Now THAT’S data recovery…
Wow. Just when you thought launching your old hard drive into space was the gold standard for data privacy and security, along comes Jon Edwards.
It seems Mr. Edwards has successfully recovered data off of a hard drive that plummeted approximately 200,000 feet through the atmosphere when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on February 1, 2003.
It was a mixture of Mr. Edwards’ skill and improbable circumstances, apparently.
You can read the story here on CNN: Data Recovered from Columbia Disaster
I find stories like this fun to read, except that in this case the reminder of the events of 2003 added a bittersweet edge. It’s a brave soul who takes on such missions into space, and I look forward to the day when we inherit all things (Hebrews 2:8, Revelation 21:7) and the entirety of creation becomes ours to know and to experience as intimately as God does now.
Dear Mr. Smith,
Permit me, Kind Sir, to leave out the divine and human dramas (as much as I feel them too) and play the geek a bit:
“…However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not been written.
“Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives, as other approaches do.”
Hooray for DOS!
Still: only 340 MB? By present standards, NASA might as well be using hamsters in cages. Maybe that’s what’s required in the harsh environment of space (including all those cosmic rays).
Even the car is considered a harsh environment for hard disk drives.
Here’s a highlight from a Google search results:
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Automotive Hard Drives handle extreme driving conditions., Hitachi …
Dec 8, 2006 … Hitachi Automotive Hard Drive is Built Like a Tank, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/500518
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340 MB sounds like that huge drive I had in college.