

To the suffering computer user, every crash is disastrous. But when computers physically break down – from interventions like falls, fires or floods – it’s time to get professional help and hope the insurance money comes in.

Data recovery services help solve the most desperate of hardware issues. They are a last resort for salvaging information from destroyed computers; even if the hard drive has been barbecued in a bonfire, the drive shell is damaged and the connections no longer work, bits of data on the disks often remain intact and can be read with the right equipment.

Engineers at companies like DriveSavers and Ontrack Data Recovery piece together missing and damaged drive parts in sanitized laboratories and recreate as much as possible of the destroyed drive before copying the remains onto media for the owner.

DriveSavers goes so far as to host a “Museum of Disk-asters” on the company Web site, a shrine of successful information resuscitations, including those from computers that had sunk into the Amazon or were crushed by cars and buses.

The company even provides forensic services to insurance agents and businesses and law enforcement officials, to help recreate data on intentionally damaged machines.

Not all information is retrievable, however. Hard drives are delicate mechanisms, and demagnetization or damage to the disk platters can result in total information loss.

Users looking to salvage information from a wrecked drive should be prepared to shell out some dough. The services charge a hefty fee for recovering data from a computer crash, but will often provide an estimate of the damage done and what might be recoverable first, for a lesser amount.

Ontrack Data Recovery, for example, provides a tiered service plan that also includes a do-it-yourself software program called EasyRecovery and a remote recovery service allowing technicians to analyze a computer’s system over the Internet.

For a full overhaul, prepare for some sticker shock. The final cost for retrieving data on a damaged drive can exceed $2,000, although figures around $900 are more likely for typical home user jobs.

Then again, that might not be such a high price after all, considering the possibly irreplaceable information contained within.