How to smash a home computer
Found on BBC News on Saturday, 13 November 2004
An executive who froze his broken hard disk thinking it would be fixed has topped a list of the weirdest computer mishaps.
Careless - and preventable - mistakes that result in data loss range from reckless file maintenance practices to episodes of pure rage towards a computer.
"Data can disappear as a result of natural disaster, system fault or computer virus, but human error, including 'computer rage', seems to be a growing problem," said Adrian Palmer, managing director of Ontrack Data Recovery.
"However, individuals and companies can avoid the hassle and stress this can cause by backing up data on a regular basis."
As odd as it may sound, but freezing a harddrive did work for me. One of the drives in a FTP server failed and you could even hear the mechanics. Since there was nothing more to lose, I froze the drive and connected it to another PC. This had to be repeated several times because the drive warms up during use, but I was able to recover all data. At room temperature, this drive wasn't accessible.