We had quite an interesting job this last week…

One of our long-time client’s house was struck by lightning (for the 2nd time in as many years, but that’s a story for another post) and took out one of their computers.

Insurance covered the cost of replacing the computer itself, but there was a lot, and I mean a LOT of data on the hard drive that the client wished to recover.  The client had no backups of their data.  Nada, zilch, zippo  – this was a fall to your knees, pull your hair out and wail to the heavens moment.

We got hold of the hard drive and mounted it in one of our recovery boxes.  After powering it up we didn’t hear any loud clicking or banging coming from the drive (Good Thing) and the drive platters were spinning (Good Thing) but the system didn’t recognize the drive (Very Bad Thing).

We pulled the drive out and took a close look at the circuit board.

Take a look at the photo below.  Do you see the problem yet?  (Hint – look at the lower-right corner of the board)

Circuit board from hard drive that was struck by lightning

Still can’t see it?  Here’s a close-up view…

Blown chip on a hard drive circuit board that was struck by lightning.

One of the chips on the board was completely fried, which was (we believed) causing the problem.

At this point the client had two options:  One, they could send the drive off for data recovery in a clean-room which would run them over $1,000 (cheapest we’ve seen from those types of recoveries is $1,3000 to date) or we could try and find replacement board, or a PCB board, for the drive, swap it out and hope for the best.

The client opted for option two, and to make a long story short, we found a fantastic company, PCB Solutions, who worked with us to find a replacement board.  They were able to locate one and shipped it to us, we swapped it out and viola! The dead drive was dead no longer.  We were able to retrieve 100% of the client’s data and the part we needed?  It was only $40.  We’ll take $40 over $1,000 any day of the week.

If you ever experience a hard drive crash, before you go spend a WHOLE lot of money do yourself a favor and see if a simple PCB board replacement will fix the issue.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

Web www.scurlocksystems.com and www.ssaremote.com

Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC

866.665.1750 | 972.633.1111

Scurlock Systems is located in Plano, Texas and provides both remote computer service and computer repair in Plano, Dallas, Richardson, Allen and surrounding areas.