Hmm, so it spins up, registers as a hard drive when connected and all that, but reads nothing but zeros, plus the manufacturer info returns garbage... The jolt of electrical blast either did a mass format or the circuitry/heads simply fail to work when it comes to reading, etc. I guess, yeah, it would take professionals to get something out of that drive now, sad to say...
If he's absolutely sure, he had a program that read the drive from start to finish and it only returned zeros, then I guess you can write that drive off. If it was me, I would get DriveImage (
http://runtime.org/data-recovery-products.htm) to create a compressed backup image of the drive and save it to another computer. If it's nothing but zeros, as you say, then the compressed image would be small. I would leave it running before I go to sleep and see what happens in the morning. If the resulting image is in gigabytes, then that means there is something to work with and salvage. So the next program I'd want to use is DiskExplorer (
Just checked, yeah, they have a Linux version). This program opens up a hex looking editor interface to the actual drive or a drive image and allows you to scan the whole thing sector by sector for unique strings or bytes of what you want to recover and know is actually on there. I'd connect it to this drive image and I'd do a Find Text using a unique string from one of the project's source files. Like if you had something unique like "pyramid++;" in a C source file and what not, you'd start the search, leave it running all night, go to sleep, and if fragments of the file still exist, it'd find it! This method assumes that most MFTs are destroyed and most files are considered "lost" so something like GetDataBack can't do automated recovery, so you have to manually recover some files that you really need using this approach... I have done it myself successfully actually.
Personal note: This made me think it's probably worth the trouble to upgrade the outlet for one's computer center to a GFCI receptacle... I would assume Oldman had the standard power strip with 15 Amp circuit breaker, plus surge protection and this lamp was plugged in from the same outlet (
but not necessarily through the same power strip). When this work-lamp hit the metal chassis of the PC, breaking the bulb, exposing the metal contacts and Bulbageddon ensued, at best you only had 15 Amp overload protection as it was arcing and sending electrical current into the PC...
If the outlet was a GFCI type, this disaster would've been detected as leakage in milliseconds and the breaker would've been tripped far earlier than from the 15 Amp overload protection by itself (
wherever this lamp was plugged, the house electrical service panel likely had a 15 Amp breaker at least) or from the fact that the bulb metal material would fry itself on the chassis and eventually stop conducting current with no 15 Amp overload breakers actually being tripped (
possible - did a breaker trip and cut power off OR did it fry itself allowing him to unplug it without that happening?)! Anyway, yeah, that's why you have to have these expensive outlets in the kitchen, bathroom, etc. because they trip on leakage, not just on overload, to prevent electric shock and possible death. New blow dryers usually include them on the plug in case your home doesn't have such outlets (
new homes must be built with them per NEC codes). More modern homes I believe just have this support from the service panel actually along with surge protection, so even better.
