JOE Nguyen was crushed when his home computer crashed for no apparent reason in 2005.

The e-commerce director at Millennium & Copthorne Hotels in Singapore thought the pictures and video clips of the birth of his three children and family were gone for good. He had no backup.

Desperate, he searched the Web for ideas to rescue his fond memories - all stored in the PC. He got one step closer when he found CBL Data Recovery Technologies, which specialises in retrieving data from mangled storage media.

'But I was not confident that my files could be recovered,' said the 36-year-old American citizen who has been living in Singapore for 15 years.

The service - at $700 - wasn't cheap either.

'But I had to get the pictures and video back. What value do you place on that?' he said.

When he did regain the files, he was pleasantly surprised.

Four days after dropping off his PC at CBL's premises at Changi Business Park, he received a call to collect a DVD that contained all the information he thought he had lost - 1GB in total.

Rescuing such 'lost' information would seem like a small feat, considering what computer forensics and data retrieval experts have done with disks wrecked by massive floods, fires and space-to-earth crash landings.

Experts found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated 60km from Earth in 2003. The shuttle was on its way back from a scientific mission in space to study the properties of liquid xenon.

The seven astronauts onboard perished, but the data on the drive survived after a 48-hour rescue marathon.

Kroll Ontrack was the data recovery firm that had a crack at salvaging the disk.

At first glance, the task seemed impossible as the drive's metal casing and the seal that keeps out dust had melted beyond recognition. But the Minnesota-headquartered firm managed to rescue 99 per cent of the information.

This is due in part to sheer luck. The platters at the heart of the drive weren't bent - at least not the parts where data had been written on (the 340MB drive was only half full).

Disk platters are flat, spinning discs made of glass. In them reside all your information - pictures, documents, passwords and e-mail messages. Had the platters been completely mangled, the rate of recovery wouldn't be as high, if at all.

CBL had worked on hard disks destroyed by the devastating 2004 Asian tsunami.

Commercial companies and government agencies usually call on computer forensics and data retrieval experts as part of their disaster recovery plans.

Research firm IDC Global estimates that spending on data protection and recovery software reached US$27 million (S$37 million) last year in Singapore.

A Forrester survey of 250 disaster recovery professionals in October last year found that over a quarter of companies worldwide declared at least one disaster from 2002 to 2007. The number could be higher if it included unreported cases.

Disruptions came from man-made power and hardware failures to natural calamities like floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. Key events included the March 2004 Madrid train bombings and hurricane Katrina's devastation in New Orleans in August 2005.

Rescue efforts cost at least $500 per drive and could go up to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the severity of the damage.

'Data recovery is definitely a science. Over the last 20 years, we've developed hundreds of proprietary techniques to do this job,' said Adrian Briscoe, general manager of Kroll.

The firm declined to discuss the computer forensics work it did for governments around the world, citing national security reasons.

Another service provider, Adroit Data Recovery Centre (ADRC), has worked for banks and government agencies throughout Asia.

The Singapore-based firm is also PC makers Acer's and Fujitsu's sole data recovery service partner here.

ADRC has $1million worth of all kinds of spare parts in stock at any time.

In fact, the firm takes pride in its exhaustive inventory. Its managing director Felix Chang believes that having ready spare parts is key to 'shortening the recovery process to a few hours instead of weeks or even months'.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 27 May 2008.