Folks,

There is at least one outfit that specializes in recovering information
lost because of HDD failures.  As I recall, they are in California.
Years ago one of my coworkers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
experienced a failure and he lost stuff that was quite valuable and
irreplaceable so he looked into this very thoroughly.  As I recall, the
company removes the disk itself and remounts it in their equipment under
clean and sterile conditions.  I don't recall the end result except that
it was extremely expensive, but under certain extreme conditions it just
might be worthwhile (i.e. our tax dollars paying the bill).  I can get
more details if anyone is really interested as my friend is still working
at the lab.

As an aside, my next door neighbor who's a "do-it-yourselfer" from way
back (he fixes his own cars - even takes the automatic transmissions
apart down to the individual gears, etc.) decided to fix his HDD when
something went wrong.  He took it all apart, carefully cleaned the disk
with a Q-Tip and alcohol, etc. and reassembled it.  He told me that he
got it working again and it worked all of a few minutes before another
failure, this time a catastrophic one!

Lewis Emerson

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