Recovering a Broken Hard Drive

[Alex]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

Is there any way possible to recover the data? No one at work thinks so, but I figured I'd ask the collective minds of this place.

1. Put a piece of masking tape on it.
2. On the masking tape write: "Property of O.B. Laden. Top Secret."
3. Ship the laptop Islamabad, Pakistan.
4. Arrange for someone to drop it in the mountains on the border with Afghanistan.
5. In four or five months submit a FOIA request to the various intelligence agencies requesting the contents of a laptop labeled "Property of O.B. Laden" but containing non-sensitive data.
6. Six months after that hand the reams of paper over to the person who broke the laptop and say "Start typing."

Sorry, no serious answer. I know nothing of data recovery.