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I was reading an article on why opening the cover of a hard drive was a bad idea.

In the article, the author mentions that the safest way to open the cover of a hard drive was to do it in a class 100 clean room (< 100 airborne particles per cubic feet).

However, near the end of the article the author states that alternatively, if you lack the capital to send your hard drive to a laboratory to have your data recovered, you could use a plastic tent because it will keep a lot of contaminants out.

It doesn't make sense to me, if you set up a plastic tent inside your room (or somewhere else) wouldn't the same amount of contaminants that were in the space you were planning to open your hard drive would stay INSIDE the tent as well?

ILikeTacos
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    What degree of safety/cleanliness are you expecting? The author obviously wasn't saying it was AS good as a legitimate clean room. – called2voyage Mar 27 '14 at 20:30
  • @called2voyage well obviously not, but will the contaminants inside the plastic tent will be significantly less than the contaminants outside the tent, so that it's plausible to even consider the tent as an option, or does it just provide a false degree of safety/security. – ILikeTacos Mar 27 '14 at 20:44
  • That's what I'm asking: what degree of damage is acceptable? At what point is it just a "false degree of safety"? – called2voyage Mar 27 '14 at 20:50
  • I'm just making up numbers, but say that by not using the tent you have a 50/50 chance of not being able to recover your data vs using the tent you increase the chances of recovering by say 10%. – ILikeTacos Mar 27 '14 at 20:55
  • On a side note the question is not about whether or not there will be damage on the hard drive, and more about if the plastic tent will actually keep contaminants out, regardless of what you have inside the tent. – ILikeTacos Mar 27 '14 at 20:57
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    So if the tent keeps contaminants out to the extent that it has *any* degree of improvement in safety over cracking open the hard drive in open air, even if the improvement was 0.0001% (if that were measurable), then the answer to your question would be yes? – called2voyage Mar 27 '14 at 21:03
  • @called2voyage no, the answer would be no. It's not worth the effort. I'm not sure where are you trying to get at here. – ILikeTacos Mar 27 '14 at 21:07
  • I'm trying to understand what you're looking for, so we know how much effort we have to put into getting the detail you want. – called2voyage Mar 27 '14 at 21:08
  • Hard drives are very fragile, so we have to understand how much potential for damage is acceptable to you. – called2voyage Mar 27 '14 at 21:10
  • In that case I'd say that MBR or GPT damage is unacceptable – ILikeTacos Mar 27 '14 at 21:22
  • Here's what the article means. Opening your disk in a clean room gives very high safety. Using a plastic tent gives a degree of safety lower than the clean room, but higher than without the tent. Or you can open the disk in an open room, with less safety still. It's up to you to decide to go with a) high cost high safety b) moderate cost, moderate safety c) low cost low safety or d) don't open the disk at all. – DJClayworth Mar 27 '14 at 21:42
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    @DJClayworth I understand what the article means, what I'm asking here is that if such moderate cost/moderate safety has actually been measured, or at least there's a physical reason why the plastic tent will keep contaminants out. For example, I assume that there are particles small enough to penetrate the plastic tent, so that it would render such plastic tent useless in keeping contaminants out. If my prior assumption is true, then are those contaminants big enough to damage the disk? – ILikeTacos Mar 27 '14 at 21:51
  • The claim includes the caveat that "However, this is really only a last case resort as the majority of the time the procedure will not be successful." In otherwords no this is not a good solution but better than opening it up in your dusty workroom. – Chad Mar 28 '14 at 19:04
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    Several modest-level clean facilities I've worked in *were* tents set up in a lab and equipped with a HEPA-filted fans to keep them over pressured enough to constantly vent out the gap at the bottom. You start with conditioned and filtered air, clean and sweep the lab first and you need sticky-mats and Tyvek suits and booties. In one case the "tent" was strips of plastic sheet draped over a PVC pipe frame and taped together. The biggest cost of these facilities is consumables (but don't underestimate that: it adds up in a hurry). – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Mar 28 '14 at 19:31
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    @AlanChavez, the tent will prevent moving air from stirring up as much dust in the contained area, slightly reducing the dust risk. But your movements, clothing, and breath will add dust particles. Pressurizing it slightly with properly filtered air will reduce the dust significantly. Your best bet at home for a hard drive would be a glove box. – John Deters Mar 31 '14 at 02:29

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