Can data be retrieved off of a burnt hard drive?

Question

On CSI one night they retrieved data off a burnt hard drive. Is that possible or is that only on tv?

Answer 1

Data recovery is very well possible. Forensics have many expensive tools for recovering data from a destroyed hard drive. There are also many software tools that a person can download from the internet to retrieve "deleted" files on a good drive.

This is a site for recovery software: http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

This is a site for software to destroy data:

http://www.cyberscrub.com/

I use both, an they do work.

Answer 2

I used to work for a computer forensic here in the Phils.

We use software and hardware to retrieve data.

Depending on how burnt the hard drive is... Usually, only the outer part, the casing, gets burned... The hard disk mainboard gets destroyed, so, one may think that it is unusable... But if you look inside, the magnetic disk are still intact, so its possbile to retrieve data.

BTW, we had experience retrieving data from a flash drive left in a shirt pocket and sent to the lundromat.

Answer 3

If you mean that you have lost your hard drive... You can retrieve the information from it by setting it up as a slave to your new hard drive.

Answer 4

It may be possible. I can give you a link that deals with hard drive problems. Some RAM/hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful. Try this site, if you can get what is required.