More money from Hard Drives - Data recovery boards

**AuburnEwaste** · 10-02-2012, 01:32 PM

To recover information from a hard drive... Isn't the reason for destroying them to ensure that nobody can recover any data from them? Someone who knows what they are doing could potentially recover sensitive information.

**wdaddy** · 10-02-2012, 02:27 PM

Originally Posted by AuburnEwaste

To recover information from a hard drive... Isn't the reason for destroying them to ensure that nobody can recover any data from them? Someone who knows what they are doing could potentially recover sensitive information.

Yeah, the data is on the platters and the platters should be physically destroyed... no data on the pcbs...

I have repaired 2 that had the boards fry and we used a donor drive to get them up and running... about the only repair you can do without opening them. I have tried a platter swap and had very bad results. We have sent drives into recovery shops and spent over $2000 for the service...

The best bet you will have with these are newer drives... like 100GB or better... it's a shame killing drives like that...

**Jeremiah** · 10-02-2012, 02:38 PM

I believe this is incorrect. Most hard-drive PCBs have between 2mb-16mb of memory stored in a cashe. 2mb is nothing in terms of pictures, vid, etc, but is plenty of space for documents containing SSN, credit cards, etc. If what i said is correct, than information could be accessed via the pcb. I always drill a hole in them before recycling. Here is a link that may help http://www.ehow.com/facts_5137741_cache-hard-drive.html

**Bear** · 10-02-2012, 06:22 PM

Originally Posted by Jeremiah

I believe this is incorrect. Most hard-drive PCBs have between 2mb-16mb of memory stored in a cashe. 2mb is nothing in terms of pictures, vid, etc, but is plenty of space for documents containing SSN, credit cards, etc. If what i said is correct, than information could be accessed via the pcb. I always drill a hole in them before recycling. Here is a link that may help What Is a Cache on a Hard Drive? | eHow.com

Trying to recover data from a HD buffer would equal trying to remove information from a stick of RAM. Both are emptied with each power down. This is why in a system crash everything you'd been writing is lost, due to it having been stored in RAM (either on the main boards RAM or the HDs RAM makes no difference), it's gone.