I was gone for 2 weeks in flordia for some R&R, and I get a call from my mother saying that EVERYTHING in the house is fried. Lightning has struck our house and had gotten into our wiring and had fried everything except things on surge protectors. All 4 of our desktops\laptops are fried, and our external harddrive is totally gone, but I have heard of people recovering from things like this, and was wondering if anyone had any tips or ideas on how to recover lost data from a fried HD. Any ideas?

P.S.: insurnce covers everything, so no dig deal if its completly totalled

Start off by trying another power supply.

4 out of 4 is worse luck than Moses had.

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Lucky Boy! 4 Out of 4! try to connect the HDD in your friend's PC, if it doesn't work... i've heard that there are companies who can restore data from fried HDD's, but i'm not sure!

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well that will teach you to put protectors on those things now

PC Magazine on 1.18.2006 tested some data recovery firms. If you have that issue, I'd recommend reading the article "Hard Drive Healers." You may Google that article and get the actual article. I can provide a URL, but as I use my university's access, I don't want to break any laws.

It actually applies here too. I think I remember it stating that usually the circuit board is the main thing that is fried, but the data is normally salvageable. Of course, professional data recovery is not cheap. But recovering digital photos that you don't have backed up elsewhere is WORTH IT.

Thanks for the help. A buddy of mine is the head guy at Geek Squad, and said that the external isn't salvageable, but 2 of the computers he can save. The thing that I really hate is thatabout 20 gigs of pictures and music are gone with no back-up....well, I've learned my lesson