When hard drives crash and the manufacturer’s technical support staff can’t help, I use sophisticated methods to recover important files. After customers ship their defective hard drives to my company, I analyze the drive to diagnose the problem. Depending on the reason for the drive’s failure, I reprogram the hard drive to avoid the damaged areas or replace damaged parts so I can retrieve the data stored in the computer’s memory. When a severe problem wipes out the files, I start from scratch to reassemble the files. Retrieving the records can take weeks. After I retrieve the data, I store it on compact discs and send the discs to the customer.