Compiled from a global poll undertaken by data recovery services company, Ontrack Data Recovery, it is a top 10 list of the more memorable disasters.

10. Helicopter Hi-jinks - Employees of a global telecommunications company dropped a laptop computer while working from a helicopter in Monaco. Incredibly, the files were retrieved and sent through an FTP server for a meeting in Hong Kong the very next day.

9. Wash the Data Away - On a flight from London to Warsaw, a passenger packed his laptop and toiletries in the same bag. Unfortunately, his shampoo leaked and flooded everything in the bag, including the laptop, causing the hard drive to fail.

8. Not a Jolly Occasion - British comedian Dom Joly, presenter and co-creator of Trigger Happy TV, dropped his laptop, damaging a hard drive that held five thousand photos, six thousand songs, half a book he was writing and all of his old newspaper columns.

7. Rescuing the Research - A leading UK research university suffered a catastrophic data loss after a fire broke out in the computer science department on a weekend morning, damaging computer equipment with smoke and water from the fire department's efforts. Despite the fire, 30 computers were rescued and more than a terabyte of data recovered.