While taking the garbage out at work tonight, I notice the owner of the business next door moving a bunch of papers out to his dumpster. When I was leaving, I drove around in time to catch him in the process of throwing an exercise machine away. I stopped and told him that I could save him some effort if he wanted to put it down and let me load it in my truck. He seemed very grateful. I load up the exercise machine in the truck, and then, I go inside to talk to him. He has a few customers, so I wait. I get to talk to him, and he says that they are moving in a month. I ask what all he is throwing away. He shows me his back room, and I see a computer there. I ask him if he is throwing that away. He says that it has some company information on it. I then tell him that I will take the hard drive out for him if I can have the computer. Again, he seemed to be grateful. So, I go get a philips head screwdriver, take out the harddrive, and hand it to him. He wanted to know how to get the info off of it. I put the shunt in cable select mode, show him the IDE cable he needs to put it in another computer, and explain to him that tinkering with computers is a hobby of mine albeit an expensive one. He then tells me to come by on Monday as he has more stuff back there. I doubt he has anymore computers, but he mentioned some printers, and various other metal. It was great to be in the right place at the right time.
As it stands, I have a 50-75 lb. exercise machine and a computer as my score with the possibility for more.
So, the moral of the story is keep your workboots (read: phillips head screwdriver) in your truck, and be prepared to take out that harddrive and educate someone. The owner of that business seemed to be happy to learn how easy it was to pull a harddrive and recover the data.
Bookmarks