This sounds like a tongue in cheek poll, but it actually happened to me.  If you had a backup portable/non-portable harddrive that contained an extensive collection of hardcore porn and important personal (and possibly work) data files went buggered, would you still go to a professional data recovery service/or office tech guy to recover everything or just suck up your losses and chuck the dead drive away?

My drive was purchased in those days when portable drives were quite expensive so I (stupidly) mixed my hardcore pornos (all straight stuff) and my personal files in one drive.  Those data files were so important that I had to suck it up and hand my buggered drive to some professionals to fix the drive enough to be able to recover and transfer all files to a new drive.  The only justifications I could think to submit myself to such a social grilling was to tell myself that these tech guys (and girls) were professional and discreet enough after seeing so much stuff on the hard drives of all the computers they fixed over the years and that everyone knows all normal guys have pornos on their hard drives.  


Edited : Added explanation to choices.

The choices got chopped off by formatting.

No - Too embarrassed to get hard drive fixed by professional, don't want everyone to think I am a perv
Yes - The data files are too important to lose, besides all guys have porno in their HD, I am normal
Maybe - Depends on how important the data files are to me (or vice versa depends how important the pornos are)

[ Last edited by  doghead at 2-11-2010 01:34 ]

of course yes if the data files are very important even there are pornos in the HD. i had same experience like you before and i just sent the HD to them to fix it for me. It costed me HK$1800 and more than 2 weeks to recover the data too.

i assume you are not movie star or popular person and it is not your pornos btw....

Yes of course. Nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide. Its not like people are still treating you like a kid these days...

The people who repair HD are professional and they have seen everything already.  Don't worry about it.  If you are old enough, remember the days you had to drop off rolls of film at the photomat to get your dirty pictures printed?

Just make sure these tech guys are not people who know your family, employers, co-workers, friends or anyone from whom you want to keep your porno-watching a secret; and you're cool...

Yes of course.

Though I would be very very careful if *I* was in the porno. Edison learnt the hard way.

If it is just porn, I wouldn't care less and I would just download them again...

But if it contained important data for work or personal, I would still consider hard... with so many cases of identify theft nowadays... its kinda scary

wow.. if it was just favourite pornos.. then i guess i would just download them again... but those important data is precious and i think that you would do anything to get them all back!! so like what the other posters have said.. i think you should send the HD in and get it repaird... but on the other hand if u have like private movies/pictures of girls you have mongered with... i would not send it in and let it be.....

This reminds me of my normal movie collection. I just download as i need.

Internet is so fast these days that its often better (and safer) watching streaming porn.

So long as the tech head recovering the files did it in my presence so I knew he didn't copy them for himself and didn't know my SO.  

For me it would really depend on how important the data files are. It would be wise to separate such files and porno material in different hard discs, which would avoid potential embarrassment.

If it's just regular porno that I d/l from the internet, it's perfectly fine to send it to a professional for help. But if the porno consists of photos of me and the girl, I think I'll just burn the hard drive and ensure it disappears forever from the face of this world. I'm paranoid that if they keep these photos, it'll come back to haunt me many years on....that's why I never have myself in the sex photos, only the girl. hah!