Data Recovered From Space Shuttle Columbia HDD

WmHBlair writes "Data recovered from a 400MB Seagate hard drive carried on the Space Shuttle Columbia has been used to complete a physics experiment performed on the mission in space. The Johnson Space Center sent the recovered drive to Kroll Ontrack in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Considering the shape the drive was in (see picture in the linked article), it could indeed qualify for the 'most amazing disk data recovery ever.'" Update: 05/08 12:51 GMT by T : Reader lucas123 points out a piece at Computerworld with a series of photos of the recovered drive.

Comments

Damn, that is one tough drive!

[Rearden82]

I'm amazed that it's still in one piece and recognizable.

I've always been skeptical when a hard drive's specs mention being able to handle 300 g's. Looks like they aren't kidding.

Wrong Shuttle or wrong image name?

[Thornburg]

If this experiment was on Columbia, why is the image called "Challenger_drive.jpg"?

Challenger was many years earlier...

Re:Wrong Shuttle or wrong image name?

[wjsteele]

Actually, the Challenger didn't blow up. The external tank collapsed due to the solid rocket motor burning through the external hydrogen tank. As the hydrogen tank collapsed, the mass of the shuttle was greatly reduced, which caused an acceleration of the entire vehicle assembly. That acceleration drove the remaining portion of the hydrogen tank into the oxygen tank causing it to also collapse. As the same time, the srb burned through it's rear attach point to the external tank, causing it to loose lateral stability. That instability allowed it to rotate (out of sync with the rest of the shuttle stack) which further weakened the external tank structure.

As the external tank collapsed and the srb rotated, it rotated the shuttle so that it was no longer aligned with it's nose pointed towards the direction of travel. The aerodynamic forces became so extreme, that it overwhelmed the shuttle's structure.

The shuttle was literally torn apart due to the aerodynamic forces. The explosion actually occurred after the collapse and breakup as the escaping oxygen and hydrogen ignited.

Bill

Re:I've had some drives crash on me, but..

[joeytmann]

Ontrack has been doing this type of recovery for years. A couple of times I have asked for quotes, just to even look at the drive was like $1,000US. Can't remember how much it was per MB to retrieve the data. I know they have recovered data for machines lost in hurricane andrew, servers sitting in water for months. They were in Kuwait after the 91 gulf war recovering systems there. I think the only way to not have Ontrack recover a drive is to literally melt the platters.

Re:Yup...

[rthille]

I've got a friend/co-worker/gun-nut who never returns a drive with his data on it. Work gets laptops back, sans drives. He takes them out to the range with a high-powered rifle and puts rounds thru them.

Me, I just use OS-X's write-random 7-times. But if blocks got remapped because of io-errors in the drive, that might be enough for the truely paranoid. If I were that, I'd use my oxy-acetylene torch and just melt the platters to slag, after pulling the magnets out to play with.

One TOUGH DRIVE

[Nonillion]

Did anyone else notice that the drive got so hot that the head controller IC was completely de-soldered. Just goes to show that if you want a hard drive destroyed you should have it shredded.

http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/watch-en.htm