Once the PC’s arrived at our Data Recovery Lab, we immediately noticed the severity of this case. Two of the computer systems had been directly exposed to the fire and where noticeable in bad condition. The remaining two computers where located in neighboring rooms at the time of the fire, and as later determined suffered from electrical damage.

Seagate, Western Digital and other hard drive manufacturers state that their drives should operate between 0 – 60 degrees Celsius when operational and can tolerate temperatures between (-40) – (+70) degrees Celsius when they are not being utilized. Therefore it is no surprise that hard disk drives will malfunction under the extreme temperatures which they are being exposed to during a fire.

It is estimated that room fires are expected to have a peak temperature of approximately 900 degrees Celsius. The temperatures of any given object will variate based on its material components and it’s proximity to the flames. But even if the temperatures have drastically decreased once reaching the computer systems, we are sure to say that the recommended temperatures of hard drive manufacturers have been over exceeded by a multitude.

Computer with fire damage

This picture shows one of the computer systems that had been directly exposed to the fire.

Performing data recovery on computer systems and storage devices which have been exposed to fire damage is always a tricky and unique situation to deal with. Prior to performing an analysis it’s always difficult to asses the severity of the occurred damage. First thing we have done in this case was to perform a full visual inspection of each computer. Thereafter we carefully removed the hard drive from each computer system and diligently cleaned the exteriors of the drives with a proprietary solvent.

Damaged Hard drive

This is what the drives looked like after we removed them from the fire exposed computer systems.

In some cases the hard drive model and other specifics are no longer identifiable, which can add some additional complexity to the recovery.
In such cases only the keen eye of an experienced Data Recovery Engineer
is able to identify the hard drives architecture.

Same drive after treatment

This is what the drives looked like after treatment performed in our lab.

After the use of proprietary techniques and after replacing electronic and mechanical components in our Class 100 (ISO 5) Cleanroom environment, the end results bared the fully recovered data from 3 out of 4 PC systems. Including the client’s most crucial systems which stored personal as well as business data

NIST tests Mobile Forensic Tools The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) has tested four mobile forensic applications. The only software application that passed all tests has been Paraben Device Seizure 2.1

• Micro Systemation .XRY 3.6
• Guidance Software Neutrino 1.4.14
• Susteen DataPilot Secure View 1.8.0
• Paraben Device Seizure 2.1

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