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PeterStoba
18-05-08, 19:37
I knew the folks at Ontrack were good at recovering data from failed drives but they managed to recover 99% of the data from a hard drive that was on board the space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated on re-entry back in 2003. It took these guys four and a half years to complete the job. By the way, it was a Seagate drive for those of you wondering and was 8 years old at the time of the crash.


Edwards said the circuit board on the bottom of the drive was "burned almost beyond recognition" and that all of its components had fallen off. Every piece of plastic on the model ST9385AG hard drive melted, he noted, and all the electronic chips inside had burned and come loose.


The article goes on to say:



Before recovery could begin, a great deal of dirt and other debris had to be cleaned from the storage device. A rubber seal at the top of the hard drive was completely burned off enabling dirt and charred elements to enter the casing. Everything but the drive's platters were virtually unusable, remarked Edwards.
"The heads were bent and they were touching where they shouldn't have, so we had to carefully cut and bend metal away from the platters to get them out without causing more damage," said Edwards.

The article can be found here (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9083718&intsrc=news_ts_head).

Absoloutely amazing

Audigex
24-06-08, 19:38
That is pretty impressive. Obviously the main issue is the platter damage (extent and location) - if it's totally destroyed right where most of the data is, you're not going to recover much

But still, 99% - that's impressive.

wonderlust
24-06-08, 20:38
Another thing to bear in mind, the drive was 8 years old at the time of the crash (2003) so the drive dates from 1995, so imho that makes it may 2Gb at the most...

still an amazing recovery though

Audigex
25-06-08, 00:13
"Data recovery specialists at Kroll Ontrack Inc. painstakingly retrieved 99% of the information stored on the charred 400MB Seagate (http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=Seagate+Technology+Inc.) hard drive's 2.5-in."

400MB then, but that's still not bad ... I have a drive from 1995 and I doubt I can still get any data from it even without it being in a shuttle accident.

Biodoid
25-06-08, 00:41
my first drive in the pc i bought in 1995 was a 1gig maxtor i think.its in a drawer somewhere with win 98 on it i think

wonderlust
25-06-08, 08:29
lol, mine was a 100Mb Scsi Drive I bought for my Atari ST, Cost me over £400 iirc

My first PC drive was a Samsung 1.2Gb bought in September 95 in my first PC (total PC cost £3000)

monkey56657
25-06-08, 13:25
My first hard disk was a lovely 40GB. :mrgreen:

Monkey
25-06-08, 14:31
If you think about it, 20 years down the line people will be laughing at 1tb drives :P

Lynx
25-06-08, 14:31
My first hard drive was a 250mb one, in an ibm 468DX with an overdrive p1 inside it, never worked fully though..

PeterStoba
25-06-08, 15:48
My first hard disk was a lovely 40GB. :mrgreen:

Me too

Lynx
25-06-08, 16:01
You younguns and new technology :P

jonwoad
25-06-08, 16:07
The first one I personally built had a 10gb hard drive, the first one we had as a family was less than a gig, probably 100mb (if that)... was on a 386

Umar
03-08-08, 22:54
My first pc had 64mb of HDD space :D i got it when iwas about 3 back in 1995 and it was old tech then! it had ONE game on it :p