When Rock Stars Lose Data

When Rock Stars Lose Data – DriveSavers Comes to the Rescue

Metallica — One of the world’s best-known heavy metal bands has joined the ranks of DriveSavers Hall of Fame. Over the years, Metallica has counted on DriveSavers to recover everything from lost live recordings to personal data belonging to members of the band.

Recently, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett (who ranked 11th on Rolling Stone’s list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time) lost access to his laptop’s hard drive, which contained irreplaceable photos from his travels around the world. Attempts to recover the data using software utilities failed.

Fortunately, Kirk’s assistant knew just where to send the drive. When it was opened in DriveSavers cleanroom, our engineers discovered media damage on the platter. In addition, a more serious issue was reveled — firmware corruption.

Most modern hard drives store various drive parameters (firmware) on a rewritable chip attached to the printed circuit board. When the firmware becomes corrupt, the drive cannot function. DriveSavers technicians addressed the firmware using special equipment and customized software to essentially rewrite the corrupt programming code. Without special tools and years of data recovery experience, it would have been impossible to recover the data.

Kirk was very pleased to receive his lost data and to show his gratitude, he sent us a photo and a drumhead, both signed by the entire band. Metallica agrees — DriveSavers Rocks!