within minutes all our old marketing brochures were back!
Oh, I’m sorry, did you think this was going to be some hugely complicated process, where like Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible, abseils down from the ceiling ever so quietly so as not to trigger the sensors, hanging mid air, before gently accessing the computer to recover all the data from the hard drive? Well, I can’t blame you. Me and my hot chocolate thought the same. But Google told me differently, and there I was, just sitting there in front of my old data. All back to life. And it took minutes.
I decided to delete and format my old hard drive through my Mac’s operating system. I went through the process all over again, and lo and behold, all my information had come back. Of course, this is where you’d imagine I’d say something like:
this is exactly why you should be calling us. We shred the darn things.
But I’d could never be that shameless.
I decided to take my research one step further. The process seemed just so easy, I was convinced there were people / companies out there that would actually provide this service at a cost. I once again hit the net, and there it was. A host of companies did in indeed offer the service. And prices ranged from £97 to literally thousands….
I was amazed. These companies could not only retrieve information from deleted hard drives but also damaged ones…..Who’d have thunk it….
However, given how easy it’s turned out to be to retrieve data from a deleted hard drive, this is the bit where I say, if you want to have your hard drive shredded, and when I say shredded, I mean we turn that bad boy into dust – then you need to contact us. We charge just a few pounds per digital item we shred. And believe you me, since Enemey of the State, Edward Snowdon and General Paranoia, more and more people are having their data shredded.