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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.
Their server is shooting flames as I type this, but they have the technology to recover their site!
Wow! They recovered 400MB of data when all they had to work with was "500 Internal Server Error"?! Unbelievable!!!
So someone put together a story on spectacular hard disk failure, space shuttle, physic experiments and heroic success, and decided to host this on anything less than an industrial-strength web server? The only thing that could have made for a quicker or larger slashdotting would be if somehow it also involved big guns and Natalie Portman (with hot grits, petrified).
Seriously people. Show some foresight here. At least the editors should have shown some mercy.
Soooo.... anyone got a coral cache of it?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I think when you're intending to launch something into space using a couple of giant rockets, you might be concerned about vibration shaking normal bolts loose.
As for the condition of the drive, it's hard to say. The exterior was obviously fried, but it was still basically drive-shaped, and from the picture it's impossible to say how damaged the platters were. If the outside was messed up but the platters were still intact, I would think recovery would be fairly simple. Would have been nice to include a picture of the interior of the drive, or maybe even multiple pictures as they took it apart.
Article on softpeida about it with pictures. http://news.softpedia.com/news/400-MB-Seagate-Drive-Survives-the-Columbia-Space-Shuttle-Disaster-84826.shtml
Here is a picture for you:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hard-drive-recovered-from-columbia&sc=rss
I'm pretty sure it's the one from the shuttle..
Actually, they probably did it for next to nothing, anticipating all the free press coverage they would get. This very "press hit" on slashdot is a good example of what they were aiming at. (Although in this specific case, they deserve the good press they're getting.)
If this experiment was on Columbia, why is the image called "Challenger_drive.jpg"?
Challenger was many years earlier...
A good general explanation is given by the RCMP (what the hell mounties have to do with computers, like most of Canadian society, is entirely beyond me) http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/tsb/pubs/it_sec/g2-003_e.pdf
If you have the practical need to nuke a drive, used DBAN: http://dban.sourceforge.net/
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.
Insert funny smart-ass comment here.
"Actually, they probably did it for next to nothing, anticipating all the free press coverage they would get. "
Don't count on it. First off, they probably didn't even know if they could recover the data. Second, they would have no way of knowing for sure that NASA would release the information about them providing the data recovery services. Third, they very likely wouldn't have known whether or not the data (if recovered) would be used for anything in the future. Fourth, there are very strict rules about government agencies doing business where they don't pay for services, especially with potentially classified data on the drives.
I would bet very strongly that they got well paid for this recovery.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
http://www.sciam.com/media/inline/BAA76AE9-F23C-1819-08D80B3BC4D83163_2.jpg
There we go
=Smidge=
nothing happened to the platters...with the exception of the violent crash (head-to-platter damage) and, more importantly, the extreme heat.
Short of that though, yeah - platters were just peachy.
I'd say that's the part that makes this impressive. Re-entry is known to be pretty darn warm. And heat will scatter magnetic domains. Heat up a magnet - it's not a magnet anymore.
Either this HD was in the center of a ball of stuff and didn't get very hot, or Seagate has some seriously awesome engineering going on.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
For anyone curious about the actual experiment whose data was recovered:
... The measurements had a temperature resolution of 0.01 mK and were conducted in microgravity aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia to avoid the density stratification caused by Earth's gravity."
The abstract for the science experiment is at http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v77/e041116 (or in the table of contents issue is http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=PLEEE8&Volume=77&Issue=4 ).
"We measured shear thinning, a viscosity decrease ordinarily associated with complex liquids, near the critical point of xenon. The data span a wide range of reduced shear rate
Basically, you pay a bench fee to get the drive examined, and then they send you the costs for recovery - for a desktop HD $500-$1500 depending on the problem. The cool part is that they send you a manifest of the recoverable files/directories so you can make an informed decision.
And they _can_ perform miracles. Including dealing with bent platters. Just depends on what you want to pay.
I must say it's been a great instructional tool for people who've neglected backups. They become wild operational militants after these episodes.
Just remember that the ONLY way to ensure data cannot be recovered on a HD is to raise the drive temp past the Curie Point for the magnetics. (A charcoal BBQ works really well for this. Just pull the electronics and wrap the drive in heavy foil unless you like the smell of roasted phenolic.)
Even if you "format" a drive it means that the waveforms coming off the heads can be interpreted as a certain, predictable value - but also remember that at root, it's an analog system and so artifacts from the prior contents are around, it's just a question of finding and interpreting them... That's why the DoD and other "erase" things are so comprehensive. Trying to obliterate all artifacts.
I saw them do it on CSI, and TV never lies.
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.
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I think the burden of proof lays on the outrageous claim, not the reasonable assertion.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Here is a picture for you:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hard-drive-recovered-from-columbia&sc=rss
No, I'm pretty sure that's just stock photography of an IBM Deskstar after one week of use.
You can tell the make and model of a nearly completely trashed hard drive.
I'm not sure whether I should be impressed or if I should merely feel sad for another wasted life ...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!