Here's Kroll Ontrack's video of the Top 10 Data Disasters of 2008.
If you’d like to reenact any of the other five, post them on YouTube with the tag “Eden Prairie News” so we can link them to our online story.

Eden Prairie company’s list includes baked laptop, vacuumed flash drive

By Karla Wennerstrom

Kroll Ontrack, headquartered in Eden Prairie, has been compiling a list of “Top 10 Data Disasters” for five years.

So who picks the top 10?

Part of the company’s business is Ontrack Data Recovery. Nominees come from all of the company’s 32 offices, but the marketing department picks the winners.

“The engineers would have too dorky of a list,” admitted Jeff Pederson, manager of operations at the company.

Kaitlin Creager, PR director, said, “Every year we pick disasters we were able to do successful recoveries from.”

Pederson added, “We realize there are a lot of unique stories just like this.”

This list shows the “worst of the worst,” Pederson said. “We’ve run into all these situations, and been able to recover data.”

Of the photo SD card (see No. 4), for example, Pederson said, “People don’t realize how delicate they are.”

And when people can’t see data on their equipment, they think it’s gone, Creager said.

“Data recovery is a possibility,” she said. “Even in a worst-case scenario [you’ve melted your entire hard drive], don’t give up hope.”
Pederson said an initial evaluation costs $100, then the company can let the customer know what can be recovered. Then the cost for data recovery ranges from about $250 to $2,500. For example, No. 1 on the list cost about $2,000, he said.

The company has also provided a video reenactment of the top five disasters (Visit www.edenprairienews.com to watch it.), but employees of Kroll Ontrack are not the stars of the video.

The “actors” are employees of the video company that made it.
“I’m actually thankful they weren’t people that we work with,” Pederson said. “They’d be getting all sorts of flak.”

Pederson said that the worldwide leader in data recovery, legal technologies and software has been located in Eden Prairie dating back to the mid-80s. The business employs more than 700 people at its Eden Prairie campus on Anderson Lakes Parkway and Flying Cloud Drive.

The list compiled by the company follows:

“In today’s day and age, it is nearly impossible to live without your data. When a data loss situation occurs, a professional data recovery company is often your best chance for a successful recovery,” said Jim Reinert, vice president of data recovery and software products, Kroll Ontrack, in a news release. “Because data recovery can require special facilities such as a cleanroom, advance technology and equipment, and highly trained engineers, an experienced data recovery provider can make a big difference. This year’s list of data disasters as well as previous list-topping incidents such as an ant invasion (2007), a dirty sock hard drive encasing (2006), a cockroach infestation (2005) and the weight of an airplane riding over the top of a laptop (2005), proves that no incident is too outrageous or difficult for us to tackle.”

10. Overboard – A round-the-world sailing trip ended poorly when a traveler’s boat capsized on the last day of her trip with her laptop on board. Luckily, Ontrack Data Recovery engineers were able to recover 100 percent of the data, which documented her once-in-a-lifetime experience.

9. All Cooped Up – When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, a newlywed couple thought both their engagement and wedding photos would never be recovered. Their fears grew worse when a local data recovery provider deemed the drive “corroded beyond repair.” Two and half years later, the couple dug up the water-logged drive from their basement to give Ontrack a try. The customers were glad they did; all of the engagement and wedding pictures were recovered.

8. Gone Fishing – A vacationing lawyer thought she could fish with her father and keep up with some business at the same time. Furious that she had brought a laptop into the fishing boat, her father’s friend threw her laptop bag (containing the laptop and backup media) overboard. The fully-clothed lawyer jumped in after the laptop, but proved to be too late. Lucky for her, valuable business and tax information was retrieved by Ontrack Data Recovery’s experienced engineers.

7. That’s a Wrap – An independent filmmaker was putting the final touches on his latest Western using his MacBook Pro when it started making odd noises and crashed. Without a backup copy, the filmmaker worried his year of hard work would go wasted. Using Ontrack Data Recovery services, the film was recovered, completed and sold. It is now available internationally on DVD.

6. Stolen Goods – A laptop was stolen from a family’s house along with a purse, car keys and the family car. The car was found the following day by the riverside, but with no sign of the laptop or handbag. Days later, a Good Samaritan arrived at the burglarized home with a dripping laptop bag (laptop inside). His children had found it washed up on the beach. How was the Good Samaritan able to find the owner? The thief had stuffed the handbag into the laptop bag before it was thrown in the river.

5. Dog Gone Wild – A rowdy dog knocked a portable USB drive off the family room coffee table, rendering it unreadable by the family computer. At stake were five years of family photos, which were all recovered via Ontrack Data Recovery, a division of Kroll Ontrack.

4. Baby Teeth – Kroll Ontrack received an SD card from a camera with lots of teeth marks on it. The customer indicated a “wild animal” had gotten hold of it and chewed it. It turns out the wild animal he was referring to was his 2-year-old son.

3. Swept Away – A routine house cleaning went awry when a one GB flash drive was sucked away with food crumbs by a vacuum cleaner. The vacuum was so powerful that the traces from the drive were pulled from the circuit board and the connector was torn loose.

2. It’s a Jungle Out There – A wildlife research institute project came to a sudden halt when one of the flash tracking chips from a Florida panther’s collar was physically damaged in the wild. The critical panther preservation data was successfully recovered.

1. Roast Laptop – A gentleman put his laptop into the kitchen oven prior to leaving for vacation in order to protect it from burglars if the house was by chance broken into while away. His wife came home and got to the oven before he did to cook a roast chicken. The oven cooked not only the chicken, but the drive too.

Source: Kroll Ontrack

The company can help customers at its Eden Prairie location. For more information about Kroll Ontrack visit www.krollontrack.com or www.ontrackdatarecovery.com. For information on data recovery, call 1-800-872-2599. The video can also be found here: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/data-disaster-2008/