Kroll Ontrack announces the worst data disasters from 2014

“Kroll Ontrack is proud to be able to ‘save the day’ when the unexpected happens,” said Paul Le Messurier, Programme and Operations Manager at Kroll Ontrack. “As the global leader in data recovery, Kroll Ontrack applies its state-of-the-art data recovery services and proprietary data recovery software to recover from all types of deleted, corrupt, missing, or inaccessible data loss. We’ve truly seen it all, but never give up hope. That attitude is what makes us successful, even with the worst of cases.”

2014 Top Ten List of Data Disasters Compiled by Kroll Ontrack

10. Water Damage at a Fire Call (Germany)
A firefighter was fighting a fire when his Nokia Lumia 610 was damaged by water. He lost all of his data including photos of family and friends. Kroll Ontrack was asked to help and successfully recovered 732 photos from the phone.

9. Late (United States)
One company was preparing for a new IT infrastructure. The new storage array was waiting to be unpacked and powered up in the server room. The day before connecting it, the old storage array broke down and access to critical data was lost. After a few minutes of panic and stress, an IT administrator decided not to make the situation worse and called the specialists at Kroll Ontrack. Everything ended positively.

8. Unfortunate Accident (Norway)
Kroll Ontrack received a call from a person who was in a ferry accident. His camera had been submerged in the water for over an hour. Ontrack Data Recovery specialists were able to recover the photos from the corroded memory card.

7. The Dog Ate My… (United States)
A dog mistook a USB flash drive for a chew toy. When the drive arrived at Kroll Ontrack, it had teeth marks all over it. The dog eventually made it out of the dog house because all of the USB drive data was recovered.

6. Microsoft® Surface Mystery (United States)
Sometimes we don’t get the story behind what happened to a device. Kroll Ontrack received a Microsoft® Surface “smashed” into pieces. All that is known is that data recovery was 100 percent successful.

5. Swept Away Server (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
A flood in the Balkan countries swept a RAID server 100 metres from the building it originated in. It took two weeks to locate the server where it had been sitting in water the entire time. Kroll Ontrack recovered 100 percent of the data.

4. Data Under Attack (United States)
When data loss is intentional, it’s usually with malicious intent. Hackers infiltrated a hotel this year deleting all of the active and backup data for 35 LUNs. Our team of highly-trained engineers worked onsite and remotely to recover all of the data that was lost.

3. It Can Happen to Anyone (United States)
Even Kroll Ontrack employees are not immune to data loss. While visiting the restroom in between meetings, a Kroll Ontrack employee slipped her iPhone into the back-pocket of her trousers for safe keeping. As she stood up and picked up her briefcase to exit, the phone escaped, landing squarely in the toilet. The employee brought her dripping wet personal phone to the mobile recovery specialist in the cleanroom with a plea for help. No questions asked, engineering took on the case. All of the employee’s phone data, including her photos of her daughter, contacts and text messages were recovered.

2. Waterfall Folly (Iceland)
A young woman was taking pictures on her smartphone of a beautiful waterfall when a gust of wind drenched her with spray from the waterfall. She was covered in water and so was her phone. The woman lost access to her phone and all of her photos, but Kroll Ontrack performed a full recovery returning the photos and the phone in working order.

1. A Difference in Opinion (Poland)
From the client’s perspective: “My laptop did not want to follow my instructions. We totally disagreed with each other, and I lost my temper, hitting it strongly with an open hand. The laptop drive was damaged – that’s why I’m here.” At odds with his computer, the client hit the laptop directly in the place where the drive resided, and that resulted in the head scratching the platters. It was extensive damage, but Kroll Ontrack recovered 50 percent of the crucial data.