A Tokyo-based company and others engaged in data recovery decided to provide free assistance to businesses and local governments, and began accepting equipment in the city.
Businesses operators who had applied in advance met with the specialists on March 5. Among them was a 67-year-old farmer from Nakanoto Town in Ishikawa Prefecture, who brought in his computer's hard disk drive. It had been damaged in the quake when his household belongings fell onto it.
He said, "It would be really helpful if we could recover the data because it is hard to spend time dealing with the lost data when we have to rebuild our farming business."
Matsuda Sakika, 37, a freelance photographer from Suzu City, Ishikawa Prefecture, brought in the hard disk of her computer which was inundated by the tsunami triggered by the quake. She told the staff that she could not retrieve her saved images.
"I hope that the data can be restored because it contains photos I have taken over the past five to ten years, to which I devoted my life," said Matsuda. "When the data is restored, I want to use it to motivate people affected by the disaster."
Kumagai Masashi, president of Digital Data Solution which handles data recovery, said about 90 percent of lost data can be retrieved.
"We want to recover as much data as possible," Kumagai said.