[Fresh Wind]

By "scratched", do they mean there was a head crash?

[DAC21]

A ton of recoverable data even if the read/write head froze up creating a scratch. And there is multiple platters, some may have been perfect.

Absolute criminal joke.

[Bogey78O]

Yup. Came here to note that. Death for a consumer but recoverable somewhat if you need to. Otherwise every criminal would just drop the running PC from 6 feet up as soon as they hear the cops knocking.

[John Robinson]

That’s my understanding. I once had an active tower fall off a desk, killed the drive (probably a scratch.) Using off-the-shelf recovery software I was able to recover all the data I wanted very easily. My understanding is that unless the drive has catastrophic physical damage (siezed mechanics, fried circuitry) then it is recoverable to great extent via software alone, and moreso by just the typical power user.

Obviously somebody didn’t want these files.

This level of corruption and the cover-up is frightening. And it’s only one front among many.