I thought this would be a good segue into what I tuned in to ask.

I am extremely interested in the field of "data recovery". Let me tell you
what I think it is, as the Microsoft Geeks (thank you very much, folks!)
could not understand what I was asking, or I could not explain it well.

When I say data recovery, I mean when there's a fire, a flood, the tapes or
computers are soggy or sooty, and no one took a couple of disks home in their
pocket with names of all their customers, employees, yadda yadda... THEN when
this company wants someone to try and restore/ recover some of the data on
these little teensy circuit boards, or backup tapes; who's he gonna call? I
note that you have mentioned a recovery file, but I don't know how much of a
beating it takes. When I try and research this subject, invariably I'm given
information on how to backup data BEFORE a catastrophe.

In the 1980s - I read this in a paperback true crime book - there was a guy
in Southern California who was trained in a vocational program, so he wasn't
an egghead by any stretch (he was the villain). He worked for a company
called Randomex, I think ultimately as a contractor. Randomex had some
percentage of data they could boast about having recovered, but I don't
recall how much. Then, this fellow goes out on his own and is able to boast
that he can recover 80% of data - free pickup and delivery. He then taught
his wife (who he considered to be less than a genius) and a couple of other
folks. His method was called "The Process". It only took "Q-tips, alcohol,
and a nongreasey soap" - PERIOD. Some hardware had to be run through this
process several times. He became a millionaire quickly.

I'm not a whiz on the computer, although I've played on them since 1994. I
just recently took my old computer apart (mostly) to see if I could clean it
up and get a look at it inside, maybe recover some data. So far I'm hesitant
about touching the box that holds the hard drive.

What I want to know: Can anyone tell me about this process, in that I am
wondering, does someone literally swipe the disk, the hard, main disk, with a
Q-tip? It's not that I want to become a millionaire. I want to know what's
inside that box and is this the treatment, or process, when data is recovered
from corrupted hardware? I don't necessarily want to "KNOW" - just, is it
possible? Probable?  That's my question. Thanks in advance; I'll be waiting.