Spinning Platters of Death

Last week, my hard drive died on my laptop. Unfortunately, due to my own negligence, the last backup was made in December. I lost some fairly important data, however, and so I took the drive to a data recovery specialist. I received the following email this morning.

I regret to inform you that despite our best efforts, we were unable to recover your data. When this drive failed, the read head assembly magnetically locked down onto the platters, causing the heads to grind against the platters. The drive platters are coated with a magnetic layer which contains the data. When the read heads crashed against the platters, it scraped this magnetic surface from the platters, causing the drive to be completely unrecoverable. I apologize for your loss. Please let me know whether you would like your failed hard drive returned to you or not.

One part of me is relieved that I don’t have to spend the $2,000 to retrieve the data. The other part of me shudders at the extra work I’ll have to do over the next couple of weeks. I guess it’s a wash.

And what have we learned today, children?