Ontrack, the leading provider of data recovery recently found that data loss is not always a result of human or technical error, there’s sometimes a secret hiding in the closet of data loss.
During summer , the most obvious reasons for data loss are sunburnt or water logged devices. However, our cute four legged friends and not so cute eight legged friends are damaging our devices too! KLDiscovery delved further into its data loss cases.
Ontrack's Top Ten Animal Disasters
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Ant invasion – Discovering ants had taken up residence in his external hard drive was an unwelcomed surprise for one customer. He first attempted to save the drive by taking off the outer shell and spraying the interior with insect repellent. The ants didn’t make it but fortunately, the repellent wasn’t quite strong enough to repel our engineers.
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A game of cat and USB – When a family cat mistook an AC power cord for a mouse it ended badly for a family’s external USB HDD. The cat won and the ‘mouse’, containing household financial information and irreplaceable memories, lost.
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Upset stomach – After a family dog got into a piece of defrosting meat on a kitchen worktop, it began feeling a bit queasy and decided to be sick on none other than the family’s computer. The dinner remnants seeped into the laptop’s hard drive, ruining the family’s computer as well as their dinner to be.
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Spiders! – KLDiscovery was called to work on a five-year-old server where the hard drive had crashed. When the data recovery engineer opened up the drive, brace yourselves, he found a nest of spiders inside - they also had a holiday home in the head of the drive server.
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Hold your horses – A horse ride ended abruptly with a fall. The rider was wearing a camera at the time of the accident, and while the rider got a clean bill of health, the memory card did not as it fell in an unfortunate position under the hoof.
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The dog ate my…USB – A dog was in for a metal surprise when it mistook a USB flash drive for its favourite chew toy resulting in a faulty unreadable USB.
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Computer bugs – In hopes of rescuing valuable company information, a customer pulled an old laptop out of a warehouse where it had been sitting unused for 10 years. When engineers opened the computer, it contained hundreds of husks of dead and decaying cockroaches!
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Litter box or laptop box? – A trusting customer left her Macbook charging on the floor of her house for just a few hours. However, upon returning she discovered a liquid on the keyboard and a sheepish kitten playing in the corner. The kittens misunderstanding led to a laptop that would not turn on.
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Cat-astrophic data cycle – A full laundry basket also contained a cat and an external hard drive. Our customer was distracted by the cat, making sure it didn’t go into the washer that unfortunately the hard drive slipped his mind. The drive did not escape the hot wash and endured the full cycle.
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Panther monitoring – A wildlife project at a research institute came almost to a standstill. The panthers had damaged the flash chip of the positioning collar. Fortunately the important data that the preservation of endangered species was collecting was restored so the project could continue.
Robin England, Senior Research and Development Engineer at KLDiscovery says: “Our beloved pets are the apple of our eye, but we need to be careful when leaving them near our equally beloved devices and memories!
“Data loss is unpredictable and can happen at any time, due to the most unexpected of situations. In order to prevent losing data that is valuable to you, we always suggest keeping a backup of the data. If the data is already lost, it’s always best to contact a specialist immediately to have the best chance possible of getting your data back.”
About Ontrack.
Ontrack is the global leader in data recovery. We recover data from every type of situation, ranging from routine to extreme.
For more information about Ontrack and its offerings please visit: Ontrack
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