Detective Anderson
Yoknapatawpha County Law Enforcement Division
1210 Lamar
Oxford, MS B38655

Dear Detective Anderson,

Because of the seriousness of the conditions surrounding this recovery effort, I wanted to provide you with some preliminary information.

The hard disk in question, a Seagate ST3660A 545 megabyte drive, has sustained serious physical damage. While it is difficult to qualify the precise source of this damage, the disk appears to have suffered electrical damage consistent with a lightning-induced surge. However, we did note unusual scorch marks on both the power and data connectors. These marks could indicate intentional destruction of the drive by the application of relatively high voltage directly to the drive connectors. Regardless of the precise cause of the problem, the recovery effort will be difficult and lengthy. The electrical pulse on the drive power connector has overloaded both the drive circuitry and the spin motor. These can be replaced relatively easily in our shop. Far more serious is the electrical damage to the magnetic heads. The power applied to the disk's data connectors has resulted in the destruction of 15 of the drive's 16 read/write heads. These are the tiny electromagnets that transfer data to and from the magnetically-coated disk surfaces. It appears that each of these destroyed heads damaged the magnetic media in their immediate vicinity. Worse still is that fact that 6 of these heads physically fragmented, causing impact and heat damage to wider areas of the disk.

At this time, we have removed the disk platters and are in the process of cleaning and re-smoothing the surfaces. These platters will be inserted into a new drive, at which point we will be able to determine how much data can be recovered. Unfortunately, the seriousness of the platter damage caused by the destroyed heads makes full recovery of the disk impossible, though partial recovery of files is likely.

We expect to have this work completed within the next two weeks. I will contact you directly with any preliminary information. Of course, our company (as always) will keep all details of this recovery effort confidential.

Sincerely,

Robert K. Gordon
President, Northview Data Recovery