Ontrack Data Recovery unveiled its 2004 list of the 10 strangest and funniest computer mishaps.
1. Data Defrost
One man brought in a hard drive in a wet plastic bag. He said he had read on the Internet that if you place a broken drive in the freezer it would fix it. So he tried that method and asked the recovery engineers not to laugh.
2. Reckless Recycling
One man tidied up his computer folders and inadvertently deleted the ones he meant to keep. He then cleaned up his system, emptied the recycle bin and defragged the hard drive before realising his error. He now triple-checks files before deleting them for good.
3. Rowdy Relatives
A man suddenly found his laptop would only boot up to the 'blue screen of death', putting his data at risk. A week later, his nephew admitted that he used its screen as a punching bag to relieve his frustrations with the slow computer. The man sent his nephew back to live with his parents.
4. Digital Disaster at 19,000 Feet
The Polish explorer Krystof Wielicki dropped his digital camera when climbing the Himalayas on his latest expedition, smashing it to smithereens and damaging the memory card in the process.
5. Gone in a Flash
One medical company worker completed 1,200 customer billing entries — a process that took several days — when lightning struck the transformer outside the building. Everything was gone, including all the bills she had just prepared.
For the final five reasons, click here...
Talkback
This was the dummest article ever. Bandwidth abuse.
gee havent heard all those ones before....
really guys you should cut the urban myth bs
Freezing a hard drive is a legitimate way to recover the contents, and it works. Just make sure the drive is dry and you have a way to pull the data off immediately. Dry ice works well too, because the drive will stay cold while doing the data recovery.
This is one of the stupidest lists I’ve seen on the internet in a long time. I'm surprised that a site as credible as ZDnet would be willing to post this crap. Some of the lists are fun and informative; but this list is full of boring helpdesk urban legends. Reading this list I was expecting to see something like Virus takes down CNN, or Power Outage causes IBM to loose 3 years of sales records, not a story about a friend of a friend who heard of a guy who accidentally spilled a can of soda on his laptop and cried for 3 days.
This seems to be a very baseless article. Such kind of article just wastes time. How can such a article can get slashdotted i dnt understand.
that article really didn't do much for me. Try instead: http://rinkworks.com/stupid/
The writer should be suspended, and the publisher who aproved this junk should be sent back the 4th grade, where this may have been funny/creative.... Where were they going with this?
P.S. a hard drive can be temporarily brought back to life in the freezer. Good thing your staff is educated.
Poorly researched article, this columnist is lazy and should have their employment reviewed.
Special report??
Plagiarism???
http://www.ontrack.com/newsreleases/index.asp?getPressRelease=5493